property. The life that man derives from God through religion
and property, is not derived from him through society, and
consequently so much of his life be holds independently of
society; and this constitutes his rights as a man as
distinguished from his rights as a citizen. In relation to
society, as not held from God through her, these are termed his
natural rights, which, she must hold inviolable, and government
protect for every one, whatever his complexion or his social
position. These rights--the rights of conscience and the rights
of property, with all their necessary implications--are
limitations of the rights of society, and the individual has the
right to plead them against the state. Society does not confer
them, and it cannot take them away, for they are at least as
sacred and as fundamental as her own.

But even this limitation of popular sovereignty is not all. The
people can be sovereign only in the sense in which they exist and
act. The people are not God, whatever some theorists may
pretend--are not independent, self-existent, and self-sufficing.
They are as dependent collectively as individually, and therefore
can exist and act only as second cause, never as first cause.
They can, then, even in the limited sphere of their sovereignty,
be sovereign only in a secondary sense, never absolute sovereign
in their own independent right. They are sovereign only to the
extent to which they impart life to the individual members of
society, and only in the sense in which she imparts it, or is its
cause. She is not its first cause or creator, and is the medial
cause or medium through which they derive it from God, not its
efficient cause or primary source. Society derives her own life
from God, and exists and acts only as dependent on him. Then she