Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11

Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11
American Founders

By

0
(0 Reviews)
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11 by John Lord

Published:

1902

Downloads:

1,462

Share This

Beacon Lights of History, Volume 11
American Founders

By

0
(0 Reviews)

Book Excerpt

ain legal privileges which the Empire had conferred upon Roman citizenship, not for any 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" Rou

FREE EBOOKS AND DEALS

(view all)

More books by John Lord

(view all)