Lysander Spooner: “The second body of legislators are liable and likely to be just as tyrannical as the first.”

When two men meet one upon the highway, or in the wilderness, have they a right to dispose of his life, liberty, or property at their pleasure, simply because they are the more numerous party?

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

All other laws, it is optional with each man to obey, or not, as he may choose.

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.