the lightnings-a moment more, and the tempeft fhall overwhelm them, they fhall founder for ever and ever. O, PITT! how vain was your confidence, that you could fave yourself and your colleagues by the deftruction of mankind. Luxemburg, Paris, THOMAS PAINE. THE RIGHTS OF MAN. CHAP. I. OF NATURAL RIGHTS. THERE never did, there never will, and there never can, exist, a legiflature, or any description of men, in any country, poffeffed of the right, or the power, of binding, and controuling pofterity to the END OF TIME: or, of commanding, FOR EVER, HOW the world shall be governed, or wнo fhall govern it and THEREFORE, all fuch clauses, 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 genera tions 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 controul them, in any fhape whatfoever, than the legislature, or the people of the present day, have to dispose of, bind, or controul, those who fhall live a hundred, or a thoufand 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 ceases 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 fhall be its 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 controuled, and contracted for, by the manufcript 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 beasts of the field, to whatever fucceffor they appointed. This is now fo exploded, as fcarcely to be remembered, aud 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, legiflature, can bind or controul 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 utmost stretch of mortal imagination can conceive; what poffible obligations, then can exift between them-what rule or principle can be laid down, that two non-entities, the one out of existence, and the other not in, and who never cam meet in this world-that the one should controu 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 such a principle ever existed, it must now exist; 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 fhall continue to be born. Therefore, to fet up a political Adam, in whom all posterity 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 genera tion, 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. B 2 |