Lysander Spooner: “But there is no reason why a judge should have the power of punishing, for contempt, any more than for any other…”

If the authority be vested in the government, the governmnt is absolute, and the people have no liberties except such as the government sees fit to indulge them with.

And whenever any number of men, calling themselves a government, do anything to another man, or to his property, which they had no right to do as individuals they thereby declare themselves trespassers, robbers, or murderers, according to…

They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…

In that case the trial is really a trial by the government, and not by the jury.