s nature, reducing one's self to the level of brutes,
who are the slaves of instinct, and even offending the author of one's
being, to renounce without reserve the most precious of his gifts, and
submit to the commission of all the crimes he has forbid us, merely to
gratify a mad or a cruel master; and if this sublime artist ought to
be more irritated at seeing his work destroyed than at seeing it
dishonoured. I shall only ask what right those, who were not afraid
thus to degrade themselves, could have to subject their dependants to
the same ignominy, and renounce, in the name of their posterity,
blessings for which it is not indebted to their liberality, and
without which life itself must appear a burthen to all those who are
worthy to live.

Puffendorf says that, as we can transfer our property from one to
another by contracts and conventions, we may likewise divest ourselves
of our liberty in favour of other men. This, in my opinion, is a very
poor way of arguing; for, in the first place, the property I cede to
another becomes by such cession a thing quite foreign to me, and the
abuse of which can no way affect me; but it concerns me greatly that
my liberty is not abused, and I can not, without incurring the guilt
of the crimes I may be forced to commit, expose myself to become the
instrument of any. Besides, the right of property being of mere human
convention and institution, every man may dispose as he pleases of
what he possesses: But the case is otherwise with regard to the
essential gifts of nature, such as life and liberty, which every man
is permitted to enjoy, and of which it is doubtful at least whether
any man has a right to divest himself: By giving up the one, we
degrade our being; by giving up the other we annihilate it as much as
it is our power to do so; and as no temporal enjoyments can indemnify
us for the loss of either, it would be at once offending both nature
and reason to renounce them for any consideration. But though we could
transfer our liberty as we do our substance, the difference would be
very great with regard to our children, who enjoy our substance but by
a cession of our right; whereas liberty being a blessing, which as men
they hold from nature, their parents have no right to strip them of
it; so that as to establish slavery it was necessary to do violence to
nature, so it was necessary to alter nature to perpetuate such a
right; and the jurisconsults, who have gravely pronounced th