01c. 1847 ADThe secret ballot makes a secret government and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
02c. 1847 ADIt is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
03c. 1847 ADNow a slave is not 'held' by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce. He is 'held' only by brute force. One person beats another until the latter will obey him, work for him, if he require it, or do nothing if he require it.Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
04c. 1847 ADSlavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
05c. 1847 ADIt cannot be said that the Constitution formed 'the people of the United States,' for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of 'the people' as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as 'we,' nor as 'people,' nor as 'ourselves.' Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any 'posterity.'Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
06c. 1847 ADThe mental capacity of a person to make reasonable contracts, is the only criterion, by which to determine his legal capacity to make obligatory contracts. And his mental capacity to make reasonable contracts is certainly not to be determined by the fact that he is, or is not, twenty-one years of age.Lysander Spooner / quote ↗
