"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. 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. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. 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. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. 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. 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. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. 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 larg. er proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil, social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention." (Vol. III., p. 79, Boston, 1839).

The main point to which we call attention is the proposition that political power, or a share, either direct or indirect, in the management of the government, is not to be placed among the Natural Rights of men. No person on the score of Natural Rights can claim an office, or claim to be eligible to an office, or claim to take part in the selection of those who shall hold office in the state. Whatever Natural Rights are, they are not a title to a participation in the government. But let us mark some of the more important statements in the paragraph above quoted.

1. Men have an equal right to the advantages for which society was created. The state is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The state is a divinely ordained, indispensable instrument, for securing to the human beings who compose it, certain advantages. And the benefits, define them as you will, which the state is intended to secure, are not the property of a class or a part. They are intended to flow out impartially to all. If the state is constituted in such a way that a part of the community are excluded from these benefits,

there is a violation of Natural Rights. Aristotle held that slaves are merely tools, to be used to promote the interests of a superior class; and assigns them this place in the state. He could not have better defined the falsehood and injustice of slavery, which refuses to recognize the title of a part of the community to an equal share in the benefits of the state, and degrades them into a mere instrument for securing the interests of their pretended owners. A set of individuals, by the exercise of force, absorbs and monopolizes the advantages of society, which belong equally to all its members. In the Declaration of American Independence, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," are set down among the Natural Rights of men; and the enumeration of Natural Rights, in the passage from Burke, is substantially equivalent. The term liberty is, indeed, a vague one, and may not be easy to fix and define. "Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself," is a remark in the paragraph we have quoted. The power allowed to the individual of doing as he pleases, with the qualification (and therefore restriction) that this power belongs, in an equal degree, to every other, is a similar definition of liberty. Nearly coincident with this description of liberty, which is adopted by recent writers, is a fine passage in one of Burke's letters to a French correspondent in 1789.* Of liberty, he says, "I certainly think that all men who desire it, deserve it. It is not the reward of our merit, or the acquisition of our industry It is our inheritance. It is the birth-right of our species." "It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish liberty. It is social freedom. It is that state of things in which the liberty of no man, and no body of men, is in a condition to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice, ascertained by wise laws, and secured by well constructed institutions." Liberty, signifying as it does, exemption from constraint, seems to be not so properly called a particular right, as the comprehensive term under which all

* Quoted in Prior's Life of Burke, p. 309. (Philadelphia, 1825).

human rights are summed up,-freedom being involved in the realization of every right. It is worthy of notice that Burke declares against the pretension to give out precise, metaphysical definitions in these matters, and treats it as a sign of the quackery of that class whom he styles the "amateurs and even professors of revolutions." "The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned."

2. The management of the State not being among the original rights of man, does not belong equally to all. It is no violation of Natural Rights when political power is lodged with a few, or with one man, provided the great ends of government are accomplished. In saying that the management of the State is "a thing to be settled by convention," and in using the terms "compact of the state," the social "partnership" and the like, Burke has no intention, we need hardly say, of giving sanction to the doctrine that a formal, explicit consent of the people, or of the major part of them, to the creation of a particular government and the selection of those who administer it, is necessary in order to bind the subject to obedience. The obligations of the subject do not depend on any such voluntary, formal act of consent on his part. We cannot forbear to transcribe one of the finest passages in which Burke sets forth this truth:

"Though civil society might be at first a voluntary act, (which, in many cases, it undoubtedly was), its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men, without their choice, derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no Supreme Ruler exists, wise to form and potent to enforce the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against irresistible power—

'Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma,
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.'

Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may assume that the awful author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that having disposed and marshaled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us. We have obligations to mankind at large which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person or number of persons among mankind, depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary; but the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indis pensably to perform. Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation; but, consenting or not, they are bound to a long train of burthensome duties towards those with whom they have never made a convention of any sort. Children are not consenting to their relation, but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to its duties; or rather it implies their consent, because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation. If the social ties and ligaments spun out of those physical relations which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and always continue, independently of our will, so without any stipulation on our part, are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends (as it has been well said) all the charities of all.'* Nor are we left without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us as it is awful and coercive. Our country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order into which we are born. We may have the same geographical situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil relation." Vol. III., p. 460.

This explains the sense in which Burke employs the terms, which, it must be confessed, are more properly used by the adherents of the antagonistic theory of the social compact.†

* Omnes omnium charitates patria una complectitur. Cicero.

In agreement with Burke's definition of the terms referred to, are the obser vations of Blackstone on the same topic, in his Commentaries, (Introduction, section 2). "But though society," says Blackstone, "had not its formal beginning from any convention of individuals, actuated by their wants and their fears; yet

It is obvious that the question how widely in a given country political power shall be diffused, must depend for its answer on a variety of circumstances. In considering this question, we go beyond the sphere of natural, unalienable rights. We have to inquire what arrangement is, on the whole, most expedient, or what system is likely to yield, in the largest measure, the advantages for which the state is established. This would be the point to determine, had we to settle the organization of society de novo. The administering of government is a work of the most difficult character, requiring special and unusual qualifications. Who shall be the Ruler, or who shall be empowered to designate the Ruler, must be decided-provided the matter were left to our decision-with sole reference to the results to be expected from a proposed system. Let political power be distributed to the few or to the many, or to all, or be concentrated in the hands of one person, it is conceivable that every Natural Right may be left intact and be safe under the ægis of government, whose office is to preserve it from infraction. It is conceivable likewise that under every system, the most popular alike with the absolute, Natural Rights should be violated. A Republic may hold a part of its population in bondage; or if not, by the tyrannical edicts of a majority, may trample upon the rights of conscience or rob the individual of some portion of his inborn liberty. It is entirely possible for a democracy to dishonor the sacredness of humanity, and cast down in the dust the heaven-given prerogatives of man.

Besides the distinguishing mark of Natural Rights that they do not, like Political Rights, include a direct or indirect share in the government, a formal definition (to use the language of the schools) may be given as follows: (a) Natural Rights are essential; Political Rights are accidental; hence (b) Natural Rights are universal, belonging to all; while Political Rights

it is a sense of their weakness and imperfection that keeps mankind together; and that, therefore, is the solid and natural foundation, as well as the cement of civil society. And this is what we mean by the original contract of society." The author proceeds to say that protection of the rights of the individual by society, and submission to the laws by him in return, are the parts of the compact.