Historical voices

A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature.

The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.

A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution.

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.

In doing this we shall easily discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people or over the people.

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise…

After these a race of conquerors arose, whose government, like that of William the Conqueror, was founded in power, and the sword assumed the name of a sceptre.

When a set of artful men pretended, through the medium of oracles, to hold intercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as they now march up the back-stairs in European courts, the world was completely under the government of superstition.

The first was a government of priestcraft, the second of conquerors, and the third of reason.

First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.

Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.

A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it.

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.

Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society.

Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence.

His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.

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.

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.

The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other.

Nay, even the laws of governments are obliged to slide into this principle, by making degrees to consist in crimes and not in persons.

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.

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.

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.