More on Rousseau....

As it is, I have a hard time agreeing with a lot of what Rousseau says, but I found this specific example to be especially difficult to reconcile. On page 128 he says, "...since the right to property is only conventional and of human institution, everyone may dispose at will of what he possesses; but this is not the case with the essential gifts of nature, such as life and liberty, which everyone is allowed to enjoy and of which it is at least doubtful whether anyone has the right to divest himself."
What I extracted from this passage is that man can give up property because it is a human construct, but liberty, a gift of nature is not for us to give.
And..............
On page 125, Rousseau says, "savage man will not bend his neck to the yoke which civilized man wears without subjection. We must not, therefore, look to the degradation of enslaved people as a basis for judging man's natural disposition for or against servitude, but look rather to the prodigious achievements of all free peoples who have striven to protect themselves from oppression......I feel that it is not for slaves to argue about liberty."
This passage bothers me because first of all, he is making the savage man sound valiant in relation to the current man. He is ignoring all factors that lead people to being enslaved, and is then removing credibility from those who are enslaved. If people were not enslaved, then there would be no bar by which to decipher liberty. Since one man being at the 'mercy' of another man is a central step in moving toward inequality in his logic, it is odd to me that he would give credibility to those who are free, when in reality people would not have liberty unless judged against those who are lacking it. Any thoughts on this??