but rather by nature. This ideal rationally leads to the fa!
             ct that a nature given right is given for all men by nature.
             Certain ideals on the subject of equality that were held by the founders were pulled from revolutionary thinkers of that time. John Locke eloquently laid before mankind a rational account of the nature of equality. The founders would later lay the framework for America in obviously Lockian terms. Locke in his Second Treatise reasons that all men in a state of nature, whether that be historical or hypothetical, are in a state of equality,
             …Wherein all Power and Jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident, than that Creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection…(71)
             David Hume expanded on the idea that all men by nature are equal in his writings Of the Original Contract. Here he notes how “nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education (119).” Locke and Hume recognized that men, all men, are created equal. The founders realized that men are not endowed with the right of equal status by another of the same status, but rather by a creator which then equalizes all men everywhere at all times. This fact made the American mind a new political creation.
             Rationally following the recognition of equality among all men of the human species was the fact that legitimate government
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