Lysander Spooner: “And all these lying lawmakers and courts know it.”

It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow such consequences as these.

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

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?

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…