The journeymen, however, know their own interest better than it is known to the legislator; and they would be all richer if there were not an idle ca… - Thomas Hodgskin

Among the legislative classes embodied into, and constituting the government, we must place the landed aristocracy. In fact, the landed aristocracy and the government are one—the latter being nothing more than the organized means of preserving the power and privileges of the former.

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

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,…