and that he has none himself; for who is there in the world but man?
But if Mr. Burke means to admit that man has rights, the question then
will be: What are those rights, and how man came by them originally?

  The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity,
respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into
antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the
intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce
what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no
authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we
shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if
antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be
produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on,
we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man
came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his
high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him. But of titles I
shall speak hereafter.

  We are now got at the origin of man, and at the origin of his
rights. As to the manner in which the world has been governed from
that day to this, it is no farther any concern of ours than to make
a proper use of the errors or the improvements which the history of it
presents. Those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago, were
then moderns, as we are now. They had their ancients, and those
ancients had others, and we also shall be ancients in our turn. If the
mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people
who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take
us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an
hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of
antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority
against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of
the rights of man at the creation. Here our enquiries find a
resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the
rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from
the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have
referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must
now refer.

  Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion,
yet it may be worth observing, that the genealogy of Christ is
traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to the creation
of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been upstart
governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously
working to un-make man.

  If any generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the
mode by which the world should be governed for ever, it was the
first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set
any up. The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of
man (for it has its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to
the living individuals, but to generations of men succeeding each
other. Every generation is equal in rights to generations which
preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in
rights with his contemporary.

  Every history of the creation, and every traditionary account,
whether from the lettered or unlettered world, however they may vary
in their opinion or belief of certain particulars, all agree in
establishing one point, the unity of man; by which I mean that men are
all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and
with equal natural right, in the same manner as if posterity had
been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being the
only mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently
every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its
existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the
first man that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same
kind.

  The Mosaic account of the creation, whether taken as divine
authority or merely historical, is full to this point, the unity or
equality of man. The expression admits of no controversy. "And God
said, Let us make man in our own image. In the image of God created he
him; male and female created he them." The distinction of sexes is
pointed out, but no other distinction is even implied. If this be
not divine authority, it is at least historical authority, and shows
that the equality of man, so far from being a modern doctrine, is
the oldest upon record.

  It is also to be observed that all the religions known in the
world are founded, so far as they relate to man, on the unity of
man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in
whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter, the good and
the bad are the only distinctions. Nay, even the laws of governments
are obliged to slide into this principle, by making degrees to consist
in crimes and not in persons.

  It is one of the greatest of all truths, and of the highest
advantage to cultivate. By considering man in this light, and by
instructing him to consider himself in this light, it places him in
a close connection with all his duties, whether to his Creator or to
the creation, of which he is a part; and it is only when he forgets
his origin, or, to use a more fashionable phrase, his birth and
family, that he becomes dissolute. It is not among the least of the
evils of the present existing governments in all parts of Europe
that man, considered as man, is thrown back to a vast distance from
his Maker, and the artificial chasm filled up with a succession of
barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, through which he has to pass. I
will quote Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he has set up
between man and his Maker. Putting himself in the character of a