That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
Interpretation
Governments can only be trusted as long as they rely on the voluntary support of the people.
Lysander Spooner emphasizes the idea that the legitimacy and trustworthiness of a government are fundamentally linked to its dependence on the voluntary support of its citizens. Once a government relies on coercion or force rather than genuine consent, it loses its integrity and the moral authority to govern. This reflects a deep skepticism about the nature of political power and the need for a government to earn the trust of the people it governs through transparent and honest means.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about the role of government in society.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that-however bloody-can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
Slavery, 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.
Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government, practically just so much.
Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation.
I'm concerned when certain movements or countries have been isolated from the international dialogue because then you have no way of influencing them.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
If the Tenth Amendment were still taken seriously, most of the federal government's present activities would not exist. That's why no one in Washington ever mentions it.
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