Liberty in general.—Natural rights.
Slavery.—Arguments of J. J. Rousseau against slavery, servitude; oppression of work under divers forms.
The honor of others.—Backbiting and slander.
Rash judgments.—Analysis of a treatise of Nicole.—Envy; rancor; delation.
Justice, distributive and remunerative.—To each according to his merits and his works. Equity.
After self-preservation, the most sacred prerogative of man is liberty—that is to say, the right of using his faculties, both physical and moral, without injury to others, at his own risks and perils, and on his own responsibility.
51. Liberty—Natural rights.—The word liberty sums up all that is understood by the natural rights of man, namely, the right to go and come, or individual liberty; the right to use his physical faculties to supply his wants, or liberty of work; the right to exercise his intelligence and reason, or liberty of thought; the right to honor God according to his lights, or liberty of conscience; the right to have a family, a wife and children, or the family right, and finally the right to keep what he has acquired, or the right of property.
52. Slavery.—The privation of all these rights, of all these liberties in an individual, is called slavery. Slavery is the suppression of the human personality. It consists in transforming man into a thing. It takes away from him the right of property and makes of himself a property. The slave is bought and sold as a thing. The fruits of his labor do not belong to him; he cannot come and go at will; he can neither think nor believe freely; in some countries he is interdicted the right of instructing himself; he has no family, or has one temporarily only, since his wife or children may be separately sold; and since the women belong to their masters as their property, there is no bridle against the license of passions.
Although slavery is at the present day well-nigh abolished in the world, still as it is not yet wholly so, and as this abolition is quite recent, and tends constantly to be renewed under one form or another, it is important to sum up the principal reasons that show the immorality and iniquity of this institution.
53. Refutation of slavery—Opinion of J. J. Rousseau.—J. J. Rousseau, in his Contrat Social (I., iv.), combated slavery with as much profundity as eloquence. Let us sum up his arguments with a few citations: