Lysander Spooner: “It can scarcely be said that there has ever been an honest man in one of them.”

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.

Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.

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

From the sale of that justice which every citizen has a right to demand, it was an easy transition to withhold or deny it.