Free Political Institutions Their Nature, Essence, and Maintenance An Abridgment and Rearrangement of Lysander Spooner's "Trial by jury" EDITED BY VICTOR YARROS LONDON C. W. DANIEL, LTD. 3, Amen Corner, E.C. 1912 CHAPTER 1: LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT AND MAJORITY RULE The theory of free government is that it is formed by the voluntary contract of the people individually with each other. This is the theory (although it is not, as it ought to be, the fact) in all the governments in the United States, as also in the government of England. The theory assumes that each man who is a party to the government, and contributes to its support, has individually and freely consented to it. Otherwise the government would have no right to tax him for its support, for taxation without consent is robbery. This theory, then, necessarily supposes that this government...
An Alleged Flaw in Anarchy. [Liberty, November 29, 1890.] To the Editor of Liberty:(66 ¶ 1) I am sorry if I have misinterpreted Liberty. I have not what I wrote before me, but I do not think I could have had the slightest intention of imputing to Liberty a force campaign against interest; but I believed (am I wrong?) that I had seen both interest and rent denounced in Liberty as objectionable and opposed to the interests of society. It was to this I was referring as a moral campaign. My own position is that interest is both moral and useful, and often more than anything else a chance of a better future to workmen. If workmen would giv...