Dissidente entre os dissidentes

If the concept of "law" was unsatisfactorily vague and impermanent, that of the "state" was even more so. Politically or sociologically, there appeared nothing fixed in its nature, character, or boundaries. Again it was the "will and power of individuals" which determined its establishment, and perpetually subject to abolition or incorporation within that of another, if overcome by individuals of greater strength. "A 'state,' " he pronounced, "is simply the boundaries within which any single combination, or concentration of will and power are efficient, or irresistible, for the time being". Natural law, which recognized the validity of contracts "which men have a natural right to make", permitted the foundation of government on this basis, but only if the contract was that of an association of individuals, entered into consciously and voluntarily by each as an individual. This governmental contract might authorize means such as statutes "not inconsistent with natural justice for the better protection of men's natural rights", but under no conditions might it sanction the destruction of natural rights while ostensibly acting in a manner which might be interpreted as furthering them:

…if the majority, however large, of the people enter into a contract of government called a constitution by which they agree to aid, abet or accomplish any kind of injustice, or to destroy or invade the natural rights of any person or persons whatsoever, this contract of government is unlawful and void. It confers no rightful authority upon those appointed to administer it. The only duties which anyone can owe to it, or to the government established under cover of its authority, are disobedience, resistance, destruction.

The idea that there was any inherent authority or sovereignty in a government as such Spooner scouted as an imposture, as he also did the belief in the right of a majority to restrain individuals from "exercise" of natural rights through the utility of "arbitrary enactments." These doctrines he placed in the same category as that of divine right of kings. Judicial tribunals were bound to declare the government or the majority acting in an illegal capacity, whenever involved in promoting anything which subverted natural law and its underlying principle, natural justice, which he defined in one place as "the rendering of equivalents".

» Lysander Spooner: Dissident Among Dissidents, in Men Against the State by James J. Martin.