They assert that, by simply retaining the name, while altering the thing,--or by simply giving an old name to a new thing,--congress has power to utterly abolish the contract which the parties themselves entered into, and substitute for it any such new and different one, as they (congress) may choose to substitute.
Spooner critiques Congress's ability to redefine contracts by merely changing the terms while keeping the name.
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Therefore all their laws, as they call them,--that is, all the laws of their own making,--have no color of authority or obligation.
Juries would refuse to enforce a tax against a man who had never agreed to pay it.
It would also be making them consent to what they regard as the destruction of their own rights.
They were even allowed to grant pardon to criminals, and to correct by their clemency the rigors of justice.