This denial of men's natural right to take possession of and cultivate wilderness land is not altered at all by the fact that the government consents to sell as much land as it thinks it expedient or profitable to sell; nor by the fact that, in certain cases, it gives outright certain lands to certain persons.
This quote highlights Spooner's view that government sales of land do not negate its claim of ownership over it.
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More from Lysander Spooner
All those who are not forbidden by law may be judges (jurors).
A man has a natural right to enforce his own rights and redress his own wrongs.
The people are no more arrayed against themselves, when a jury puts its veto upon a statute, which the other tribunals have sanctioned, than they are when the same veto is exercised by the representatives, the senate, the executive, or the…
It is also sheer impudence, on their part, to assume that their commands are at all necessary to teach other men what is, and what is not, justice.