en will be: What are those
rights and how came man by them originally?

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity
respecting the rights of man is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity; they stop in some of the intermediate stages, and produce
what was then done as a rule for the present day. Mr. Burke, for
example, would have the English nation submit themselves to their
monarchs for ever, because an English Parliament did make such a
submission to William and Mary, not only on behalf of the people then
living, but on behalf of their heirs and posterities--as if any
parliament had the right of binding and controlling posterity, or of
commanding for ever how the world should be governed. If antiquity is to
be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively
contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come
out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his
Maker. What was he then? Man! Man was his high and only title, and a
higher cannot be given him.

All histories of creation agree in establishing one point, the unity of
man, by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and that all men
are born equal, and with equal natural rights. These natural rights are
the foundation of all their civil rights.

A few words will explain this: Natural rights are those which appertain
to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are the rights of the
mind, and also those rights of acting as an individual for his own
happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.
Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a
member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural
right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his
individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this
kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

It follows, then, that the power produced from the aggregate of natural
rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to
invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in
which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.

Let us now apply these principles to governments. These may all be
comprehended under three heads: First, superstition; secondly, power;
thirdly, the common interest of society and the common rights of man.

When a set of artful men pretended to