Natural Rights

for natural rights are inalienable, and can no more be surrendered to government—which is but an association or individuals—than to a single individual.

This rule, principle, obligation or requirement of natural justice, has its origin in the natural rights of individuals, results necessarily from them, keeps them ever in view as its end and purpose, secures their enjoyment, and forbids their violation.

If these doctrines are correct, then those contracts of government, state and national, which we call constitutions, are void, and unlawful, so far as they purport to authorize, (if any of them do authorize,) anything in violation of natural justice, or the natural rights of any man or class of men whatsoever.

But to show that I hold my office by natural right is a story much sooner told and less open to dispute.

Societies are not instituted for the purpose of enabling governments to destroy natural rights;

and proceeds upon the ground that every man should be presumed to be entitled to life, liberty, and such property as he has in his possession;

All monopolies, all special privileges, all sumptuary laws, all restraints upon any traffic, bargain, or contract, that was naturally lawful,* all restraints upon men’s natural [221] rights, the whole catalogue of mala prohibita, and all taxation to which the taxed parties had not individually, severally, and freely consented, would be at an end;

In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.

MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance:

As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture;

It is on a par with the “natural right” of every citizen born into the world to an acre of land and a good education.