ferocious energies of oppressed nations-has sounded into the ears of despots and dynasties the fearful moanings of coming storms-has crimsoned fields of blood-has numbered troops of martyrs- has accelerated the downfall of empires-has moved the foundations of mighty thrones. Even now, millions of imprisoned spirits await its march with anxious solicitude and hope. It must go forth, like a bright angel of God, to unbar the prison-doors, to succour the needy, heal the sick, relieve the distressed, and pour a flood of light and love into the darkened intellects and dreary hearts of the sons of man.

As in the consciousness of moral truths all hearts confess their distinctions, though all are not agreed as to their precise number or force, so in the conviction of rights all acknowledge their reality, though they differ as to their nature and extent. The simple fact that man has rights seems unquestionable, and is accordingly admitted by almost unanimous suffrage, to the rank of a standard truth. Controversy commences with the attempted verbal definition or statement of what is contained in the fact. Man has rights, is every where the exclamation—but what are they?-how are they defined-what is their extent-where their limitation? What are the actual characteristics of the fact-whither does it lead—and what relation has it to the social arrangements of life? The problem is not without its difficulty, as toppling piles of fiery disputations, essays, tracts, and speeches may prove; yet it is not surrounded by that dark mist which should drive us despairingly away. Perhaps the labors of our fathers-certainly the eternal instincts of our own soulswill throw light into the gloom, so that all around may not partake of that Cimmerian night in which the pale ghost of thought wanders sightless and cheerless. Let us appeal to the reason and conscience and heart of man; for there is our only appeal-there is the only tribunal which can be called upon legitimately to decide. On this question there is no long line of authorities to cite, or despotic precedents to consult. If reason and conscience are incompetent guides, the whole inquiry is impracticable and absurd; we are thrown into the void, uncertain darkness, abandoned to dim conjecture and still dimmer hope.

That man has some rights, we say, is a fact beyond the limits of a lawful doubt; it is a fact presupposed in some sense in all political ratiocination; it is a fact of universal consciousness, which can no more be disbelieved than the existence of self; it is a fact which admits no formal demonstration, for itself is the groundwork and first-truth of demonstration. The best proof of its legitimacy is the appeal to each individual truth. It rests on instincts which are broad, bursting manifestations of Nature-on convictions which spring up spontaneously with the earliest as well as mightiest unfoldings of human thought which are developed in the child and the savage, and ever wield, under every sky, despotic influence over the volitions of human will. The spirit of resistance is never more instantly or violently aroused, than when these spontaneous convictions of right are infringed. No people, how stupid in mind or

degraded in morals soever, which has not felt their might—so inseparable are they from human existence, so powerfully active over all the movings of human impulse. Years of oppression cannot wholly eradicate or dim their force, whilst they grow stronger and firmer with intellectual progress and moral elevation. Man has rights. To every faculty of his organization there is annexed the consciousness of a right to its use, of a right to invigorate and expand it, to multiply its objects and unfold its power. As a being of flesh and blood, of appetite and passions, of organs and limbs, he feels he has a right to their gratification and use. He may eat and drink whatever is adapted to his taste, and accumulate whatever means will increase his happiness or content. He may employ his corporeal powers in any occupation for which they were designed; he may exercise his labour and skill in the direction which may best contribute to his comfort; he may fix his habitation, and adjust his modes of life, as private necessity or pleasure shall control. In all these dispositions, none on earth can say, what doest thou? As an intellectual being, he may use that capacity of intellectual growth with which he is endowed. He has a right to expand and invigorate every mental power, to cultivate every mental gift, to lay up knowledge in stores, to investigate every science, to comprehend all arts, to exhaust literature, to penetrate nature, to unfold past records, to commune with great minds, to sympathize with heroic deeds, to delight in virtuous achievement, to revel amid the magnificent creations of genius. Who shall restrain thought in its free passage over the broad universe-who shall clip the restless wings of imagination, or imprison the giant energies of the will? Man has the right to think-not only to think, but to utter. Thank Heaven, no chains can bind the viewless thought-no tyranny can reach the immaterial mind. Whatever his mind in the "wide circuit of its musings" may conceive, his mouth in the presence of the world may speak; what his noble spirit feels, he has the right to express. He may send forth his "truths of power in words immortal;" he may seek to convince and persuade his fellow men; to make known his convictions; to declare his aspirations; to unfold the truth; to discover new relations of thought; to promulge novel doctrine; to question error; and, if he be able, to move men towards a triumphant assault on evil institutions and corrupt laws. As a moral being, he has a right to decide on the duties of the sphere in which he is placed; he has the right to indulge the tenderest as well as loftiest sensibilities of the heart; to sigh with the sorrowful; to commiserate the oppressed, and to weep the bitter tears of a broken heart over misplaced confidence or wounded love. He has the right to nourish the sense of duty, the power of endurance, the energies of self-command; to conquer passion with manly force; to throw back temptation with lusty arm; to resist the myriad fascinations of deceitful life with iron heart and iron will. He has the right to act according to that conscience which his God has given; to oppose vice, though millions swell the ranks of its worshippers; to

espouse and uphold truth, despised as it may be, and even when the prospect reveals only the faggot and flame.

These rights of man belong to him as man--they are neither gifts or grants, or privileges, but rights. He traces them to no concessions of a parliament which may have assembled far back in the darkness of time; to no constitution which his forefathers may have sanctioned or framed; to no royal assent unwillingly yielded to the stubborn requisitions of a sturdy people; to no concessions granted in the plenitude of aristocratic generosity; to no revolutions nor battles; but to a higher and greater source than these-the God of his spirit, the Creator of the worlds. They are the primary, absolute, imprescriptible rights of his nature, derived through the laws of his being, as an immediate gift from Him that is over all. They belong to man as an individual, and are higher than human constitutions or human laws. The charter on which they depend was drawn from the skies, and bears the signet and stamp of Heaven. To fetter the freedom of man is not only to act the part of tyranny, but to inflict a gross wrong, to outrage a high gift, to trample on a creation of God.

As rights, then, are the possession of the whole race, equality of right is predicable of its constituent members. Identity of nature involves a community of attributes, and a parity of moral claims. Inequality of condition, it is obvious, can effect no transfer of rights. The strong, the rich, the gifted, the good, are only equal, in respect to rights, to those less abundantly endowed. Supremacy in one shape confers no supremacy in others; and if it did, as the roads to excellence are infinitely varied, there could be no mode of adjusting the diversity of conflicting claims.

Many objects of inquiry, abstruse in themselves, or complicated in their details, lawfully admit a wide latitude of debate; but on this subject, opinions can only diverge through the corrupting influence of interest or the blending agency of passion; for, if there be in the galaxy of celestial truths, one of purer ray or richer brilliancy than the rest, it is that which attests the essential equality of men. Endued, as they are, with the same appetites and desires, with conscience, reason, free-will, with kindred feelings of love and hate, and like susceptibilities of pleasure and pain; bound, as they are, by countless ties of sympathy and dependence, sharers of the same beautiful existence, handiwork of the same God, children of a common destiny, hastening on to an eternal world, who shall erect the barriers between them, or affix the mark which shall debar either this one or that one from the full fruition of every blessing of existence-every gift of God? Who shall assign rank to the members of an universal brotherhood? Who shall urge his superiority, and not shrink in crimson confusion before the rebuke of outraged humanity? No. As the simplest flower of the field expands its beauty to every eye, as the softest zephyr wafts cool refreshment to every brow, as the free winds of Heaven

blow, the stars forever shine, the ocean rolls its waves, the earth yields its increase for all; as the palsying hand of infirmity touches, as sorrow and suffering visit all, as "pallid death, with equal pace, strikes the cottage of the peasant and the palace of the king"; as the incidents of life afflict or elevate all, so are the high and holy rights which spring from the depths of our human being, the common inheritance of each-the glorious portion of all. They are a patrimony from which none, even the smallest of God's offspring, are debarred. Wherever are the upright form, the manly brow, the "large discourse of thought," which are the attributes of man, there are also the noblest rights of man. Trodden down, despised he may be; still is he man, bound to us by holiest ties of obligation, and calling in strongest tones upon our reverence and love. Let, then, the poor and weeping son of man look up, wherever he may be, moistening, with bitter tears, the hard crust of adversity. This world is not all a wilderness, for there is still a God and a brother to him. He is still embraced in the warm arm of friendliest affection. He still may hope that the wormwood and gall shall no more be mingled in the cup of daily life.

Man surrenders none of his rights on entrance into society. There is a theory which places the social and natural state in a certain mutual contradistinction and equipoise. It represents man as having existed in a certain state of natural liberty, with a portion of which he parted to secure the superior protection and enjoyment of the social state. What is precisely intended by this natural state, it is difficult to discover. The term has been used by writers in every varied sense, from the most simple to the most absurd. Some, with Monboddo, mean by it, an original inceptive, complete animal state, when humanity, like poor Chimpanzee, howled through the woods, with a tail and hair to his back, exposed to every vicissitude of season, and dependent for existence on the wild products of spontaneous nature. Others again have meant by it a primitive state of innocence, virtue, and peace.

"When worth was crowned, and faith was kept, Ere friendship grew a snare, and love waxed coldThose pure and happy times—the golden days of old."

While a third class, and generally the most numerous, use it as a fig ment of the brain-a conjunction of fancy wrought up in aid of a political speculation, or to help out some forgone conclusion. It looks at a man without society, without government, subordination, or law, and apart from those relations subsisting between him and his fellow-man. So we take Blackstone, when he says, "that natural liberty consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the faculty of free will. But every man, when he enters society, gives up a part of his natural liberty as the price of so valuable a purchase." Here we have the natural and social states piaced in

a sort of antagonism. We must part with a portion of one to attain the benefits of the other. Man must give up the rights inherent in him at birth for other rights which are the creatures and offspring of social life. Membership of society is an acquired privilege, and all those benefits consequent upon mutual association, a "valuable purchase." Most truly it is a valuable purchase if, for the sake of it, man parts with any of his natural rights, which are the first best gift of God, the sources of all his growth, distinction, and happiness. But we regard this whole hypothesis not only as fundamentally wrong, but disastrous in all its influence to the perfect freedom of man. Why resort to the supposition of a natural state, when, in fact, such a state, in the sense intended, never did nor could exist? In defining the rights of man, we must consider his whole constitution-all the laws and relations of his being. Every science respecting human nature, save political, resorts immediately to that nature itself. The physiologist, without fancy or fiction, consults alone the frame-work and organization of man; he observes its structure, notes its workings, marks its adaptations, compares its relations, and then constructs his science on a basis of fact. The metaphysician, regarding himself as the mere spectator or critic, looks into the interior processes of mental action, describes their characteristics, and from the multitude of separate observations, declares the general law. And in the same way, the moral philosopher, the anatomist, and physician proceed. But the political inquirer, not stopping to regard man as he actually is in his present condition, and amid his present relations, flies off to some distant point, begins his inquiries with a fiction, builds a broad system thereupon, and ends, as he must inevitably end, with a fictitious result. Now, an's only truly natural state is, when he conforms to all those natural laws which the Creator has instituted in that physical, intellectual, and moral economy in which he is placed. A wild life of savage and solitary wretchedness, of absolute personal independence and isolation, is the most unnatural state in which he could possibly be supposed. It is a condition wholly incompatible with, and repugnant to the dictates and designs of his being. Society is the natural element of humanity-the only element in which it can live, and breathe and move. All its fears, weaknesses, and affections impel it to society in every step of its progress from the cradle to the grave. In our view, indeed, there is a primitive ap etite, an original aggregative principle, an inward intuition, ever propelling man to an association of some sort with his kind. This principle is manifested and gratified by the incarcerated criminal, for instance, in the absence of every other resource, by solitary converse with the brute creation, or by lending animation to inanimate things, until even "he and his chains grow friends." It is a propu'sion which cannot be overcome except under the cruel discipline of years. When thwarted or crossed, it becomes the source of intense pain, and when gratified in the reciprocal interchange of depen lance and love, yields the purest and best delight. If to this original tendency of nature, we add our.