Historical voices

This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue.

Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their…

Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it,--and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is their…

That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.

That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him.

Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together.

By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own cause.

One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause.

They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence,--rights which are absolutely repugnant to it?

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law.

He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock.

In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor.

They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life and to consolation in death.

They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful.

Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation.

It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule.

If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right.

In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy.

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,) the real rights of men.

But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us!

They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title.