governments, who have no other
title to the prerogative of establishing such rules, than is given them
by the possession or command of sufficient physical power to coerce
submission to them.

The injustice of these rules, however palpable and atrocious it may be,
has not deterred their authors from dignifying them with the name of
_law_. And, what is much more to be deplored, such has been the
superstition of the people, and such their blind veneration for physical
power, that this injustice has not opened their eyes to the distinction
between law and force, between the sacred requirements of natural
justice, and the criminal exactions of unrestrained selfishness and
power. They have thus not only suffered the name of law to be stolen,
and applied to crime as a cloak to conceal its true nature, but they
have rendered homage and obedience to crime, under the name of law,
until the very name of law, instead of signifying, in their minds, an
immutable principle of right, has come to signify little more than an
arbitrary command of power, without reference to its justice or its
injustice, its innocence or its criminality. And now, commands the most
criminal, if christened with the name of law, obtain nearly as ready an
obedience, oftentimes a more ready obedience, than law and justice
itself. This superstition, on the part of the people, which has thus
allowed force and crime to usurp the name and occupy the throne of
justice and law, is hardly paralleled in its grossness, even by that
superstition, which, in darker ages of the world, has allowed falsehood,
absurdity and cruelty to usurp the name and the throne of religion.

But I am aware that other definitions of law, widely different from that
I have given, have been attempted--definitions too, which practically
obtain, to a great extent, in our judicial tribunals, and in all the
departments of government. But these other definitions are nevertheless,
all, in themselves, uncertain, indefinite, mutable; and therefore
incapable of being standards, by a reference to which the question of
law, or no law, can be determined. Law, as defined by them, is
capricious, arbitrary, unstable; is based upon no fixed principle;
results from no established fact; is susceptible of only a limited,
partial and arbitrary application; possesses no intrinsic authority;
does not, in itself, recognize any moral principle; does not necessarily
confer upon, or even acknowledge in individuals, an