And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of
preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them
all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no
one is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his
own person.

Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man,
two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the
physical properties of matter.

Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it
follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all
contracts and all engagements.

Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the
balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in
equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports
that of equality.*

* The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this
connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one
family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of
a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.

Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis
of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and
generating principle of every law and of every system of regular
government.*

* In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of