The historian Clyde Wilson has observed that John C. Calhoun’s congressional speeches are “always dealing with a real and known audience and with a subject requiring decision.” Calhoun was not merely expounding on theoretical or abstract points. This is important in understanding his response to the abolition petitions, including the one colloquially described as the “positive good” speech. Like all his speeches, it must be understood in the context of his time.

Financial markets involve various individuals engaged in the buying and selling of financial assets. Most of the time, the actions of the market participants are driven by popular ideas. If the market participants were to follow a theory that corresponds to reality, then the market will reflect this. Conversely, if the decisions taken by the market participants are based on assumptions that are detached from reality, then the direction of the market is likely to follow.

It must be owned that Mr Locke, and other theoretical writers, have held, that “there remains still inherent in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them: for when such trust is abused, it is thereby forfeited, and devolves to those who gave it.” But however just this conclusion may be in theory, we cannot adopt it, nor argue from it, under any dispensation of government at present actually existing. . .

Ludwig von Mises was a strict classical liberal who viewed the state as a necessary, albeit dangerous, instrument for protecting social cooperation. He famously used the traditional metaphor of the “night-watchman state.” He saw any taxation that goes beyond funding the absolute bare minimum required to protect citizens from violence, theft, and fraud as the forcible extraction of a person’s life and effort.