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compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact, and the continued existence of that compact.
Liberty, in this simple, unsophisticated sense, I acknowledge, is a fair idea that has never yet received a form in the various governments that have been established on our beauteous globe; the demon of property has ever been at hand to encroach on the sacred rights of men, and to fence round with awful pomp laws that war with justice. But that it results from the eternal foundation of right—from immutable truth—who will presume to deny, that pretends to rationality—if reason has led them to build their morality[1] and religion on
- ↑ As religion is included in my idea of morality, I should not have mentioned the term without specifying all the simple ideas which that comprehensive word generalizes, but as the charge of atheism has been very freely banded about in the letter I am considering, I wish to guard against misrepresentation.
an
