Often the natural rights of an individual are opposed to the presumed interests or heated passions of a large majority of democratic government; if these rights are not clearly and expressly ascertained, the individual must be lost; and for the truth of this I appeal to every man who has borne a part in the legislative councils of America. In such government the tyranny of the legislative is most to be dreaded.

ANONYMOUS FARMER, Reply to Cassius by Brutus, published in Virginia Independent Chronicle, May 14, 1788, quoted in What the Anti-Federalists Were For by Herbert J. Storing [University of Chicago 1981], p. 40

[L]egislation...is...the battlefield for the fantasies and greed of everyone.

What is law, or at least what ought it to be? What is its rational and moral mission? Is it not to hold the balance even between all rights, all liberties, and all property? Is it not to cause justice to rule among all? Is it not to prevent and to repress oppression and robbery wherever they are found? And are you not shocked at the immense, radical, and deplorable innovation introduced into the world by compelling the law itself to commit the very crimes to punish which is its especial mission - by turning the law in principle and in fact against liberty and property?

Your system has written over the entrance of the legislative halls these words: "Whoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of the legalized pillage." And what has been the result? All classes of society have become demoralized by shouting around the gates of the palace: "Give me a share of the spoils."

[When universal suffrage was proclaimed, I had for a moment hopes to have heard this sentiment: "No more pillage for any one, justice for all." And that would have been the real solution...Such was not the case...In making inroads upon the National Assembly, each class, in accordance with your system, has endeavored to make the law an instrument of rapine. There have been demanded heavier imposts, gratuitous credit, the right to employment, the right to assistance, the guaranty of incomes and of minimum wages, gratuitous instruction, loans to industry, etc., etc.: in short, every one has endeavored to live and thrive at the expense of others.

[M]embers of the legislature...seem to be inoculated with the bacillus of irrepressible activity, the desire continually to be proposing new laws, new restrictions, new exactions.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter VI, Bill of Rights

The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens?

[T]he propensity of all single and numerous assemblies [is] to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.

There are few historical errors more serious than the assumption that popular governments have always been legislating governments.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.

Mass fabrication of laws ends by jeopardizing the other fundamental requisite of law—certainty.

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.