Lysander Spooner

This monopoly of money has also given, to the holders of it, a control, so nearly absolute, of all industry--agricultural as well as mechanical--and all traffic, as has enabled them to plunder all the producing classes in the prices of…

For the first seventy years of the government, one portion of the lawmakers would be satisfied with nothing less than permission to rob one-sixth, or one-seventh, of the whole population, not only of their labor, but even of their right to…

That this is no exaggerated description of our national lawmaking, the following facts will prove.

If you were now required to name such a lawmaker, I think you would search our history in vain to find him.

A man has sometimes gained a reputation for honesty, in his own State or district, by opposing some one or more of the robberies that were proposed by members from other portions of the country.

It can scarcely be said that there has ever been an honest man in one of them.

You have had abundant opportunity to know--and if you have kept your eyes open, you do know--what these schemes of robbery have been in the past; and from these you can judge what they will be in the future.

You cannot claim to be ignorant of what crimes such a government will commit.

Was a more thorough scheme of national villainy ever invented?

Substantially all their lawmaking proceeds upon this theory; for there is no other theory, on which they can find any justification whatever for any lawmaking at all.

It can do to no one any favor, nor render to any one any assistance, which it withholds from another.

It must adhere inflexibly to the principle of entire freedom for all honest industry, and all honest traffic.