But the moral law, the so-called law of nature, _droit naturel_, which founds and sustains the moral order, the order of right, of justice, is not a law founded or prescribed by nature, but the law for the moral government of nature, under which all moral natures are placed by the Author of nature as supreme law-giver. The law of nature is God's law; and whatever rights it founds or are held from it are his rights, and ours only because they are his. My rights, in relation to you, are your duties, what God prescribes as the law of your conduct to me; and your rights are, in relation to me, my duties to you, what God prescribes as the rule of my conduct to you. But what God prescribes he has the right to prescribe, and therefore can command me to respect no rights in you, and you to respect no rights in me, that are not his; and being his, civil society is bound by them, and cannot alienate them or deny them without violating his law, and robbing him of his rights. Hence, he who does an injury to another wrongs not him only, but wrongs his Maker, his Sovereign, and his Judge. Take any of the rights enumerated as inalienable in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Among these is the right to life. This right all men and civil society itself are bound to treat as sacred and inviolable. But all men are created equal, and under the law of nature have equal rights. But how can equals bind one another? By mutual compact. But whence the obligation of the compact? Why am I obliged to keep my word? Certainly not by the word itself; but because I should deprive him of his right to whom I have pledged it. But I have given my word to assist in committing a murder. Am I bound to keep it? Not at all. Why not? Because I have pledged myself to commit a crime, to do a wrong or unjust act. Evidently, then, compacts or pledged words do not create justice, they presuppose it; and it is only in virtue of the law of justice that compacts are obligatory, and no compacts not conformable to that law can bind. Why, then, am I bound to respect your life? It is not you who can bind me; for you and I are equals, and neither in his own name can bind the other. To take your life would be an unjust act; that is, I should rob justice of its right to your life. The right to life is then the right of justice. But justice is not an abstraction; it is not a mental conception, but a reality, and therefore God; and hence the right for you or me to live is the right of him who hath made us and whose we are, with all that we are, all that we have, and all that we can do. Hence, the right to life is inalienable even by myself, and suicide is not only a crime against society, but a sin against God; for God owns it as his right, and therefore he has the right to command all men to hold it in every man sacred and inviolable, and never to be taken by other men or even civil society, but at his order. So of all the other rights of man.