for when the
robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure. That part
of the government of England that is called the house of lords, was
originally composed of persons who had committed the robberies of which
I have been speaking. It was an association for the protection of the
property they had stolen.

But besides the criminality of the origin of aristocracy, it has an
injurious effect on the moral and physical character of man. Like
slavery it debilitates the human faculties; for as the mind bowed down
by slavery loses in silence its elastic powers, so, in the contrary
extreme, when it is buoyed up by folly, it becomes incapable of exerting
them, and dwindles into imbecility. It is impossible that a mind
employed upon ribbands and titles can ever be great. The childishness of
the objects consumes the man.

It is at all times necessary, and more particularly so during the
progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by
habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first
principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to
understand them: and it is by keeping that line and that origin always
in view that we never forget them.

An enquiry into the origin of Rights will demonstrate to us that
_rights_ are not _gifts_ from one man to another, nor from one class of
men to another; for who is he who could be the first giver, or by what
principle, or on what authority, could he possess the right of giving? A
declaration of rights is not a creation of them, nor a donation of them.
It is a manifest of the principle by which they exist, followed by a
detail of what the rights are; for every civil right has a natural
right for its foundation, and it includes the principle of a reciprocal
guarantee of those rights from man to man. As, therefore, it is
impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin
of man, it consequently follows, that rights appertain to man in right
of his existence only, and must therefore be equal to every man. The
principle of an _equality of rights_ is clear and simple. Every man can
understand it, and it is by understanding his rights that he learns his
duties; for where the rights of men are equal, every man must finally
see the necessity of protecting the rights of others as the most
effectual security for his own. But if, in the formation of a
constitution, we depart from the principle of equal rights, or