To art and insinuation they turned, as their only resource, and flattered a people whom they could not awe; but address, and the abilities to persuade, were a weak compensation for the absence of real power.
Spooner critiques the limitations of persuasion in the absence of real power.
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It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.
It would be a solecism and absurdity in government to allow such consequences as these.
And nobody is bound to take the least notice of them, unless it be to trample them under foot, as usurpations.
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…