h the first confers
are irreconcilable with the guarantees of tranquillity which the second
furnishes.

Notion Of Rights In The United States

No great people without a notion of rights--How the notion of rights can
be given to people--Respect of rights in the United States--Whence it
arises.

After the idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right;
or, to speak more accurately, these two ideas are commingled in one.
The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political
world. It is the idea of right which enabled men to define anarchy and
tyranny; and which taught them to remain independent without arrogance,
as well as to obey without servility. The man who submits to violence
is debased by his compliance; but when he obeys the mandate of one
who possesses that right of authority which he acknowledges in a
fellow-creature, he rises in some measure above the person who delivers
the command. There are no great men without virtue, and there are
no great nations--it may almost be added that there would be no
society--without the notion of rights; for what is the condition of a
mass of rational and intelligent beings who are only united together by
the bond of force?

I am persuaded that the only means which we possess at the present time
of inculcating the notion of rights, and of rendering it, as it were,
palpable to the senses, is to invest all the members of the community
with the peaceful exercise of certain rights: this is very clearly seen
in children, who are men without the strength and the experience of
manhood. When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects which
surround him, he is instinctively led to turn everything which he can
lay his hands upon to his own purposes; he has no notion of the property
of others; but as he gradually learns the value of things, and begins
to perceive that he may in his turn be deprived of his possessions, he
becomes more circumspect, and he observes those rights in others which
he wishes to have respected in himself. The principle which the child
derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the
objects which he may call his own. In America those complaints against
property in general which are so frequent in Europe are never heard,
because in America there are no paupers; and as everyone has property of
his own to defend, everyone recognizes the principle upon which he holds
it.

The same thing occurs in the p