“Natural society is a state of equality and liberty; a state in which all men enjoy the same prerogatives, and an entire independence on any other power but God. For every man is naturally master of himself, and equal to his fellow-creatures so long as he does not subject himself to another person’s authority by a particular convention.” Here we find coupled with liberty that word equality which played such a tremendous part in history for the succeeding hundred years. And we must bear in mind that what the people of that time meant by it was political equality, equality of rights, equality before the law and the government; and not equality of ability, talents, fortunes, or gifts, as some have fancied. Burlamaqui not only found liberty, independence, and equality growing out of nature itself; but he argued that all this was part of the divine plan, the great order of nature and the universe. Indeed, that was what he and his Reformation predecessors had set out to discover, to unravel the system of humanity, to see if there really was a system that could be gathered from the actual plain facts; and to see also if there was a unity and completeness in this system. “The human understanding,” he says, “is naturally right, and has within itself a strength sufficient to arrive at the knowledge of truth, and to distinguish it from error.” That he announces as the fundamental principle of his book, “the hinge whereon the whole system of humanity turns,” and it was simply his way of restating the great doctrine of the Reformation, the right of private judgment. But he goes on to enlarge on it in a way particularly pleasing to the patriot colonists, for he says we have this power to decide for ourselves, “especially in things wherein our respective duties are concerned.” “Yes,” said the colonists, “we have often thought that we were the best judges of all our own affairs.” “Those who feel,” said Franklin, in his examination before Parliament, “can best judge.” The daring Burlamaqui went on to show that liberty instead of being, as some supposed, a privilege to be graciously accorded, was in reality a universal right, inherent in the nature of things.