Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.

Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.

The mission of law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even thought the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect property.