maxims, the following may be enumerated, and which are the sentiments of Mr. Locke.

That all legitimate government is derived • from the confent of the people; that men are naturally equal, and that no one has a right to injure another in his life, ⚫ health, liberty, or poffeffions; and that no man in civil fociety ought to be fubject to the arbitrary will of others, but

only to known and established laws, made by general confent, for the common benefit. That no taxes are to be levied on • the people, without the confent of the majority, given by themselves, or by • their deputies. That the ruling power ought to govern by declared and received laws, and not by extemporary dictates, • and undetermined refolutions. That kings and princes, magiftrates and rulers of every clafs, have no juft authority

• but

• but what is delegated to them by the people; and which, when not employed for their benefit, the people have always a right to refume, in whatever hands it may be placed.' These principles of Mr. LOCKE are certainly much more perfpicuous, than the account of the rights of men given by Mr. Burke 78, and they are founded on unquestionable reason.

MR. BURKE obferves, that If civil fociety be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law 79. But allowing civil fociety to be the offspring of convention, if a civil convention had been made in any country, in the last century, or in two or ten centuries before, which was found to be injurious to the majority of the community, they would

78 Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 87, 88, 89.

1

79 Ibid. p. 87.

have an undoubted right to demand a new convention, and to fettle fuch a form of civil fociety, and establish such laws, as should be more equitable, and more conducive to the general welfare, Mr. Burke alfo fays, How can any man claim, under the conventions of civil fociety, rights which do not fo much as fuppofe its • existence?' To which it may be anfwered, that though every man may be obliged, fo far as he can do it conscientiously, to comply with the particular conventions of that civil fociety in which he lives, while he continues in it, yet that is no reason whatever why the majority of that or any other fociety, if they have, or suppose they have, acquired more just ideas of the nature of government than were poffeffed by their ancestors, should not make fuch alterations in the original convention, or adopt any fuch new mode

of

of government, as they may conceive to be beft adapted to promote the common benefit. Nor does it follow, because a man ́ in civil fociety is not, in a dispute with another, to be judge in his own cause that therefore the majority of the members of any civil community have not a right to establish a government for their own advantage.

BUT Mr. Burke likewife fays, that' 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 among the direct • original rights of man in civil fociety "1? Certainly no individual man has a right to claim the office of magistrate, or minister of ftate, or other office of authority in the government; but it must be an original right

Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 88.

Ibid. p. 87.

of men in civil fociety, to adopt thofe mea fures that are most conducive to the welfare' of the whole, and of confequence to ap point fuch men to public offices, or to establish fuch a mode of government, as the majority fhall judge beft calculated to advance the general happiness.

THE RIGHTS OF MEN is a phrase to which Mr. Burke feems to have an extreme averfion, though it is, perhaps, one of thofe expreffive phrases, which are not eafily altered for the better. But notwithftanding his diflike to this expreffion, there' are certainly natural rights, independently of all pofitive law or appointment. Mr. Burke, however, seems to have a much higher idea of the value and importance of property, than of thofe general rights to which all men have an equal claim." He appears to be of opinion, that property can never be too well fecured, though he