As to the manner in which the world has been governed from that day to this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make a proper use of the errors or the improvements which the history of it presents.Those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we are now.They had their ancients, and those ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients in our turn.If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago.The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing.
It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation.Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home.If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam.Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation of man? I will answer the question.Because there have been upstart governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working to un-make man.
If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each other.Every generation is equal in rights to generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary.
Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account, whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the only mode by which the former is carried forward;and consequently every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God.The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority or merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or equality of man.
The expression admits of no controversy."And God said, Let us make man in our own image.In the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." The distinction of sexes is pointed out, but no other distinction is even implied.If this be not divine authority, it is at least historical authority, and shows that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon record.
It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of man, as being all of one degree.Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to slide into this principle, by making degrees to consist in crimes and not in persons.
It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest advantage to cultivate.By considering man in this light, and by instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in a close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to the creation, of which he is a part; and it is only when he forgets his origin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and family, that he becomes dissolute.It is not among the least of the evils of the present existing governments in all parts of Europe that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a vast distance from his Maker, and the artificial chasm filled up with a succession of barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through which he has to pass.I will quote Mr.Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up between man and his Maker.Putting himself in the character of a herald, he says: "We fear God- we look with awe to kings- with affection to Parliaments with duty to magistrates- with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility." Mr.Burke has forgotten to put in "'chivalry." He has also forgotten to put in Peter.
The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other.It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points.His duty to God, which every man must feel;and with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected: if not, they will be despised; and with regard to those to whom no power is delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing of them.
Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man.We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other.Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured.His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.But in order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be necessary to mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
