Lysander Spooner

That reason is, that every right he gives up diminishes his own power of self-protection, and makes it so much more difficult for the government to protect him.

For a still further reason, it is absurd to say that a man must give up some of his rights to a government, in order that government may protect him in the rest.

It is to say that he has really given up every right, and reserved none.

This is to suppose that he has retained no rights at all, that he can, at any time, claim as his own, as against the government.

But if he is compelled to give them up to somebody else,--to a government, so-called, or to any body else,--he ceases to have any rights of his own to be protected.

A man wants his rights protected, solely that he himself may possess and use them, and have the full benefit of them.

This is just as absurd as it would be to assume that a man had given himself away as a slave, in order to be protected in the enjoyment of his liberty.

And yet our government is absurd enough to assume that a man can be protected in his rights, after he has surrendered them altogether into other hands than his own.

The only possible way, in which any man can be protected in his rights, is to protect him in his own actual possession and exercise of them.

It cannot be said that men put all their rights into the hands of the government, in order to have them protected; because there can be no such thing as a man's being protected in his rights, any longer than he is allowed to retain them in…

And yet this government now rests wholly upon the assumption that some ten millions of male adults--men supposed to be compos mentis--have not only attempted to do, but have actually succeeded in doing, these absurd and impossible things.

Was a more absolute, irresponsible government than that ever invented?