Highlights from the book:
"Twentieth century America has seen the apparent triumph of the industrial over the agrarian way of life, and the victory of centralized government over the forces of federalism, decentralization, and local rule."
"Spooner regarded the Constitution primarily as a device which afforded opportunities to minority groups to exploit others through the instrument of special privileges."
"Up to this time Spooner had hardly begun his work as an economic pamphleteer. Primarily concerned with money, banking and credit, he later grew to be regarded by the anarchists as on a par with Greene as an advocate of free banking."
"These were not the words of a proletarian at the barricades but of an established lawyer in a staid community, and they illustrate the degree of affection for natural law as well as aversion for the legislative process and its product."
"Congress was delegated nowhere in the Constitution to provide national currency, or establish legal tender which everyone was under obligation to accept \& use in the contraction \& payment of debts. The power to coin did not include the power to make use universal and mandatory."
"...he now mustered his choicest polemics for an attack upon the nation's financiers and their part in encouraging monopoly in business and industry. This was now inevitable in view of the increasing centralization of finance."
"the thread of persistent concern over the concepts of natural law, natural justice, and natural rights which eventually led him to denounce all man-made government as superflous and the legislative process as pure chicanery."
'There is, and can be, no law but natural law." In later writings he was to define natural law as "the science of men's rights,".... There were no such things as group rights, declared Spooner; "Society is only a number of individuals.'
'He took particular exception to the phrase "supreme power of the state" as the evident source of the status of law. "A 'state,' is simply the boundaries within which any single com-bination, or concentration of will and power are efficient, or irresistible, for the time being."'
'It was Wendell Phillips' idea that people were bound to obey all legislative statutes, however unjust, until the body responsible for their passage arrived at their repeal.'
"Looking at the United States Constitution, he declared that the convention delegates represented only one-twentieth of the whole population in the country, and that statutory legislation was produced by men who represented only half of that number."
An Essay On The Trial By Jury (1852)
"The work had for its core the thesis that any legislation either in England or
the United States which was in conflict with the common law was summarily invalid."
'Spooner charged that in the England and United States of his time, there existed sufficient evidence that the "true" trial by jury did not exist at all, nor had it done so for many years.'
"trial by jury was a formal establishment of the right of revolution, which no govt ever willingly acknowledged. Govt never admitted the injustice of its laws, \& revolt was possible only by such elements as actually established a degree of physical strength superior to the govt."
'Spooner's anti-govt sentiments were thoroughly aroused by boasting on the part of elements of the North over the crushing of Southern "dissent" in the name of "liberty and free government." He said it resembled a holy war fought in interests of establishing a state religion.'
"who made it had no power to contract for others than themselves in any matters. To maintain a group might make political agreements binding on future generations was as valid as to believe they also possessed power to make business or marriage contracts mandatory upon them."
"Spooner recited the Constitution possessed no authority of itself, \& that it merely represented a contract drawn up among persons long dead even though relatively few then living had been allowed to take formal part in expressing approval or dissent at the time of its adoption."
"The secret ballot makes a secret government, open despotism is better. The single despot stands and says: I am the State: my will is law, I am your master. I take the responsibility of my acts, ... But a secret government is little better than a government of assassins.""
"Elected by whom they did not know, protected by the Constitution from responsibility for any legislation which they might pass. The right to vote out incumbents was no "remedy", they were merely replaced by others who exercised similar absolute and irresponsible power."
'The theory taxes were paid voluntarily disregarded the "practical fact" that most tax remittances were made "under the compulsion of threat." Taxpayers acceded to policies of the abstraction "govt" through fear of jail, confiscation, or violence should they make resistance."'
"Spooner's death in 1887 brought to an end both his pamphleteering and his anonymous contributions to Liberty at the time when the nation-wide loose affiliation of anti-govemment intellectuals was at its peak."