This is actually from an essay "On Government No. I" that appeared in Franklin's paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, on 1 April 1736. The author was John Webbe. He wrote about the privileges enjoyed under British rule,
:Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
Misattributed
“Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.”
Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. IV, sec. 21
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Context: Freedom of Men under Government is, to have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; a Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man: as Freedom of Nature is, to be under no other restraint but the Law of Nature.
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John Locke 144
English philosopher and physician 1632–1704Related quotes
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
p, 125
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
“Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.”
"The Problems of the Colored Race in the South," lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895) http://web.archive.org/20071031084051/www.historycooperative.org/btw/Vol.4/html/93.html
Context: Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
We went into slavery a piece of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery without a language; we came out speaking the proud Anglo-Saxon tongue. We went into slavery with slave chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands.
Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.
The Rights of the Colonists (1772)
Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter II, The Elements of Liberalism, p. 17.
“Free without scandal; wise without restraint;
Their virtue due to nature, not to fear.”
Selima, Act I, Sc. 1.
Zara (1735)
Context: You talk no more of that gay nation now,
Where men adore their wives, and woman's power
Draws reverence from a polished people's softness,
Their husbands' equals, and their lovers' queens;
Free without scandal; wise without restraint;
Their virtue due to nature, not to fear.
Source: Mayan Majix, Comment on Recent Extra Terrestrial Activity http://www.mayanmajix.com/art4538.html