Says Mirabeau, in his beautiful essay on "Despotism," "We can destroy the
life of a man for a frightful crime; but that is not to appropriate my
existence when it is forced from me. Consider, upon this subject, how
absurd is the opinion of the pretended philosophers who have established
force as title; who have set up a right of conquest, and recognized to the
conquerors the legitimate power to grant life or put to death.
"It is not true that the right of life and death, exercised by a man upon
another man, has ever been anything else than an act of frenzy; for your
enemy reduced to slavery can be yet useful to you, provided you preserve
his life,--and this is less than the right that he has upon you, and the
relation which binds you together; but the massacre of a man is nothing
more than to dishonor and disgust humanity, * * * the right of life and
death, * * * and what other has the Creator to exercise over our
existence?
"From man to man the rights then are always respective. Personal propriety
cannot surrender itself, liberty cannot alienate itself. This first gift
of nature is imprescriptible; and men, even in their delirium, cannot
renounce it."