Lysander Spooner

We acknowledge that you have a natural right to make your own contracts.

Society prohibits the use of private individual coercion, and gives in its place a more safe and more certain remedy.

The right to contract is the attribute of a free agent, and he may rightfully coerce performance from another free agent, who violates his faith.

They all have the same end in view as his false definitions; that is, to establish the principle that governments have all power, and the people no rights.

And it is the only rule, to which congress have any constitutional power to make commerce conform.

The natural right of all men to make all contracts whatsoever, that are naturally and intrinsically just and lawful, furnishes the pre-existing rule, by which alone commerce can be regulated.

It would give congress power arbitrarily to control, obstruct, impede, derange, prohibit, and destroy commerce.

This definition is an utterly false, absurd, and atrocious one.

Is not this asserting that governments have all power, and the people no rights?

Thus they say, virtually, that the natural rights of mankind impose no constitutional restraints whatever upon congress, in the exercise of their lawmaking powers.

This power, like all others vested in congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed by the constitution.

Solely because these governments have all--or at least so many of them as Trimble had in his mind--been despotic and tyrannical; and have claimed for themselves all power, and denied to the people all rights.