The great advantage of Jefferson's approach is precisely to avoid entangling questions of rights with such empirical issues. According to the Declaration, rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be respected, period. The second implication is that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke earlier distinguished natural from conventional rights. They are for that reason unalienable.
Conventional rights arise from agreements.
Locke maintained that people have natural rights, including rights to life, health, liberty, and property. Those rights do not depend on government or any other person s acquiescence. They are intrinsic to being human. Again, to see the importance of this, it is useful to contrast Jefferson s position with an alternative. Jean-Jacques Rousseau held that all rights are conventional.