ng forth of a complete series of
universal rights of man and of citizens can in no way be explained
through their influence alone.

In 1764 there appeared in Boston the celebrated pamphlet of James Otis
upon _The Rights of the British Colonies_. In it was brought forward the
idea that the political and civil rights of the English colonists in no
way rested upon a grant from the crown; even Magna Charta, old as it
might be, was not the beginning of all things. "A time may come when
Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural,
inherent, and inseparable rights of the colonists as men and as citizens
would remain, and, whatever became of charters, can never be abolished
till the general conflagration."[100]

In this pamphlet definite limitations of the legislative power "which
have been established by God and by Nature" are already enumerated in
the form of the later bills of rights. As the center of the whole stood
the principal occasion of strife between the colonies and the
mother-country, the right of taxation. That the levying of taxes or
duties without the consent of the people or of representatives of the
colonies was not indeed contrary to the laws of the country, but
contrary to the eternal laws of liberty.[101] But these limitations were
none other than those enumerated by Locke, which "the law of God and of
Nature has set for every legislative power in every state and in every
form of government".

But these propositions of Locke's are here found in a very radical
transformation. They are changing namely from law to personal right.
While Locke, similar to Rousseau later, places the individuals in
subjection to the will of the majority of the community, upon which,
however, restrictions are placed by the objects of the state, now the
individual establishes the conditions under which he will enter the
community, and in the state holds fast to these conditions as rights. He
has accordingly rights in the state and claims upon the state which do
not spring from the state. In opposition to England's attempt to
restrict these rights, the idea formally to declare them and to defend
them grew all the stronger.

This formulation was influenced by a work that was published anonymously
at Oxford in 1754, in which for the first time "absolute rights" of the
English are mentioned.[102] It originated from no less a person than
Blackstone.[103] These rights of the individual were voiced in
Blacksto