be possible for a government to exist and for a system of laws to be framed, that confined itself to the punishment of such offences, and left all the rest (except the suppression of force by force) voluntary or matter of mutual compact. What are a man's natural rights? Those, the infringement of which cannot go unpunished by leaving all but cases of necessity to choice and reason, much would be perhaps gained, and nothing lost.

COROLLARY 1. It follows from the foregoing statement, that there is nothing to restrain or oppose the will of one man, but the will of another meeting it. Thus, in a desert island, it is evident that my will and right would be absolute and unlimited, and I might say with Robinson Crusoe, "I am monarch of all I survey."

COROLLARY 2. It is society that circumscribes my will or rights, by establishing equal and mutual rights. I do not belong to the state nor am I a nonentity in it, but I am some thing and independent in it, for that very reason that no one in it belongs to me. Equality, instead of being destroyed by society, results from and is proved by it; for in morals as in physics, the action and reaction are equal. In a row of the pit, each person has a right

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to his own place by the supposition that he has no right to encroach on any one's else. They are convertible propositions. Away then with the notion that liberty and equality are inconsistent. But here is the artifice by merging the rights of the individual in the factitious order of society, those rights become arbitrary, capricious, removeable at the pleasure of the state or ruling power; there is nothing substantial or sacred left in them: if one has no right naturally, all taken together can mount up to nothing; right and justice are mere blanks to be filled up with arbitrary will, and the people have thenceforward no defence against the government. Hence the great utility of universal suffrage; for if the vote and choice of a single individual goes for nothing, so may that of all the rest of the community, by parity of reasoning: but if the choice of every man in the community is held sacred, then what must be the weight and value of the whole?

Many object that by this means property is not represented, and they would have nothing but property represented. Property always has a natural influence and authority: it is only persons without property that have no natural protection, and require every artificial and legal one.

COROLLARY 3. If I was out at sea in a boat with a jure divino monarch, and he wanted to throw me overboard, I would not let him. No gentleman would ask such a compliance, no freeman would submit to it. Has he then a right to dispose of the lives and liberties of thirty millions of men? Or have they no right to resist his demands? They have thirty millions of times that right, if they had a particle of the same spirit that I have. It is not the individual, but thirty millions of his subjects that call me to account in his name, and who have both the right and power. They have the power, but let them beware how the exercise of it turns against their own rights! It is not the idol but the worshippers who are to be feared, and who by degrading one of their own rank, make themselves liable to be branded with the same disqualifications and penalties.

COROLLARY 4. No one can be born a slave; for my limbs are my own, and the power and the will to use them are anterior to all laws, and independent of every other person. No one acquires a right over another but that other acquires the same right over him; therefore the relation of master and slave is a contradiction in political logic. Hence combina

tions among labourers for the rise of wages are always just and lawful, as much as those among master manufacturers to keep them down. A man's labour is his own as much as another's good; and he may starve if he pleases, but he may refuse to work except on his own terms. The right of property is founded on this, that one man has not a right to the produce of another's labour, but each man has a right to the benefit of his own exertions and the use of his natural and inalienable powers, except for a supposed equivalent and by mutual consent. Personal liberty and property therefore rest upon the same foundation.

There are four things that a man may call his own. 1. His person, 2. his actions, 3. his property, 4. his opinions. Let us see how each of these circumscribes and modifies those of others, upon the principle of equity and necessity above laid down.

FIRST, AS TO THE RIGHTS OF PERSONS. My object is to show that the right of society to make laws to coerce the will of others, is founded on the necessity of repelling the unauthorised encroachment of that will on their rights; that is, strictly on the right of self-defence or resistance to interference. Society says, Let us alone, and we will let you alone:" its object is not

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to patronize or advise others, that is, forcibly; but to protect itself: meddling with others for any other plea or purpose is impertinence. But equal rights destroy one another; nor can there be a right to impossible things, such as the exercise of two equal and incompatible rights. Let A be the culprit; B, C, D, &c. are plaintiffs against A, and wish to prevent his taking any unfair or wilful advantage over them. They claim no right to dictate to or domineer over him, but merely to prevent his dictating to and domineering over them, and in this, having right on their side, they have also the power to put it in execution. 1.-A, B, C, D have the common and natural rights of persons, namely, that none of these has a right to offer violence to, or give bodily pain or injury to any of the others. People laugh at natural rights: they might as well deny they have natural persons; for while the last distinction is true and unavoidable by the constitution of things, certain consequences must and will follow undeniably from it-"while this machine is to him," &c. For instance, I should like to know whether Mr. Burke, with his Sublime and Beautiful fancies, would deny that each person has a particular body and senses belonging to him, so that he feels a peculiar and natural interest in whatever