[A]ll governments have frequently used this power to delude and defraud their subjects. They have either mixed the precious metals with baser materia… - Thomas Hodgskin

Our leaders invent nothing but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects.

The persons who thus appropriated the soil of Europe, did so by a right of conquest. They did not lay down the sword the instant they had overrun the land, they kept it drawn in their hand, and engraved with it laws for the conquered. The countries they overran had been previously cultivated by slaves in a rude manner. In appropriating the soil, they appropriated its inhabitants, reduced some to slavery, and continued the slavery of others. Power so acquired, and privileges so established, were the basis of the present political and legal, not social, edifice of Europe. These conquerors were the first legislators. By an almost uninterrupted succession, the power of legislation has continued in the hands of their descendants to the present day.

If the government, for example, should decree that an ox should be given for a sheep, and a sheep for a hat or a pair of stockings, its folly would be laughed at, its unjust interference would excite our indignation, and its decrees would be despised and disobeyed. The same would be the case with all other similar commodities; and what is there then in the nature of gold and silver which should release them from this general law,…