Lysander Spooner: “On the contrary, they acknowledge themselves robbers, murderers, and villains, pure and simple.”

For all these reasons, they are not only modest and sensible, but really frank, honest, and honorable villains, contrasted with these courts of injustice, and the lawmakers by whom these courts are established.

They do not tell us of the almshouses, hospitals, schools, churches, etc., which, out of the purest charity and benevolence, they maintain for our benefit, out of the money they take from us.

They do not tell us that all liberty and order would be destroyed, that society itself would go to pieces, and man go back to barbarism, if it were not for the care, and supervision, and protection, they lavish upon us.

They neither ask, nor expect, any mercy, if they should ever fall into the hands of honest men.