From the begining, the two main ideas I find necessary to define better are:
1- What are rights?
2-Natural Law(s)
A right, seems to have 3 possible origins: (1) natural conditions, (2) social agreement or (3) force. (If you know a fourth tell me). When something is natural such as liberty (inexistence of shackles) the right to such comes from (1), when something isn’t natural (material property) it can’t come from (1). When people agree (with or without a government) about something as rights to all, this right comes from (2). When one or a nation imposes to another one or another nation a condition and grant himself rights over such nation, this rights comes from (3), e.g. conquests, slavery, etc.
Natural Law (to me) may mean 3 things:
1-Physical, Chemical, Biological laws.
2-Primitive society’s standarts.
3-Law of the jungle (the strongest rule)
You obviously don’t mean 1 and 3 when you defined natural law as “The natural law elucidates what is best for humans, and what is not good for humans”, but on your definition you used the words good and bad, well those are relative ideas, not all things are purely good or purely bad. Here in Brazil we have an expression “faca de dois gumes” (double-edged knife) that would mean: something that both helps and dammages the user.
Actually most things are “double-edged knife”, some as murdering are only bad, but collective property and private property have both good and bad aspects. From evolutionism, we find that a economical competition inside the human race is as bad for humanity as a fight amongs the ants of the same colony is for the ant species. We also conclude that a collective human society would be more fit than a individualist one, once the human is two weak to live alone in the jungles.
Thus, the natural law for human beings is a group (from both mine and your definitions), not an individual once an individual would be two weak. “Unity generates strenght”. As I had mentioned before, liberty is the inexistence of shackles, natural. In nature, there are no shackles, we have liberty. But once we have a group we have a problem: Full and absolute liberty would mean I can do anything, even murder, that is where we have the NATURAL LIMITATION OF LIBERTY. “My liberty ends where yours begins”, this is also a natural law from both mine and your definitions.
We also have life, all living beings have life, and every animal has to kill other living beings to survive, thus life requires death. human beings as a specie would be far more fit (from evolutionism) defending the lifes of all humans before the life of other creatures. This is the origin of the right to life, a natural condition. So, the right to life would be a natural right for both mine and yours perspectives.
Notice that property is NOT needed to define the rights to life and liberty, I used only natural conditions to explain where do they come from. Property is an idea that seems to have only appeared after human beings stoped living in a purely collective and natural societ (when they shared things there was no idea such a private property). I belive then that the orgins of rigths may be COMPARED to the “original axiom of property in one’s person”, but that this one isn’t the best way to explain rights.
Ok, now to property:
One idea must be introduced here, it is the possession idea. Possession would be what you need to live (limited) while property would be illimited, their nature is the same, they refers to external things that we humans agree are in control of some humans. While some natural conditions (very cold winter) estimulate the idea of possession, the idea of property is estimulated by itself, a feedback. Private property estimulates private property (greed).
So in Alasca, the natives had to have their clothes and houses in order to survive, while they had no necessity of private property. they would help each other in times of need and share the wealth in times of wealth. So basically, possession are natural, while property is artificial.
Property over something would be the right to control something that is not necessarly nedded for the owner, while possession would be the right to control something that is needed for the owner. Property would come from either social agreement or force, and possessions would be natural.
when you use the “original axiom of property in one’s person” this property would be a possession, not a property.
Finally (I guess it is big enougth already) state.
The state IS NOT natural, naturaly there is no such institution with legitimate use of force and violence, once those are not needed in a natural society(unless on huntings, etc). Basically when Max Weber defines the state as:
“The institution with monopoly over legitimate uses of force and violence”
By legitimate he DOES NOT mean natural law, because the “natural state” would be equal to no state. The state comes from either social agreement or force. When a nation is born, it comes from social agreement, when the European conquered the rest of the world, they created (sometimes replacing old states) states via force.
The state hasn’t always existed, neither has private property, yet the only way to assure the unnatural right of property is creating an unnatural institution with monopoly over the legitimate uses of force and violence. Where legitimate means according to what the society agrees it is legitimate as private property. This is why state exists to defend private property:
Immagine a state that doesn’t taxes its people (it has so many oil companies (rockefeller’s land) , it doesn’t need to tax the people) , this way he wouldn’t be “stealing” following your deffinitions. Yet he would be defending private property of its people. Basically this is the function of the state, to assure private property. This is why John Locke said:
“The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under governmernment is the preservation of their property.”
And why Adam Smith said:
“The necessity of civil government grows with the acqisition of valuable property. Till there be property there can be no government. The very end of which is to secure the wealth and defend the rich from the poor.”
This is big enoght already, so I will stop here.