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