Wesley Corpus

Nay, you have told us, that no man has a right to give away his own liberty; that it is unalienable from the nature of every child of man. Never, therefore, patronize those iniquitous laws. No; if you are a lover of liberty, an enemy to slavery and oppression, exhort them to shake off this servile yoke. 22. To set this whole matter in another light, I beg leave to repeat the sum of a small tract lately published.* Have not the people, in every age and nation, the right to dispose of the supreme power; of investing therewith whom they please, and upon what conditions they see good? Conse quently, if those conditions are not observed, they have a right to take it away. To prove this, it is argued, “All men living are naturally equal; none is above another; and all are naturally free masters of their own actions; therefore, no man can have any power over another, but by his own consent; therefore, the power which any Governors enjoy, must be originally derived from the people, and presupposes an original compact between them and their first Governors.” 23. But, who are the people? Are they every man, woman, and child? Why not? Is it not one fundamental * Thoughts on the Origin of Power. principle, that “all persons living are naturally equal; that all human creatures are naturally free; masters of their own actions; that none can have any power over them, but by their own consent?” Why, then, should not every man, woman, and child, have a voice in placing their Governors, in fixing the measure of their power, and the conditions on which it is intrusted? And why should not every one have a voice in displacing them too? Surely they that gave the power have a right to take it away. By what argument do you prove, that women are not naturally as free as men? And if they are, why have they not as good a right to choose their Governors? Who can have any power over free, rational creatures, but by their own consent? And are they not free by nature as well as we? Are they not rational creatures? 24. But suppose we exclude women from using their natural right, by might overcoming right, what pretence have we for excluding men like ourselves, barely because they have not lived one-and-twenty years?