Excerpt from The Antecedents of the Declaration of Independence It has been necessary thus to define our position in regard to this doctrine of inalienable rights in order to show clearly the attitude which we occupy in tracing the history of this and'the other doctrines contained in the Declaration. The connection between these doctrines and the works of Hooker, Hobbes, and Locke is so generally acknowledged that I shall confine my attention only to their history before the time of Hooker (1554 2 Even in the period before his time it is my intention to touch only upon such authors as state most clearly the substance of the doctrines of the Declaration, for I wish to avoid reading into many of the theories more than is really there. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.