Mon Droit

“ Every battle field, from Marathon to Saratoga; every page of history, every day's experience, furnish us with but too much, and too lamentable testimony, that life is alienable. The assertion therefore that life is an unalienable endowment, is not only not self-evident, but is a specimen of sophistry unsupported by any known fact, and incapable of the shadow of proof.
It is indeed not improper to suppose, that our first parent, when he came from the forming hand of his Creator, was endowed with an unalienable right to life. ”

“ Doubtless in some vague and unprofitable manner, equality may be predicated of men; but in no sense or shape, as I conceive, can it so be done, as to divest the sentence under review of its treacherous absurdity. Against our knowledge, innate, acquired, or revealed—against the instinct and impulses of every son of Adam, is the assertion, "all men are created equal." The powers of no individual, nor of any combination of them, with all the advantages to boot of genius, and the first order of physical endowment, can produce one solitary example of perfect equality. ”

“ National honor must consist in the good opinion entertained of us by other nations, not in a lofty opinion entertained of ourselves. If we have hitherto failed to create that opinion abroad; shall we succeed in creating it by a repetition of the acts that have all along failed to do it? Because the big guns of the chivalry are adequate to knock this continent into a roar of laughter, will a gigantic foreign power be so terrified, "that it dare not fight in defence of its just rights?" ”

“ People are apt to be chary of what is scarce. Perhaps however we judge them harshly; and they only make a great parade of this virtue because they have no other. We have no certain means of knowing but what the chivalry would canonize modesty, if they knew what it was. But it is not to be expected, that men can appreciate what they cannot comprehend.
How is sacred honor better than honor! And by how much is a pagan virtue superior to a christian one? Piety is a virtue, if faith is. If we should bear of a man parading and boasting of his sacred piety! ”

“ It may not be amiss here to inquire, under what contingencies, equality can be predicated of man; and if possible, to find some shadow of apology for that startling paradox, which is under review. Can it be alledged on this behalf that all men are equally created to die? So are brutes. And if any thing is gained by our assent to that, it res to the advantage of the brute, and not to the author of the Declaration; for if that constituted equality, the brute might have been comprehended in the dispensation, and the self-evident truth would have stood then—"all men and brutes are created equal." ”

“ Rights! with which we are endowed by our Creator, and in a manner withal, that makes them self-evidently unalienable, a sane man would suppose, were about as secure as any thing could well be made on this side the grave. Who would want a human government, to secure, what in the same breath is alledged, a Divine one had secured, so as make the loss of it self-evidently impossible? ”

“ As dead men tell no tales, I do not know how we are to get any witnesses of a man's right to life after he is dispossessed; so the right to the pursuit of happiness, must be proved by the pursuit, if proved at all. The right, and the possession, must be contemplated as one, if indeed it is a subject concrete enough for contemplation. I shall so treat it from obvious necessity.
Some men's pursuit of happiness consists in picking our pockets; others in taking our lives; a third makes his pursuit of happiness consist in getting the two first convicted of their pursuits ”

“ If I have succeeded in showing that the statements in the Declaration of Independence, purporting to be self-evident truths, are self-destroying sophisms—that men are not created equal, so far as we have any means of knowing—that they are not endowed by their Creator with any stronger right to life than to death; and that they cannot be endowed with any right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because such endowments would nullify themselves ”

“ The word "rights," as the author of the Declaration and others like him use it, communicates a fiction, not a fact. Our knowledge cannot be increased by such a use of the word; it brings no additional idea, to speak of a right to life, more than to speak of a right to a right. Such an arrangement of words possesses no power but to deceive. It cheats—that is all. The advantage gained by believing a fiction, is always a minus quantity. ”

“ Illogical minds, making no distinction, the effect of their logic is but to puzzle, not convince. No man can be said to have a right to any thing he is not possessed of, unless he has such proof of title, as will effect a restoration. A right that cannot be proved, how can it be known that it is a right? Possession or the ability to get possession are all the proofs of rights. Rights, without one or the other of these proofs, are mere pretensions. In our system, that is a right, which the law contemplates as one. The southern planter has a right to buy and sell men as slaves. ”

“ To be endowed with a right to live, and yet at the same time can not live—that is to say, a right to life, and yet not in possession—is not an endowment of any practical value. An abstract right to life, which some one has taken away from us is worth less than the carcass of a dead cut. The Creator, I apprehend, has higher occupation than making such endowments. Moreover, the right to live, would seem to conflict very much with the right to die. ”

“ It is therefore more liable to drop from beneath our feet, than our unalienable rights are, to slip from our possession. If that contingency should occur, and leave this amazing nation to get along as well as it could without it, the government would not probably find it out; for it appears that as yet it has never been able to discover what was "self-evident!!" A government instituted to secure the earth from dropping away from us, would not have a more laborious vocation, than one instituted to secure us in rights that could not possibly be taken away. ”

“ But the chivalry can afford to be generous in the matter of pledges if in nothing else. They can pledge their lives, because understanding them to be "unalienable," there is of course no risk. It is cheaper to do any thing else with them, than to lead them. They can pledge their fortunes with similar safety, for these are for the most part desperate, and are as well got rid of as kept. And lastly, they may pledge their "sacred honor" from Maine to California, and from independence to doomsday, without a shadow of risk; for no man will ever take it who knows what it is. ”

“ Accordingly when I contemplated the subject of emancipation divested of these treacherous additions, I found the remainder so increased in force, as to be sufficient to carry conviction to every mind, endowed with adequate powers to distinguish right from wrong. The argument for emancipation, divested of its treacherous allies, leads to the full conviction, that the institution of slavery, as it exists in this country, is neither more or less than one stupendous fraud. The system, is a strong-hold of iniquity, and it is useless for any other purpose. ”

“ As there is no pervading "light of knowledge" in those ages, every one must be impressed with the importance of preserving his own store. Let us conscientiously strive to remember, what there is no chance of our forgetting: then when we enter into the darkness, if each one will light his icicle, we can raise an illumination that will make the dark ages more brilliant than the enlightened ones. ”

“ The administration under that government, has furnished us with a most admirable body of rules, examples and precepts, instructing us in the way to exercise and enjoy these rights to the greatest advantage. Here, we are not cheated with sophisms—we are not mocked with words full of sound signifying nothing. A human government, if it is good for any thing, secures its subjects in the right to enjoy the fruits of their own lawful industry. The governments of the earth, have not succeeded perfectly, in this their essential duty ”

“ To make a man a present of his own face, would be a specimen of generosity of the same value, as presenting him an example of what was self-evident. If a gentleman should propose to introduce me to myself, for the purpose of enlarging the circle of my acquaintance, I should consider his politeness of the same kind with that which would exert itself to increase my knowledge, by informing me of what I knew before. ”

“ The slaves of our country are in precisely the same predicament with regard to their alledged right to liberty, as we are in, touching a farm under the waves of the Atlantic—certain death attends all attempts, or most attempts to take possession. ”

“ Men in the strong agonies of death, make no parade of rhetoric, And in the trying emergencies of life, public or private, when the strain of rigorous necessity brings us to as straight a condition; a brevity as rigid as the condition we are in, is the first, last, and sole characteristic of our speech. In the emergency which constrained our leading men at the time of the Declaration, we should suppose they would have pledged all they had to pledge at once ”

“ The system of slavery is a strong-hold of sin. The implements in the warfare of those who war against it, need not be carnal, for the ramparts of that strong-hold are not made of stone. Yet all the address, the patience, the skill and discipline are necessary to reduce the strong-hold, as if its walls were granite. ”

“ The word "rights" in its juxtaposition to life and liberty, communicating no appreciable idea; is but darkening counsel by words without knowledge. I cannot but reiterate, what I have I believe expressed before, that the friends of emancipation de fritter away their logic, by settings forth of these crude incomprehensible fictions. They communicate no idea, and possess no force but to puzzle. The right to liberty must be proved by possession, or by human endowments; otherwise it becomes as valueless as an abstract right to a tin whistle, which the owner is not permitted to blow ”

“ Perhaps the reader ought to be informed that the above, is a self-evident truth otherwise he might possibly doubt its verity. The value then, of this right to liberty, which a South Carolina slave is endowed with, (if all men are,) may be calculated more easily than a nullifier can calculate the value of the Union. The value of this right, to the poor slave, according to my mathematics, is just the value nullification adds to that Union. The truth is, the value of the right, without the possession, exists only in theory, not in fact. ”

“ Honor is nothing more than a virtue; modesty nothing less. one should be accounted sacred, the other not, must be demonstrated by southern causistry if demonstrated at all. Chastity is generally accounted a virtue north of Mason and Dixon's line. If it has not hitherto endured the climate south of that line, is it so much the fault of the virtue, as the fault of the cultivators! On the supposition however that this virtue might be cultivated as an exotic, it is doubtful whether the chivalry would account it "sacred." ”

“ Under every conceivable contingency—under circumstances unlimited in their dissimilitude and inequality, are men born; under all these do they continue to live; and under them also they die. Whether all men are created equal (using the verb in its true and literal sense) can be known only to their Creator. And since there is no revelation on that point, it is as impossible for man to know any thing about it, as it is to beget himself. ”

“ When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires, that they should declare the causes, which impel them to the separation. ”

“ But I deny that men could come to the conclusion he argues for, if their minds had not been previously prepared for that conclusion, by the revelation the reasoner affects not to use. No man ever has obtained a knowledge of the true God, so far as we are informed, unless by revelation. The strange, incoherent mythological views of the heathen, are the greatest advance towards this knowledge, which man has ever made, unaided by the knowledge the scriptures reveal. If doctor Paley had found one heathen, who, by searching, had found out God, he would have found one fact in support of his logic ”

“ Still, from forms of surpassing beauty, through a long series of gradations to the most offensive deformity—from minds of the purest radiance, through like gradations, to those of the obscurity, fog and confusion of his, whose profitless aphorisms are under review—from the extremest verge of what is lovely and desirable, to the limit of all that is odious in complexion, condition or circumstance are men created. ”

“ Ordinary dead men, in such an emergency would want the aid of a live lawyer. Could they find one to go before the courts in the next world, to vindicate a dead man's right to life? But supposing he should recover judgment by default; what sheriff would bring him back to this world, and put him in possession of his lost property?
To be sure, man has a self-evident right to life while he lives. I do not dispute that. But it would take an immense amount of sophistry to prove his right to it after that time ”