AUTHOR OF COMMON SENSE, AMERICAN CRISIS, AGE OF REASON, PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED AND SOLD BY D. WEBSTER, A BRITISH EXILE. 1797 THE RIGHTS OF MAN. CHAP Ì. THER OF NATURAL RIGHTS. ; or, HERE never did, there never will, and there never can exist, a legislature, or any defcription of men, in any country, poffeffed of the right, or the power, of binding, and controlling pofterity to the end of time of commanding, for ever, how the world fhall be governed, or who fhall govern it and therefore, all fuch claufes, acts, or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right, nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age, and generation, must be as free to act for itself, in all cafes, as the ages and generations that preceded it. The vanity and prefumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most prepofterous and infolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man-neither has any generation a property in the generations that are to follow. A legislature, or the people of any antecedent period, had no more right to difpofe of the people of the present day, or to bind, or to control them, in any fhape whatsoever, than the legislature, or the people of the prefent day, have to dispose of, bind, or control, thofe who fhall live a hundred, or a thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be competent to all the purposes which its occafions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceafes to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participations in the concerns of this world, he no longer has any authority, in directing who shall be governors, or how its government fhall be organized, or how adminiftered, I contend for the right of the living, and against their being willed away, and controlled, and contracted for, by the manuscript authority of the dead. There was a time, when kings difpofed of their crowns by will, upon their death-beds, and configned the people, like beafts of the field, to whatever fucceffor they appointed. This is now fo exploded, as fcarcely to be remembered, and fo monftrous, as hardly to be believed. It is a general principle in governments, that no parent, or mafter, nor all the authority of the legislature, can bind or control the perfonal freedom, even of an individual, beyond the age of twenty-one years ;-on what ground of right, then, can any legislature bind all pofterity for ever? Those who have quitted the world, and those who are not yet arrived at it, are as remote from each other, as the utmoft ftretch of mortal imagination can conceive;what poffible obligations then, can exist between them-what rule or principle can be laid down, that two non-entities, the one out of ex-. istence, and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world-that the one should control the other to the end of time? From what, or from whence, is the right of any human power derived to bind pofterity for ever? If fuch a principle ever existed, it must now exift; for whatever appertains to the nature of man, cannot be annihilated by man. It is the nature of man to die, and he will continue to die as long as he fall continue to be born. Therefore, to fet up a political Adam, in whom all pofterity are bound for ever, it must be proved that this Adam poffeffed fuch a power or fuch a right. Although laws which are made in one generation, often continue in force through fucceeding generations, they continue to derive their force from the confent of the living, and are not repealed, not because they cannot be repealed, but because they are not, and the non-repealing paffes for confent. A former legislature might as well have paffed an act to authorife themfelves to live for ever, as to make their authority live for ever. The cir cumftances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change alfo; and, as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that have any right in it. That which may be thought right, and be found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong, and found inconvenient, in another. In fuch cafes who is to decide the living or the dead? It fignifies nothing to a man what is done to him after he is dead; but it fignifies much to the living to have a will in what fhall concern them. Who is there in the world but man; and if we admit that man has rights, the confideration then will be-what are thofe rights; and, how came man to them originally? The error of thofe who reafon by pre. cedents, drawn from antiquity, refpecting the rights of man, is, that they do not go far enough into antiquity: They do not go the whole way: They ftop in fome of the intermediate ftages of a hundred, or a thousand years, and produce what was then done as a rule for the prefent day. This is no authority at all! If we travel still farther into antiquity, we fhall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and, if antiquity is to be authority, a thoufand fuch authorities may be produced, fucceffively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall come out right at laft, we fhall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his only title, and a higher cannot be given him. We have now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his rights. As to the manner in which the world has been governed, from that day to this, it is no further any concern of ours, than to make a proper use of the errors, or the improvements, which the hiftory of it prefents. Thofe who lived a hundred, or a thousand years ago, were then moderns, as we are now. If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live a hundred, or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as that we make a precedent of those who li ́ved a hundred, or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving every thing, 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 refting place, and our reason finds a home. If a difpute about the rights of man had arifen, at the distance of a hundred years from the creation, it is to this fource of authority they must have referred; and it is to the fame fource of authority, that we must now refer. The genealogy of Chrift is traced to Adam;-Why then not trace the the rights of man to the creation of man? Because there have been upstart-governments, thrusting themselves between, and prefumptuously working to unmake man. If any generation of men ever poffeffed the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that ever exifted—and, if that generation did not do it, no fucceeding generation can fhew any authority for doing it, nor fet up any. 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 fucceeding each other. Every generation is c qual in rights to the generations that preceded it, by the fame 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 pointthe unity of man-by which I mean, that man, confidered as man, is all of one degree, and confequently, that all men are born equal, and with equal natural rights, in the fame 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, confequently, every child born into the world, must be confidered 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 fame kind. The Mofaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine authority, or merely historical, is fully up to this point-the unity or equality of man. The expreffions admit of no controverfy: "And God faid, let us "make man in our own image: in the image of God created he him— "male and female created he them." The diftinction of fexes is pointed out, but no other distinction is even implied. If this be not divine authority, it is historical authority, and fhews that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is the oldeft upon record. It It is alfo to be observed, that all the religions known in this world are founded, fo 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 fuppofed to exift hereafter, the good and the bad are the only diftinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to flide into this principle, by making degrees to confift in crimes, and not in perfons. is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the higheft advantage to cultivate. By confidering man in this light, and by inftructing him to confider himself in this light, it places him in a clofe 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 ufe a more fashionable phrafe his birth and family, that he becomes diffolute It is not among the leaft of the evils, of the prefent exifting governments in all parts of Europe, that man, confidered as man, is thrown back to a vaft distance from his Maker, and the artificial chafm filled up by a fucceffion of barriers, or a fort of turnpike-gates, through which he has to pass. The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike-gates through which he is to pafs by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and fimple; and confifts but of two points-bis duty to God, which every man muft feel— and, with respect to his neighbour-to do as he would be done by. If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be refpected; if not, they will be defpifed. And, with refpect to thofe to whom no power is delegated, but who affume it, the rational world can know nothing of them. CHAP, |