Gouverneur Morris on the proper balance between commerce, private property, and political liberty (1776)

In this collection of musings about the object of government, the nature of human happiness, public virtue, and the tension between political and commercial liberty Morris believes that there exists a possible contradiction between the “natural rights” as espoused in the “Declaration of Independence” and the “social rights” which men enjoy when they live in communities. Morris dismisses natural rights as suitable only for individuals who live in a state of nature, perhaps alone on an island, where the rule of the strongest holds sway. Since men are naturally sociable the only rights they hold are those that make societies function. Once societies have been established, this automatically extinguishes “natural liberty”, or the right of every man to do what he pleases. He makes similar arguments in his “Remarks upon the Principles and Views of the London Corresponding Society” (1795) in which he rejects their ideas about “equal rights” for all men. He concludes that “that same state of Nature is not the natural state of Man. He is a social animal. His rights, therefore, and his duties, are social. Consequently, to talk of his natural rights, in contradistinction to the social, seems about as proper as to talk of his angelic rights, or his bestial rights … Man, therefore, being a social Creature, can have no rights inconsistent with the social state.” This way of thinking seems to place Morris on the conservative side of the political spectrum when compared to Thomas Jefferson.