Page:A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature (1775) (IA declarationofpeo00shar).djvu/25

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with his Subjects, who are his equals both on their entrance and at their exeunt from the Stage of Life,) he immediately loses the best Rule for his Conduct as a Prince, and necessarily degenerates into brutality; so that, in such cafes, to suppose that the Will of the Prince is to be allowed the force of Law is the highest absurdity! Nay, even the Baron himself has elsewhere declared, that “the word, Man, is thought to carry somewhat of Dignity in its sound; and we commonly” (says he) “make use of this as the last and the most prevailing argument against a rude insulter, I am not a Beast, a Dog, but I am a Man as well as yourself. Since then human nature agrees equally to all persons, and since no one can live a sociable life with another, who does not own and respect him as 'a Man; it follows, as a command of the Law of Nature, that every Man esteem and treat another as one who is naturally his equal, or who is A Man as well as he.” (Book 3. c. 2. p. 178.) It would therefore be unreasonable to conceive, that any society of Men should voluntarily submit themselves to a tempo-ral