The type of rights that the colonists who drafted the Declaration of Independence most wanted to protect were the natural or inalienable rights, which were life, liberty, and property. Thomas Jefferson was in charge of writing a draft. He was a man of the Enlightenment when thinkers turned to reason and science to explain both the physical universe and human behavior. Locke, a philosopher of the Enlightenment thought that all men have inalienable rights. The purpose of government is to protect those rights which are life, liberty, and property.