From Principles of Nature, by Elihu Palmer:

That happiness is to be preferred to misery, pleasure to pain, virtue to vice, truth to falsehood, science to ignorance, order to confusion, universal good to universal evil, are positions which no rational being can possibly controvert. They are positions to which mankind, in all ages and countries, must yield assent. They are positions, the truth of which is never denied, the essence of which is never controverted; it is the form and application only, which has been the cause of social contention, and not the reality or excellence of the axioms themselves. 

The universality of the principle of sensation, generates universal capacity of enjoying pleasure and suffering pain; this circumstance modifies the character of human actions, and renders it necessary that every man should regard every other man with an eye of strict justice, with a tender and delicate sensibility, with a constant reference to the preservation of his feelings, and the extension of his happiness; in a word, that the exercise of external justice should be constantly reciprocated by all the individuals of the same species. 

If I assume to myself the pretended right of injuring the sensations, the moral sentiments, or general happiness of my neighbour, he has, undoubtedly, an equal right to commit the same violence upon me; this would go to the destruction of all right, to the total subversion of all justice ; it would reduce society instantly to a state of warfare, and introduce the reign of terror and of misery. 

It is a contradiction in terms to assert that any man has a right to do wrong; the exercise of such pretended right is the absolute destruction of all right, and the first human being who commits violence, has already prepared for himself a hell of retaliation, the justice of which his own mind can never deny. 

It is, therefore, inconsistent with truth to say, that there is no such thing as a general standard of moral principle; this standard has a real existence in the construction of our nature ; it is ascertained and regulated by the rule of reciprocal justice. It is absolute in the most important duties of human life; but in other cases of less weight and magnitude, it is discovered, by the calculation of judgment, by the process of the understanding, and will sometimes vibrate between the impression of sense, and the subtile combinations which constitute an ultimate moral decision. 

If it be objected upon the suggestion of this idea, that the system of natural morality is less perfect than that which has been revealed, the true answer is that revealed morality, in the most intelligible cases, is incorrect and absurd; and in the more refined cases of difficulty a total ignorance is manifested, so that it is evident, upon the very face of the record, that the subject of moral principle, in its subtile discriminations, was never examined or understood by theological writers. 

The boasted maxim of the Christian religion—”all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” is incorrect in point of phraseology, and in point of principle does not exceed any of the moral writers of antiquity, who lived many hundred years before Jesus Christ. If this scriptural declaration means to establish the doctrine of reciprocal justice, it is incontroverlibly right; but the idea of placing the essence of virtue in the wishes of the human heart, is not very correct. It is very possible that one human being may desire another to do unto him many things which ought not to be done, and which are, in their own nature, improper or immoral. 

To say, therefore, that our desires should constitute the basis of moral decision, is a declaration not consistent with truth, and which, in many cases would subvert the very essence of moral principle. There is a fitness or suitableness in the thing itself, united with the consideration of the good or bad effect that would be produced, which ought to become the ground of uniform and universal judgment in the human mind. My neighbour may wish me to do unto him an act of serious and substantial injury, which being performed, ought to be returned to me in manner and form exactly the same; and thus by an adherence to this maxim as it is now stated, a double injury would be produced, and the foundation of virtue be shaken to the centre. 

But waving any criticism of this kind, and giving to this scripture declaration the full extent of what is contended for, it is, nevertheless, no more than a plain maxim of justice, which had been known and practised, in a greater or less degree, at all times and in ail countries. All the local and unjust institutions of mankind in former ages, have not destroyed the essential relation which man bears to man, nor have they been able wholly to efface a knowledge of those duties which result from these relations and from the powers and principles of human existence. 

The more the subject of moral principle is examined, the more it will appear that there are certain general features in it, which the experience of man has partially recognized, and being fully developed and reduced to practice, would constitute a solid foundation for human felicity. The approach to such a standard of perfection will be gradual and slow, but it must, nevertheless, from the very nature of man, be constant and certain. 

The following, says Volney, is conceived to be the primordial basis and physical origin of all justice and right; whatever be the active power, the moving cause that directs the universe, this power having given to all men the same organs, the same sensations, and the same wants, has thereby declared, that it has also given them the same rights to the use of its benefits, and that in the order of nature, all men are equal. Secondly, inasmuch as this power has given to every man the ability of preserving and maintaining his own existence, it clearly follows that all men are constituted independent of each other—that they are created free—that no man can be subject, and no man sovereign, but that all men are the unlimited proprietors of their own persons. 

Equality, therefore, and liberty, are two essential attributes of man—two laws of the divinity not less essential and immutable than the physical properties of inanimate nature. Again, from the principle that every man is the unlimited master of his own person, it follows that one inseparable condition in every contract and engagement is the free and voluntary consent of all the persons therein bound; farther, because every individual is equal to every other individual, it follows that the balance of receipts and payments in political society ought to be rigorously in equilibrium with each other; so that from the idea of equality, immediately flows that other idea— equity and justice.

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