Thomas Hodgskin

[I]t is nevertheless proper to make men aware that the price they pay for attempting to uphold the artificial right of property, is nothing less than the enormous sum of misery inflicted in the name of law and government.

Power so acquired, and privileges so established, were the basis of the present political and legal, not social, edifice of Europe.

The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation….

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 …

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

Who can describe the disgusting servility with which all classes submit to be fleeced by the demands of the tax-gatherer, on all sorts of false pretences, when his demands cannot be fraudulently evaded?

Those who make laws, appropriate wealth in order to secure power.

the parent theft from which flow all other thefts, is that of the legislator

Nature rewards industry and skill, the legislator be he who he may, is utterly regardless of the connection between industry and plenty.

the law has always been, and is at present made, by men who are not labourers. It is actually made by those who derive from nature no title whatever to any wealth.

The law, as to preserve life is that of individuals, is a set of rules and practices … intended to appropriate to the law-makers the produce of those who cultivate the soil, prepare clothing, or distribute what is produced among the …

The law is a great scheme of rules intended to preserve the power of government, secure the wealth of the landowner, the priest, and the capitalist, but never to secure his produce to the labourer.

The power of making laws was long vested in those—and still is vested in their descendants—who followed no trade but war, and knew no handicraft but robbery and plunder.

It is as impossible for men not to have a notion of a right of property, as it is for them to want the idea of personal identity.

Thus, the natural idea of property is a mere extension of that of individuality

The ideas expressed by the words mine and thine, as applied to the produce of labour, are simply then an extended form of the ideas of personal identity and individuality.

Mr. Locke says, that every man has a property in his own person; in fact, individuality—which is signified by the word own—cannot be disjoined from the person.

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

Wherever the right of property is placed on a proper foundation, slavery, with all its hateful consequences, is unknown:—wherever this foundation is rotten, freedom cannot exist, nor justice be administered.

[G]overnments are not producers, they have no commodities on their road to the market, and can have no claim whatever to issue paper-money. Even exchequer bills are wrong,…

[A]ll governments have frequently used this power to delude and defraud their subjects. They have either mixed the precious metals with baser materials, or they have divided them into smaller pieces, certifying at the same time by their …

Governments have meddled incessantly with money, which in our time has been the fruitful parent of intricate discussions and painful changes.

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 …

Domestic slavery, combined with systems of foreign conquest and usurpation, ruined the empires of antiquity.