Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/222

190 Foundation of civil and political rights. [i765 also, for Parliament too was the offspring of the common law. 5. But corporate rights were matters of grace and favour of the donor or founder. 6. Therefore the rights of the colonists, political and personal alike, were matters of grace and favour. Otis denied Howard's distinction between personal and political rights ; it was "a new invention."" The rights of men were natural or civil ( w political "), and they might be both, at the same time, for the two divisions were not opposed to each other; which, it may be remarked, meant that all rights were civil, but certain civil rights were " natural." Civil rights were principally three, rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property ; these by Blackstone were called absolute civil or political rights, and these were natural. Now natural, absolute (Howard's " personal **) rights, so far from being opposed to civil or political rights, were the very basis of all municipal laws of any great value. Howard's distinction too had led him to confound the rights of bodies politic or corporate with the civil or political rights of natural persons. Because the rights of bodies corporate, so far as they de- pended upon charter, were matters of grace and favour of the donor or founder, Howard had inferred that the colonies, as bodies corporate, had no rights independent of their charters. But this, said Otis, contradicted his statement that by "the common law" every colonist had a right to his life, liberty and property. Rights of life, liberty, and property, by nature and by the common law, were civil or political rights. But in the colonies these and all other rights, according to Howard, depended upon charter. It must follow that the people of those colonies (New York, for instance) which had no charters, had no right to life, liberty, or property. And even in the colonies which had charters, these rights depended upon the mere good-will, grace, and pleasure of the supreme power. That could not be true ; the origin of these rights was found in the law of nature. If all the charters were abolished, this would not shake one of the essential rights of the colonists ; the colonists would still be men, citizens, British subjects. No Act of Parliament could deprive them of the liberties of such. It followed although Otis left the plain deduction to the reader that the colonists could claim the common law, without admitting the authority of Parliament, even if it were true that the British Constitution was, properly speaking, the common law in such a way that Parliament, like the rights of life, liberty, and property, could be said to be the offspring of it. Otis made no allusion to this point; his argument was not affected by it. It was enough that the "personal" rights in question, being civil or political, were at the same time natural, and hence above charters or Parliaments. Otis however did not deny that Parliament had the right to lay taxes upon the colonies, and so far take the property of the colonists