Government_
appeared.[61]

Blackstone was the first (1765) to found his doctrine of the absolute
rights of persons upon the idea of the personal rights of the
individual. Security, liberty, and property are the absolute rights of
every Englishman, which from their character are nothing else than the
natural liberty that remains to the individual after deducting the legal
restraints demanded by the common interest.[62] Laws appear likewise as
protectors of these rights,--the whole constitution of Parliament, the
limitation of the royal prerogative, and along with these the protection
of the law courts, the right of petition, and the right to carry arms
are treated, exactly in the manner of the Bill of Rights, as rights of
Englishmen, and indeed as subordinate rights to assist in guarding the
three principal rights.[63] But in spite of his fundamental conception
of a natural right, the individual with rights was for Blackstone not
man simply, but the English subject.[64]

The American declarations of rights, on the other hand, begin with the
statement that all men are born free and equal, and these declarations
speak of rights that belong to "every individual", "all mankind" or
"every member of society". They enumerate a much larger number of rights
than the English declarations, and look upon these rights as innate and
inalienable. Whence comes this conception in American law?

It is not from the English law. There is then nothing else from which to
derive it than the conceptions of natural rights of that time. But there
have been theories of natural rights ever since the time of the Greeks,
and they never led to the formulation of fundamental rights. The theory
of natural rights for a long time had no hesitation in setting forth the
contradiction between natural law and positive law without demanding
the realization of the former through the latter. A passage from Ulpian
is drawn upon in the _Digests_, which declares all men to be equal
according to the law of nature, but slavery to be an institution of the
civil law.[65] The Romans, however, in spite of all mitigation of slave
laws, never thought of such a thing as the abolition of slavery. The
natural freedom of man was set forth by many writers during the
eighteenth century as compatible with lawful servitude. Even Locke, for
whom liberty forms the very essence of man, in his constitution for
North Carolina sanctioned slavery and servitude.

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