a condition to procure the happiness of any man. Justice is also called
_equity_, because by the assistance of the laws made to command the
whole, she reduces all its members to a state of equality; that is to
say, she prevents them from prevailing one over the other, by the
inequality which Nature or industry may have made between their
respective powers.

_Rights_, to man, are every thing which society, by equitable laws,
permits each individual to do for his own peculiar felicity. These
rights are evidently limited by the invariable end of all association:
society has, on its part, rights over all its members, by virtue of the
advantages which it procures for them; all its members, in turn, have a
right to claim, to exact from society, or secure from its ministers
those advantages for the procuring of which they congregated, in favour
of which they renounced a portion of their natural liberty. A society,
of which the chiefs, aided by the laws, do not procure any good for its
members, evidently loses its right over them: those chiefs who injure
society lose the right of commanding. It is not our country, without it
secures the welfare of its inhabitants; a society without equity
contains only enemies; a society oppressed is composed only of tyrants
and slaves; slaves are incapable of being citizens; it is liberty,
property, and security, that render our country dear to us; it is the
true love of his country that forms the citizen.

For want of having a proper knowledge of these truths, or for want of
applying them when known, some nations have become unhappy--have
contained nothing but a vile heap of slaves, separated from each other,
detached from society, which neither procures for them any good, nor
secures to them any one advantage. In consequence of the imprudence of
some nations, or of the craft, cunning, and violence of those to whom