Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Context: There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such 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 cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.
1840s, Past and Present (1843)
Islam Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone
Naked Lunch (1959)
The Contemporary Review
Context: AHow, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. Rights are not things which grow by using the multiplication table. here are two men. If there are such things as rights, these two men must evidently start with equal rights. How shall you, then, by multiplying one of the two, even a thousand times over, give him larger rights than the other, since each new unit that appears only brings with him his own rights; or how, by multiplying one of the units up to the point of exhausting the powers of the said multiplication table, shall you take from the other the rights with which he started?
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)
Context: Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.
[Narrative and Critical History of America: English explorations and settlements in North America, 1497-1689, edited by Justin Winsor, 1889, vol. III, The Religious Element in the Settlemen of New England.—Puritans and Separatists in England by George E. Ellis, 219–243, https://books.google.com/books?id=NhBkAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA229, 1884, Houghton, Mifflin and Company] (quote from p. 229)
Rex v. Wilkes (1769), 4 Burr. Part IV., p. 2563.
Address to the Convention (4 June 1788) http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/resources/documents/ch07_04.htm
Addresses to the Virginia Ratifying Convention (1788)
Context: Does any man suppose that one general national government can exist in so extensive a country as this? I hope that a government may be framed which may suit us, by drawing a line between the general and state governments, and prevent that dangerous clashing of interest and power, which must, as it now stands, terminate in the destruction of one or the other. When we come to the judiciary, we shall be more convinced that this government will terminate in the annihilation of the state governments: the question then will be, whether a consolidated government can preserve the freedom and secure the rights of the people.
If such amendments be introduced as shall exclude danger, I shall most gladly put my hand to it. When such amendments as shall, from the best information, secure the great essential rights of the people, shall be agreed to by gentlemen, I shall most heartily make the greatest concessions, and concur in any reasonable measure to obtain the desirable end of conciliation and unanimity…
Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp#art11, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796, and at Algiers on January 3, 1797 and received ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797; it was signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul). This is a declaration of the secular character of the government of the United States, sometimes misattributed to John Adams, who signed the treaty into law. A portion is also sometimes misattributed to George Washington, and also misquoted as "This nation of ours was not founded on Christian principles."
Treaty of Tripoli (1797)
Section IV, p. 12–13
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)
