suppose that they are innate, appealing to consciousness,--concerning
which there can be no dispute or argument. Others suppose that they
exist only so far as men can assert and use them, whether granted by
rulers or seized by society. Some find that they arose among our
Teutonic ancestors in their German forests, while still others go back
to Jewish, Grecian, and Roman history for their origin. Wherever they
originated, their practical enforcement has been a slow and unequal
growth among various peoples, and it is always the evident result of an
evolution, or development of civilization.

In the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson
asserts that "all men are created equal," and that among their
indisputable rights are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Nobody disputes this; and yet, looking critically into the matter, it
seems strange that, despite Jefferson's own strong anti-slavery
sentiments, his associates should have excluded the colored race from
the common benefits of humanity, unless the negroes in their plantations
were not men at all, only things or chattels. The American people went
through a great war and spent thousands of millions of dollars to
maintain the indissoluble union of their States; but the events of that
war and the civil reconstruction forced the demonstration that African
slaves have the same inalienable rights for recognition before the law
as the free descendants of the English and the Dutch. The statement of
the Declaration has been formally made good; and yet, whence came it?

If we go back to the New Testament, the great Charter of Christendom, in
search of rights, we are much puzzled to find them definitely declared
anywhere; but we find, instead, duties enjoined with great clearness
and made universally binding. It is only by a series of deductions,
especially from Saint Paul's epistles, that we infer the right of