“The inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS.”34 Samuel Adams wrote a famed circular on behalf of Massachusetts to other colonial citizens that discussed natural rights in 1768. Sam Adams was one of the more orthodox founders, but he still rested rights on nature and not the Christian god. He wrote that the right to property “is an essential, unalterable right in nature, engrafted into the British constitution, as a fundamental law, and ever
...more
