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ON DECLARING THE LAWS AND RIGHTS OF NATURE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2012

C. Bradley Thompson
C. Bradley Thompson
Affiliation:
Political Science, Clemson University
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Abstract

This article examines the moral theory of the American Revolutionary and Founding periods by focusing on two key concepts of that doctrine: the moral laws and the moral rights of nature. In particular, the article will examine several important questions from the perspective of America’s Revolutionary generation: What are the moral laws and rights of nature? What is the difference between a law and a right of nature, and how are the laws and rights of nature related to each other? Are nature’s moral laws and rights descriptive, prescriptive, or both? What are the attributes and sanctions of nature’s laws and rights, and how are they promulgated? What is the source of nature’s laws and rights? And finally, how did America’s founding fathers use the laws and rights of nature to establish their political institutions? In order to answer these questions, the article focuses on the core text universally recognized as the symbol of America’s revolutionary mind and moral theory: the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration’s deepest philosophic meaning is herein illuminated by also examining the broader, extant literature of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 29 , Issue 2: Natural Rights Individualism and Progressivism in American Political Philosophy , July 2012 , pp. 104 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2012

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References

1 Taylor, John of Caroline, An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (Fredricksburg, 1814), 6–7Google Scholar; quoted in Arieli, Yehoshua, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1964), 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar. John Taylor of Caroline was a writer and a politician from Virginia associated with the Jeffersonian Democrats. In addition to An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of Government, Taylor's best known works include Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated (1820), and Tyranny Unmasked (1822).

2 Adams, John to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815, in The Works of John Adams, 10 vols. ed. Adams, Charles Francis (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856), X: 172Google Scholar.

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5 In using the Declaration of Independence as an “expression of the American mind,” I do not mean to suggest, however, that the members of America's Founding generation were in full agreement with each other on all philosophical issues in 1776. The fact is, as I will demonstrate, they were not, although there was broad agreement on most moral issues. Strictly speaking, the Declaration may not even represent entirely Thomas Jefferson's deepest philosophic views. The document was intended to represent the views of all Americans, most of whom were devoutly Christian and some of whom were slaveowners. This is important to remember because it helps us to understand why, for instance, Jefferson may have spoken of rights coming from a “Creator” and why he excluded property from his list of unalienable rights.

6 Over the course of the last century a good deal of the scholarship on the American Revolutionary and Founding periods, and on the Declaration of Independence in particular, has been of either the “skeptical” or “fileopietistic” variety. Scholars in the “skeptical” camp tend to view the principles of the Declaration through the lens of historicism, that is, as true or relevant for the period in which they were first invoked and used but outdated and inapplicable to the changed conditions of the modern world. The classic interpretation of the Declaration from the “skeptical” camp is Becker, Carl L.'s The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Vintage Books, 1922), 277Google Scholar. Scholars in the “fileopietistic” camp tend to view the principles of the Declaration through the lens of intrinsicism, that is, as unquestioningly and eternally true and worthy of a reverence bordering on the quasi-religious. A recent effort of this sort is Spalding, Matthew's We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2009), 36–44, 58–60, 215–39Google Scholar.

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8 See, for instance, the view of Otis, James, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved [1764],” in Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789: A Documentary History of the American Revolution, ed. Greene, Jack P. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), 28–33Google Scholar.

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10 The proposition that the laws of nature were known through inductive reasoning was not uniform, however, amongst the Founding generation. In the years after the Revolution, some Founders such as James Wilson argued that certain moral laws of nature were known to man through an innate moral sense. In his Lectures on Law [1790–1791], Wilson advanced a very different view of how the moral laws of nature are known than the one presented here: “If I am asked … how do you know that you ought to do that, of which your conscience enjoins the performance? I can only say, I feel that such is my duty. Here investigation must stop; reasoning can go no farther. The science of morals, as well as other sciences, is founded on truths, that cannot be discovered or proved by reasoning…. We cannot, therefore, begin to reason, till we are furnished, otherwise than by reason, with some truths, on which we can found our arguments. Even in mathematicks, we must be provided with axioms perceived intuitively to be true, before our demonstrations can commence. Morality, like mathematicks, has its intuitive truths, without which we cannot make a single step in our reasonings upon the subject.” James Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” in The Works of James Wilson, I: 133.

11 Adams, John, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4 vols., ed. Butterfield, L. H. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1962), I: 43–44, 117, 26Google Scholar.

12 “Draft of a letter to Jonathan Sewell,” Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, I: 123 (emphasis added). Compare with John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I: 1, 5–9.

13 “Draft of a Letter to an Unidentified Correspondent [1758],” The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. Butterfield, L. H. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 71–72Google Scholar.

14 Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (March 3, 1756), I: 11.

15 Ibid., 42.

16 Ibid., 61; Earliest Diary, 77; Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, I: 65. This paragraph is drawn from Thompson, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty, 19–20.

17 Allen, Ethan, “Reason: the Only Oracle of Man [1785],” in The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic, ed. Walters, Kerry S. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 149, 164Google Scholar.

18 Montesquieu, , Persian Letters, translated and with an Introduction byBetts, C. J. (New York: Penguin Books, 1973), 162–63Google Scholar; Benjamin Franklin, “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain” in The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic, 59.

19 Bland, Richard, “An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies [1766],” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, 2 vols., eds. Hyneman, Charles S. and Lutz, Donald S. (Indianapolis, IN: LibertyPress, 1983), I: 85Google Scholar; Elihu Palmer, “Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species [1801],” in The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic, 266.

20 For a philosophic explication of this conditional imperative, see Rand, Ayn, “Causality Versus Duty,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It (New York: Signet Books, 1982), 99Google Scholar. Also see Peikoff, Leonard, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (New York: Dutton Books, 1991), 241–49Google Scholar, and Barnett, Randy E., The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4–12Google Scholar.

21 Goodrich, Elizur, “The Principles of Civil Union and Happiness Considered and Recommended [1787],” in Political Sermons of the American Founding: 1730–1805, ed. Sandoz, Ellis (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 914Google Scholar (emphasis added).

22 Abraham Williams, “An Election Sermon [1762],” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 7.

23 Otis, James, “A Vindication of the British Colonies …,” in Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765, ed. Bailyn, Bernard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 554Google Scholar.

24 Michael Zuckert draws a similar conclusion in The Natural Rights Republic, 57–66.

25 Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787, The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 425–26.

26 Jefferson, Thomas to Georgetown Republicans, 1809, Writings, XVI: 349Google Scholar; Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, April 19, 1814, Writings, XIX: 210; Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the French Treaties,” April 28, 1793, Writings, III: 228; Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British-America [1774]” in Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 228. Michael Zuckert has referred to what I am calling metaphysical law as the “ultimate realities.” (See Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic, 57–58, 61.)

27 Grotius, Hugo, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres [1625], Prolegomena, II, trans. by Kelsey, Francis W. et al. for The Classics of International Law series, ed. Scott, J. B. (Oxford, London: 1925)Google Scholar.

28 Ethan Allen, “Reason the Only Oracle of Man,” in The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic, 177.

29 Elihu Palmer, “Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species,” in The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic, 264 (emphasis added).

30 See Wise, John, “A Vindication of the Government of New England [1717],” in Puritan Political Ideas: 1558–1794, ed. Morgan, Edmund S. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965), 251–67Google Scholar; Abraham Williams, “An Election Sermon [1762],” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 3–18; Elizur Goodrich, “The Principles of Civil Union and Happiness Considered and Recommended [1787],” in Political Sermons of the American Founding: 1730–1805, 909–40.

31 See Adams, John, “Discourses on Davila [1791],” in The Political Writings of John Adams, ed. Carey, George W. (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000), 310–15Google Scholar.

32 Thomas Jefferson to the Republicans of Georgetown, March 8, 1809, Writings, XIV: 349 (emphasis added).

33 The “imperial crisis” is that period in American colonial history dating approximately between the passage of the Sugar Act in 1764 and the outbreak of armed hostilities between Great Britain and her American colonies in 1775.

34 The dual nature of the Founders' use of the natural rights philosophy is nicely captured in Maier, Pauline, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Random House, 1997)Google Scholar. Also see Webking, Robert, The American Revolution and the Politics of Liberty (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

35 Jefferson, Thomas to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824 in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols., ed. Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Bergh, Albert Ellery (Washington D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), XVI: 51Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Writings), XVI: 48.

36 For a very different interpretation of the role of rights in the American Revolution, see Reid, John Phillip, Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of Rights (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1986)Google Scholar, and Reid, , “The Irrelevance of the Declaration,” in Law in the American Revolution and the Revolution in the Law: A Collection of Review Essays on American Legal History, ed. Hartog, Hendrik (New York: New York University Press, 1981): 46–89Google Scholar. Reid wants to downplay the influence of natural-rights theory in the American Revolution and instead sees American Revolutionaries as being more influenced by the English common law tradition.

37 American rights talk is not, as Mary Ann Glendon has argued, a dialect. It is, instead, metaphorically speaking, a grammar. Rights are the way in which we organize and order our social relations. It is the traditional civil or common law rights of different places and times (e.g., the rights of Englishmen) that provides the dialect of rights. See Glendon, Mary Ann, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: The Free Press, 1991), 109Google Scholar.

38 James Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” in Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 28–29; Richard Bland, “An Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies,” in Colonies to Nation, 89; Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British-America,” in Colonies to Nation, 228–29, 237; Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, May 12, 1819, Writings, XV: 200.

39 Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, February 9, 1797, Writings, IX: 379; Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, September 7, 1797, Writings, IX: 422; James Wilson, Lectures on Law, in The Works of James Wilson, II: 609.

40 See Schwartz, Bernard, “Revolutionary Declarations and Constitutions,” chap. in The Great Rights of Mankind: A History of the American Bill of Rights (Madison, WI: Madison House, 1992), 53–91Google Scholar.

41 The Virginia Bill of Rights can be downloaded from the internet at: http://www.constitution.org/bor/vir_bor.htm; The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 can be downloaded off the internet at: http://www.nhinet.org/ccs/docs/ma-1780.htm. Thomas Jefferson to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824, Writings, XVI: 48.

42 Alasdair MacIntyre has summed up with admirable clarity the typical academic philosopher's view of natural rights, when he declared that no such rights exist and that a belief in them is akin to a belief in “witches and unicorns.” (See After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980], pp. 68–70.) Many conservatives, by contrast, assume the existence and the meaning of natural rights without ever explaining what they are and the function they serve.

43 Otis's accusation that Howard was advancing a “Filmerian” position was meant as a term of abuse to suggest that Howard was promoting the views of Sir Robert Filmer, the seventeenth-century English political theorist who advocated absolute monarchy grounded in a theory of divine rights.

44 Martin Howard, Jr., “A Letter From a Gentleman of Halifax” [1765], in Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765, 534–36, 538; James Otis, “A Vindication of the British Colonies … [1765],” in Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765, 554, 558–63. See Stoner, James, Common Law and Liberal Theory: Coke, Hobbes, and the Origins of American Constitutionalism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992)Google Scholar.

45 Warren, Mercy Otis, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution [1805], in Two Volumes, Foreword by Lester H. Cohen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1994): I: 154Google Scholar.

46 Quoted in Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of Rights, 3.

47 Elisha Williams, “The Essential Rights and Liberties of Protestants,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805, 56. Williams was a Congregational minister, legislator, jurist, and rector of Yale College during the early to middle decades of the eighteenth century.

48 Shute, Daniel, “An Election Sermon,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, Hyneman, Charles and Lutz, Donald S., 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1983): I: 111Google Scholar; A Well-Wisher to Mankind [John Perkins], “Theory of Agency: Or, An Essay on the Nature, Source and Extent of Moral Freedom,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 139, 148. Perkins was a physician from Lynn, Massachusetts, who was best known in New England for having authored various pamphlets on earthquakes, comets, and various other natural phenomena.

49 Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, Writings, XIV: 490; Thomas Jefferson to Georgetown Republicans, 1809, Writings, XVI: 349.

50 Mather, Moses, “America's Appeal to the Impartial World,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805, ed. Sandoz, Ellis (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1990), 444, 446Google Scholar. Mather, born into a famous New England family of divines, was the congregational minister for Darien, Connecticut, for sixty-four years between 1742 and 1806. Mather was one of America's most vocal religious leaders in support of liberty and independence.

51 This is not to say, as Karl Marx suggested in “On the Jewish Question,” that the eighteenth-century natural rights philosophy turns men into “an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself.” (Cf. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Questions,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker [New York: Norton, 1972], 40.) The purpose of rights is to serve as a bridge between individuals and civil society. They are the mechanism by which men can live together peacefully and form voluntary associations.

52 Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Residence Bill,” 1790, Writings, III: 60; Thomas Jefferson to Colonel James Monroe, May 20, 1782, Writings, IV: 196.

53 Jefferson, Thomas to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Peterson, Merrill D., (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 517Google Scholar.

54 Thomas Jefferson to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816, Writings, XV: 24.

55 The Declaratory Act was passed by the British parliament in 1766. Its purpose was to assert the authority of parliament over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever” despite its face-saving repeal of the Stamp Act.

56 Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia,” August 4, 1818, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 334.

57 James Otis, “A Vindication of the British Colonies …” in Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765, 559; John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” in The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, 22.

58 Dickinson, John, “Speech on a Petition for a Change of Government of the Colony of Pennsylvania … 1764,” in Ford, Paul L., ed., Writings of John Dickinson (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1895), 34Google Scholar; John Adams, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law,” in The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, 33; Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Residence Bill,” 1790, Writings, III: 60; Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, Writings, XIV: 490; Thomas Jefferson to the Republicans of Georgetown, March 8, 1809, Writings, XIV: 349; Wilson, James, Lectures on Law [1790–1792], in The Works of James Wilson, ed. McCloskey, Robert Green, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), II: 609Google Scholar.

59 Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, Writings, XV: 441.

60 Wilson, James, Lectures on Law, in The Works of James Wilson, ed. McCloskey, Robert Green, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), II: 596Google Scholar.

61 Witherspoon, John, Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” in The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon, ed. Miller, Thomas (Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), 181Google Scholar. Witherspoon's Princeton lectures were not published until after his death in 1794. The lectures were first published in 1802.

62 Madison, James, “Property,” in The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 244Google Scholar.

63 Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, Writings, XIV: 490.

64 John Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” in The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon, 183.

65 Jefferson, Thomas, “Argument in the Case of Howell vs. Netherland”, April, 1770 in The Works of Thomasz Jefferson, 10 vols. ed. Ford, Paul Leicester (New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904–5), I: 376Google Scholar (emphasis added); Thomas Jefferson to Noah Webster, December 4, 1790, Writings, VIII: 112–13; James Wilson, Lectures on Law, in The Works of James Wilson, II: 597, 609.

66 On the idea of rights as licenses and fences, see Jefferson, Thomas to Isaac H. Tiffany, April 4, 1819, Writings, in Jefferson: Political Writings, eds. Appleby, Joyce and Ball, Terrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas Jefferson to Noah Webster, December 4, 1790, Writings, VIII: 112–13.

67 Jefferson, Thomas, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Peterson, Merrill D. (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 96–97Google Scholar; Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, Writings, XIV: 490; John Witherspoon, “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” in The Selected Writings of John Witherspoon, 181.

68 John Dickinson, “An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados” (Philadelphia, 1766), in Ford, ed., Writings of John Dickinson, 261–62; Abraham Williams, “An Election Sermon,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 11, 15; William Whiting, “An Address to the Inhabitants of Berkshire County, Mass.,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 474 (emphasis added); [Silas Downer], “A Discourse at the Dedication of the Tree of Liberty,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 100 (emphasis added); Thomas Jefferson to Francis W. Gilmer, June 7, 1816, Writings, XV: 24 (emphasis added). Though his treatment is brief, Bernard Bailyn glimpsed the transition in American Revolutionary thought from the “rights of Englishmen” to the “rights of man.” See The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, enlarged ed., (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 184–98Google Scholar.

69 For a helpful discussion of the subsidiary natural rights, see Hamburger, Philip A., “Natural Rights, Natural Law, and American Constitutions,” The Yale Law Journal 102 (Jan., 1993): 907–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Mayhew, Jonathan, “The Snare Broken,” in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805, ed. Sandoz, Ellis (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press, 1990), 263Google Scholar. Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the French Treaties,” April 28, 1793, Writings, III: 228–29. Also see Simeon Howard, “A Sermon Preached to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 191; Gad Hitchcock, “An Election Sermon,” “A Sermon Preached to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 294.

71 John Adams to John Taylor of Caroline, April 15, 1814 in The Political Writings of John Adams, ed. George W. Carey, 369.

72 Simeon Howard, “A Sermon Preached to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston,” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 187.

73 Thomas Jefferson to Isaac Tiffany, April 4, 1819, in Jefferson: Political Writings, 224 (emphasis added). For one of the most philosophically sophisticated treatments of liberty written during the Revolutionary period, see John Perkins, “Theory of Agency: Or, An Essay on the Nature, Source and Extent of Moral Freedom [1771],” in American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760–1805, I: 137–57.

74 For the claim that Jefferson does not regard property to be a natural right, see Matthews, Richard, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1985), 27Google Scholar.

75 Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816, Writings, XIV: 490; Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural,” 1801, Writings, III: 320.

76 Quoted in Ely, James W. Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights, 2d ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 26Google Scholar; Madison, James, The Federalist, Edited, with Introduction and Notes, byCooke, Jacob E. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1961), 58Google Scholar.

77 Adams, The Works of John Adams, 10 vols., edited by Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1850–1856): V, 453–54; VI, 8–9.

78 Chattel slavery is of course the anomaly to the Founding generation's view of rights.

79 Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816, Writing, XIV: 466.

80 Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, June 12, 1817, Writings, XV: 124; Thomas Jefferson to J. Correa de Serra, April 19, 1814, Writings, XIX: 210; Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, January 21, 1816, Writings, IV: 405; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 196–97; Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, January 21, 1816, Writings, IV: 405; Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 196–97.

81 [Samuel Adams], “A State of the Rights of the Colonists,” Tracts of the American Revolution, 235. For a contemporary analysis of rights as a logical unity, see Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 352.

82 John Dickinson, “An Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbados” (Philadelphia, 1766), in Ford, ed., Writings of John Dickinson, 262.

83 From a philosophic perspective, what could it possibly mean to say that God endows man with rights? Consider the following analogy. The Declaration seems to be suggesting that one, rights are a metaphysical thing, comparable to, say, a seed; and two, that God has somehow planted the seed of rights in man at birth. The suggestion here is that the Creator's “rights seed” is inalienable because it is a gift from God, which means that it is wrought in man's natural constitution, that it cannot be taken away by other men or governments, and that all men everywhere have these rights. This “rights seed” must be, however, watered, nourished, and protected in order to grow and flourish, which is why it has not been universally recognized. There are, of course, two obvious problems with this view: first, the existence of God is arbitrarily asserted rather than proved, and second, even if there were a God, unaided reason could not demonstrate that God had planted in man the seed of rights. The “rights seed” will not show up on an MRI.

84 For the view that Jefferson's God is “Nature's God, see Boorstin, Daniel, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 29ff.Google Scholar; also Yarbrough, Jean, American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 7Google Scholar; and Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic, 25, 59–60.

85 Thomas Jefferson to Major John Cartwright, June 5, 1824, Writings, XVI: 43–44; Thomas Jefferson to Georgetown Republicans, 1809, Writings, XVI: 349; Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, April 19, 1814, Writings, XIX: 210; Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the French Treaties,” April 28, 1793, Writings, III: 228; Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British-America” in Colonies to Nation, 1763–1789, 228; Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the French Treaties,” April 28, 1793, Writings, III: 228–29. In fact, the existence and necessity of rights can be validated by simply studying reality—by comparing the general levels of wealth and happiness that exist between those nations that respect property rights and those which do not.

86 For an examination of the new society created by the American Revolution, see Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1993)Google Scholar.

87 Adams, John to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society, Butterfield, L. H., ed. Adams Family Correspondence. Vol. 2. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.