Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Unalienable Rights of Man

In the Canadian Legislative Council. David Christie said, there are "some points of variance [between the British Constitution and the American] but the same great principle is the basis of both--that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the unalienable rights of man, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the secret of the strength of the British Constitution, and without a free and full recognition of it no government can be strong or permanent."

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 26.