THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



195 



words. I have said, then, that a man may have 

 a right to alienate Ms life and liberty, not his 

 right to life and liberty. No man has a right to 

 alienate his rights. All natural rights are, in- 

 deed, in so far as they are real and existing, ina- 

 lienable. That is to say, no man can rightfully 

 transfer them to society, nor can society right- 

 fully divest him of them. To say that a man 

 has a right to any thing, and, at the same time, 

 assert that society may take it from him, is to 

 affirm that society may $o injustice, or deprive 

 the individual of his due. I hold to no such 

 doctrine. 



Hence, in. maintaining that a man may lay 

 down his life or liberty for the general good, I 

 have been careful, in my work on liberty and sla- 

 very, to remind the reader that, in such case, 

 the individual has no right to his life or liberty, 

 but that society has the sole and exclusive right 

 to them. Mr. R. has overlooked the sentence 

 containing this guarded expression. It imme- 

 diately precedes the passage quoted by him; and 

 1 beg leave to insert it here. "All we ask is," 

 (p. 110), "as may be seen from the first chap- 

 ter of this Essay, that the rights of the individ- 

 ual, whether real or imaginary, may be held in 

 subjection to the undoubted right of the commu- 

 nity to protect itself and to secure its own high- 

 est good. This solemn right, so inseparably 

 linked to a sacred duty, is paramount to the 

 rights and powers of the individual. Nay, as 

 we have already seen, (in the first chapter, ) 

 the individual can have no right that con- 

 flicts with this; because it is his duty to co- 

 operate in the establishment of the gfne- 

 ral good. Surely he can have no right 

 which is adverse to duty." With the follow- 

 ing sentence, the extract of Mr. R. begins. 



It appears, then, that according to the views 

 expressed by me, the individual may not alien- 

 ate his right to life or liberty. That is, he can 

 neither confer this right upon society, nor can 

 society take it from him. Yet, as I have said in 

 the extract made by Mr. R., "if for the general 

 good, he would not cheerfully lay down both life 

 and liberty, then both may be rightfully taken 

 from him." (p. Ill) Mark the words: "life 

 and liberty may," in such case, "be taken from 

 him," and not this right to life and liberty; for 

 as I have most explicitly stated he has, in such 

 case, no right to life or liberty, according to 

 my views as therein expressed. Hence, no 

 right of the individual is touched, but only 

 things to which he has no right. How, then, 

 does this passage conflict with the first chapter 

 of my Essay? In that chapter, it is asserted, 

 that the rights to life and liberty are inalienable ; 

 "that all the powers of earth combined cannot 

 take them away." But I have not asserted ei- 

 ther there, or elsewhere, that life and liberty are 

 inalienable; and in the passage before us, I have 

 merely affirmed that society may take them from 

 us in such cases, and in such cases only, as 

 those in which we have no right to them. I ap- 

 peal to the impartial reader if there is any con- 

 tradiction here ? Is not the doctrine of the pas- 



sage quoted by Mr. R. precisely the same as 

 as that of the first chapter, to which it most ex- 

 plicitly refers for confirmation of the very senti- 

 ment, that no right is taken away by society? 

 Life and liberty may, when the individual has no 

 right to them, be taken away ; but the right to 



THEM, WHENSOEVER AND WHERESOEVER IT MAY RE- 

 ALLY EXIST, CANNOT BE TOUCHED BY MAN. Like 



all other really existing natural rights, or rights 

 derived from God, they are inalienable, either by 

 the rightful act of the possessor, or by the legit- 

 imate authority of society. 



But to pass on. "Had he not previously sta- 

 ted," asks Mr. R., "that 'society arises not 

 from a surrender of individual rights/ and 

 hence, need not appeal to the alienation of such 

 rights in support of its powers." Most assu- 

 redly he had, and, as we have already seen, he 

 has not appealed to the alienation of such 

 rights in support of its powers. He has not as- 

 serted, that the power of society arises from a 

 surrender to her of individual rights, but only 

 that she possesses power over those things to 

 which the individual has no right, and which 

 her own highest good demands. 



"Was it wise," Mr. R. proceeds, "to aban- 

 don this impregnable position 'for the purpose 

 of maintaining that slavery is justifiable, because 

 life and liberty are alienable rights?" It were, 

 indeed, most unwise, if he had done so ; but, as 

 we have seen, he has not contended for " alien- 

 able rights." He has merely contended for the 

 alienability of life and liberty when they are not 

 rights. I repeat, then, that all men have "cer- 

 tain inalienable rights, but that life and liberty 

 are not among these." Life and liberty are not 

 among the inalienable rights of all men ; for the 

 simple, sole, and sufficient reason that some men 

 have no such rights at all; the murderer, for in- 

 stance, has no right to life, nor has the highway 

 robber to liberty. In those who have these 

 rights, however, they are inalienable; for soci- 

 ety never takes the rights she is ordained to 

 defend and protect. These rights are not abso- 

 lute, like the right of all men to do their duty; 

 they are conditional. Hence, in some cases they 

 exist, and in some they are without existence. 



Having, as it seems to me, misconceived my 

 position, and imputed to me the doctrine "that 

 life and liberty are alienable rights," Mr. R. 

 thinks it might be easily overthrown by the ab- 

 olitionist. Let us hear, then, what this imagi- 

 nary abolitionist might say, against my doctrine. 

 "If life be alienable," he might say, "then sui- 

 cide may be right, for man cannot alienate a 

 right over his own life without possessing that 

 right himself." When it is affirmed that life is 

 alienable, the meaning is, nay, the express as- 

 sertion is, that it may be alienated only for good 

 and sufficient reason. No one pretends that it 

 may be wantonly or wickedly thrown away, a s 

 in suicide, or sacrificed to the whims of a 

 blood-thirsty tyrant. As I have repeatedly said, 

 in my work on liberty and slavery, "It is pre- 

 tended by no one that society has the right to 



