CHAPTER XVII.
UNIVERSAL BASIS OF ALL RIGHT AND ALL LAW.
The men chosen by the people to investigate the true principles of morals and of reason then proceeded in the sacred object of their mission; and, after a long examination, having discovered a fundamental and universal principle, a legislator arose and said to the people: Here is the primordial basis, the physical origin of all justice and of all right.
Whatever be the active power, the moving cause, that governs the universe, since it has given to all men the same organs, the same sensations, and the same wants, it has thereby declared that it has given to all the same right to the use of its treasures, and that all men are equal in the order of nature.
And, since this power has given to each man the necessary means of preserving his own existence, it is evident that it has constituted them all independent one of another; that it has created them free; that no one is subject to another; that each one is absolute proprietor of his own person.
Equality and liberty are, therefore, two essential attributes of man, two laws of the Divinity, constitutional and unchangeable, like the physical properties of matter.
Now, every individual being absolute master of his own person, it follows that a full and free consent is a condition indispensable to all contracts and all engagements.
Again, since each individual is equal to another, it follows that the balance of what is received and of what is given, should be strictly in equilibrium; so that the idea of justice, of equity, necessarily imports that of equality.* * The etymology of the words themselves trace out to us this connection: equilibrium, equalitas, equitas, are all of one family, and the physical idea of equality, in the scales of a balance, is the source and type of all the rest.
Equality and liberty are therefore the physical and unalterable basis of every union of men in society, and of course the necessary and generating principle of every law and of every system of regular government.* * In the Declaration of Rights, there is an inversion of ideas in the first article, liberty being placed before equality, from which it in reality springs.

This defect is not to be wondered at; the science of the rights of man is a new science: it was invented yesterday by the Americans, to-day the French are perfecting it, but there yet remains a great deal to be done.

In the ideas that constitute it there is a genealogical order which, from us basis, physical equality, to the minutest and most remote branches of government, ought to proceed in an uninterrupted series of inferences.
A disregard of this basis has introduced in your nation, and in every other, those disorders which have finally roused you.

It is by returning to this rule that you may reform them, and reorganize a happy order of society.
But observe, this reorganization will occasion a violent shock in your habits, your fortunes, and your prejudices.

Vicious contracts and abusive claims must be dissolved, unjust distinctions and ill founded property renounced; you must indeed recur for a moment to a state of nature.