Lysander Spooner: “All other laws, it is optional with each man to obey, or not, as he may choose.”

It was a principle of the Common Law, as it is of the law of nature, and of common sense, that no man can be taxed without his personal consent.

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.

They were even allowed to grant pardon to criminals, and to correct by their clemency the rigors of justice.

It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.