Just came across a nice passage from statesman Samuel Adams written in 1772 in a piece called “Rights of the Colonists as Men”:

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self–preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent… Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains. All positive and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity. As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.

I came across this while trying to find a good reference about why Jefferson modified Locke’s inalienable rights of man from “life, liberty & property” to “life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.” It seems like a real pussy switch to have had made. Happiness is such a wishy-washy thing. It’s not really a right. Property, now that’s a right I can stand behind. I remember there being some kind of story or reasoning behind this switch from back in my American history days. I’ll keep looking.