What is the law?—Who are the law makers?— The law is a great scheme of rules intended to preserve the power of government, secure the wealth of the l… - Thomas Hodgskin

Slave-owners and rich men, among a crowd of slave-descended famishing labourers, lead probably a more anxious and toilsome life in protecting their property, and in enforcing obedience to their orders, than the slaves whose labour they extort.

[T]he real business of men, what promotes their prosperity, is always better done by themselves than by any few separate and distinct individuals, acting as a government in the name of the whole.

Nature may annihilate, but she never tortures…. Not so the legislator. He has inflicted on mankind for ages the miseries of revenue laws,—greater than those of pestilence and famine, and sometimes producing both these calamities, without our learning the lesson which nature seems to have intended to teach, viz. the means of avoiding this perpetual calamity. Revenue laws meet us at every turn. They embitter our meals, and disturb our sleep. They excite dishonesty, and check enterprise. They impede division of labour, and create division of interest. They sow strife and enmity amongst townsmen and brethren….