There are questions which lie back of this discussion--errors, as I think, which underlie the popular ideas of both government and rights. We should not consider that we had fully met the difficulties of the subject if we passed them by. Domestic slavery, it is said, is an abridgment of inalienable rights; and legitimate government is a voluntary concession of certain alienable rights. Natural rights are, of course, such as are inherent in the constitution of man: inalienable, because in point of fact he cannot be substantively deprived of them. The law which in any case provides to do this, treats him as though he were not a rational, but a mere sentient being--and therein alienates his rights. Domestic slavery is said to treat the slave as a mere chattel, a thing, not an entity, and hence deprives him by provision of law of the right of being treated as a rational being as he is, and not a mere thing. This is said, because it places his time and labor at the disposal of another man. How far this reproach is just, turns upon a definite answer to the question--_What are rights?_ “_Government is a voluntary concession of certain alienable rights._” If this concession be made by the majority of the citizens, the government is called republican; if otherwise, it is called despotic. In this theory of government, certain rights are assumed to be given up, in order to secure other and more important rights. I have shown government to embody, of necessity, two great abstract principles in harmonious operation--though, in their essential nature, the one antagonizes the other. Now the principle of slavery--_control by the will of another_--certainly operates an abridgment of the exercise of _self-control_, which is the principle of liberty. And so far as the principle of slavery operates, in any given instance of government, is that, in such instance, a giving up, to that extent, of the right of _self-control_, in order to secure a _right_ to the _self-control_ which remains ungiven up? Is this so? This question also turn upon the solution of that other question--What are rights?