Quote of the Day by Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father of the United States: ‘The sacred rights of mankind are…’
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased." - Alexander Hamilton There is a young man standing at a desk in 1775. He is barely 20 years old. He has no family name behind him, no wealth, and no country he can call his own. He picks up a pen and writes one of the most powerful sentences in the history of political thought. That sentence is the one above. Meaning of the Quote The quote opens with a rejection. Rights are not found in parchments or records. This is a deliberate challenge to the dominant argument of the time. Loyalists and defenders of British authority pointed to legal documents, precedents, and parliamentary statutes. They argued that rights existed only where they had been formally recorded and officially granted. Hamilton refuses this entirely. He does not merely disagree. He inverts the argument. If rights come from documents, they can also be revoked by documents. A king can unsign a charter. A parliament can repeal a law. Any right dependent on a human record is vulnerable to human corruption. Hamilton argued instead that the deity had constituted an eternal and immutable law, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatsoever. This natural law is binding over the entire globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to it. The image of the sunbeam is deliberate and precise. A sunbeam does not require permission to illuminate. It does not consult a document before it shines. It simply exists, and by existing, it reveals. Hamilton is saying that rights are like light. They do not need to be granted. They need only to be seen.
The phrase "the whole volume of human nature" is equally considered. Rights are not written in one person, or in one people, or in one nation. They are written across the entire record of what human beings are. Every person who has ever existed carries the same text within them. The final claim is the most radical. They can never be erased. No mortal power can remove what the divinity has inscribed. Not a king. Not a parliament. Not an army. Not a law. Rights exist before governments and will outlast them. Who is Alexander Hamilton? Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father of the United States, was born out of wedlock in Charlestown on the Caribbean island of Nevis. He was orphaned as a child and taken in by a prosperous merchant. His early life was so obscure that not even the year of his birth is known with certainty. His father abandoned the family, and his mother died when Hamilton was still a child. He became a clerk for merchants on the island of St. Croix. Full of ambition, Hamilton confessed in 1769 that he would willingly risk his life to exalt his station and wished there was a war. With funds contributed by patrons on St. Croix, he arrived in New York City in 1773 and enrolled at King's College. During his years as a student, Hamilton became engaged in the debate over independence, writing pamphlets that included A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress in 1774 and The Farmer Refuted in 1775. The quote above is drawn from The Farmer Refuted. Hamilton was responding to a Loyalist clergyman who argued that the colonists must remain obedient British subjects. Hamilton's bravery and leadership abilities brought him to the attention of continental leaders. In 1777, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and George Washington appointed him as his aide-de-camp.
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