An excerpt from "a project" I am writing:
"... After all, the universal rights of self-preservation and preservation of others, notwithstanding fatality, are guaranteed to all living things from the moment of birth. If even the common rat and cockroach may invoke these natural rights without justification, approval, or judgement; then a free man, who is his own property, may as well. If not, the man is a tool possessed, neither free nor owner of himself. He lives subordinate to the rights of vermin..."