Category: Thought

Not the equality of men, but the equality of their claims to make the best of themselves within the limits mutually produced, has all along been my principle.…
The equality alleged [in Social Statics] is not among men themselves, but among their claims to equally-​limited spheres for the exercise of their faculties: an utterly different proposition.

Herbert Spencer, in a letter to W. H. Hudson, a former assistant, rejecting his consent to Hudson dedicating his book on Jean-​Jacques Rousseau to him (January 7, 1903). The book went on to be published as Rousseau and Naturalism in Life and Thought (1903), dedicated to Dr. Frederick James Furnivall. Spencer went on to say, in that letter, that the “equality” he had alleged in his first book, Social Statics (1851), “is not among men themselves, but among their claims to equally-​limited spheres for the exercise of their faculties: an utterly different proposition. [T. H.] Huxley confused the two and spread the confusion, and I am anxious that it should not be further spread.”

Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.

St. George Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia (1796).

Slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty.

Senator Charles Sumner, in his “The Crime Against Kansas” speech (May 19 – 20, 1856).

The first steps of the slaveholder to justify by argument the peculiar institutions is to deny the self-​evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. He denies that all men are created equal. He denies that he has inalienable rights.

John Quincy Adams, “Letter to the 12th Congressional District” (June 29, 1839).

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery.

John Adams, as quoted in letter to Robert J. Evans (June 8, 1819).

[B]etween an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sec. 168.