self-government as exercised through a participation in the
common government of all, shows, however, that if it be not a
natural right it will be difficult to say in what a natural right
consists. Indeed, it is perhaps the most natural of any of our
rights, inasmuch as its denial is the denial of all right to
personal liberty, for how can such latter right exist when the
right to maintain it among men and the societies of men is
denied? Again, if the right to share in the joint government is
not inherent, from whence does it come? Who can give the right to
govern another? and how can any give what he has not got? Society
is but the aggregate of individuals, and in its authority
represents only the conceded limitations on all, not any
reservoir of human rights, otherwise human rights would vary with
every changing association. Still again, if the right of a man as
regards Government can be divested either by himself or
Government at will, then Government has no limit to its rightful
tyranny--it may divest not only one man, but a hundred or a
thousand; indeed, why not all but the chosen few or the imperial
one, thus arriving logically at oligarchic or despotic rule. And
if a man may divest himself of this right, what right is sacred
from his renunciation? That a man may refuse to exercise any
right is true, and that in changing his abode he may sever his
political and social relations is equally true; but these facts
only prove that his natural rights inhere in his person, go with
him in his movement, subject always to be exercised under the
conditions and limitations before recited. After all, to
demonstrate the utter falsity and pernicious consequence of the
idea that the right to share in the common Government (which is
only a synonym for the right of franchise) is a privilege to be
farmed out by Government at discretion and to whom it chooses, it
is only necessary to ask, if that be so, whence comes the right
to representation? Wherein is the foundation for any democratic
society, predicated on the rights of individuals? That various
mixed Governments do undertake to limit the franchise to the few
as a privilege coming from the body-corporate, has nothing to do
with the question, for I am discussing now rights, not practices;
republics