… is from page 98 of an excerpt from the great Richard Overton‘s 1646 An Arrow Against All Tyrants and Tyranny, shot from the Prison of Newgate into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords and All Other Usurpers and Tyrants Whatsoever, as this excerpt appears in the superb 2015 reader, Individualism, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore:
Mine and thine cannot be, except this be: No man hath power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man’s.
DBx: Indeed so.
Of all of Richard Epstein’s many excellent books, my favorite remains his 1995 volume, Simple Rules for a Complex World. No such rule is more essential to a thriving civilization than the one articulated above by Overton.
(For more on Overton, see this 1980 article by Carl Watner.)
