For one, or another, of these reasons, therefore, each and every law, so-called, that forty-eight different congresses have presumed to make, within the last ninety-six years, have been utterly destitute of all legitimate authority.
Spooner claims that laws made by Congress lack legitimacy if they do not align with justice.
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And nobody is bound to take the least notice of them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations.
And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.
It was simply, that they would neither convict the innocent, nor acquit the guilty.
Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.