rights which he could claim as a human being. If the Roman laws
recognized any rights, it was those which the State had given, not those
which are innate and inalienable, and which the State could not justly
take away. I apprehend that even in the Greek and Roman republics no
civil rights could be claimed except those conferred upon men as
citizens rather than as human beings. Slaves certainly had no rights,
and they composed half the population of the old Roman world. Rights
were derived from decrees or laws, not from human consciousness.

Where then did Jefferson get his ideas as to the equal rights to which
men were born? Doubtless from the French philosophers of the eighteenth
century, especially from Rousseau, who, despite his shortcomings as a
man, was one of the most original thinkers that his century produced,
and one of the most influential in shaping the opinions of civilized
Europe. In his "Contrat Social" Rousseau appealed to consciousness,
rather than to authorities or the laws of nations. He took his stand on
the principles of eternal justice in all he wrote as to civil liberties,
and hence he kindled an immense enthusiasm for liberty as an
inalienable right.

But Rousseau came from Switzerland, where the passion for personal
independence was greater than in any other part of Europe,--a passion
perhaps inherited from the old Teutonic nations in their forests, on
which Tacitus dilates, next to their veneration for woman the most
interesting trait among the Germanic barbarians. No Eastern nation,
except the ancient Persians, had these traits. The law of liberty is an
Occidental rather than an Oriental peculiarity, and arose among the
Aryans in their European settlements. Moreover, Rousseau lived in a city
where John Calvin had taught the principles of religious liberty which
afterwards took root in Holland, England, Scotland, and France, and