culture, there is assuredly no new principle communicated to it, but only a more correct feeling and a sounder judgment are drawn forth. The savage state is not the condition of life which shows us most clearly what human nature is: it reveals to us man in most adverse conditions and in his most imperfect development.

4. Thus, then, the consensus humani generis that individual 4. Opinion concern men have rights is universal, and the lowest ing rights is not derived from state law. races are no exception to the universality. The sense of rights is nearly as uniform and pronounced as that men have duties or that there is a moral law. The same general admission is seen when men complain of a judge's unrighteous decisions or of political injustice. For instance, if a judge, out of compassion, were to decide in favor of a poor man, giving him, on the general principles of benevolence, what the rich had owned in times past, every one would feel that a wrong was done; that the judge was not meant to be an equalizer of comforts, or a distributor of good things, but had to deal with the question of property; that the rule suum cuique is his guide, and that his feelings of compassion ought to have no weight in the case. But men go in their judgments still farther they complain of the law itself, as being unjust, which shows that they have a standard-true or false -according to which they pass judgment over and against the law of the state.

ist?

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But how do we discover what rights are, and what is the Why do rights ex rational ground on which we can defend their existence? The answer is, that the nature of the individual human being, his needs, the purpose implied in his nature, especially in his moral nature, demand that he be invested with certain powers of free action. The fact of being a man involves the exercise of those activities which are necessary to sustain and unfold the nature of man. Thus he cannot be a man without keeping himself alive, without labor, without the family state, without relations and engage

ments between the members of society or relations to God. For the great ends which his existence as a man in the world points out, he must have a certain range of free action. Thus we may say that the sum of all rights amounts to this, that every one has a right to be what he was meant to be; that he has a right to develop himself; to maintain and to carry out his true nature.

And this appears the more necessary, when we reflect that without this free action he could not attain to any high moral elevation; that his social, moral, religious nature needs these rights as the foundation for its development nor could he live in society without a sense of obligation, which implies the recognition of rights as belonging to others. Here we come to the a posteriori argument for the existence of rights, which Dr. Whewell has made use of,* that as men have a desire for objects in the outer world which are in the hands of others, there would be no security in possession, but continual struggle to get what another has by fraud or force, unless the desire were controlled by the conception of property, by looking on a thing as another's property. "In like manner the conceptions-of contract, of marriage, and the like, restrain or limit most of the acts to which the uncontrolled desires and affections would give rise." "So the desire of personal safety requires that there should exist a right of personal safety." "Without such a right, the desire would give rise to a constant tempest of anger and fear, arising from the assaults, actual or apprehended, of other men." To all which it might be replied that it does not appear that brute animals recognize the rights of each other, while yet they get along tolerably well in their intercourse within their own kind by some sort of social feeling. The exposition is hardly conclusive, unless you take into account man's moral nature. Obligation goes along with the recognition of rights. "You have a right to a thing, and therefore, I have no right to take it from you." These two

* Elem. of moral. Book I., chap. iv., p. 78.

propositions complete the appeal to the moral sense. But when we conceive of a being with such immense desires supported by such resources as man, it would seem to be a curse for him to have them, if they must conflict with other similar desires eternally; and so the final cause of implanting a sense of obligation in his nature is apparent, for this is the great controlling force-this leads to law and public control over the wrong-doer. The mere conception of property, however, if we could conceive of it apart from obligation, would only bring into the mind the wrath caused by invasions of property. These three considerations, then the general consent of mankind embodying rights and enforcing the obligations to respect them by law and punishment; the proper estimate of the destination of the individual, requiring that he have a power of free action in certain directions for the development of his nature; and the demand of a check on aggressions caused by excited desires, which would necessarily ruin man if a sense of obligation did not form a part of his being-these show that the possession of rights recognized by others belongs to man, and could not be practically denied without extreme evil.

One course of thought shows the importance of obligations. Importance of the as correlative to rights. The existence of a sense of obligation. right pertaining to any one or inherent in any one implies an obligation laid on every other one, and so there are innumerable moral threads, so to speak, passing from every person to all others, and binding their consciences to observe the same rule of non-intrusion upon the rights of others which they claim as a protection for themselves. Without this, which may be called the moral factor in jural science, the science would have no connection with ethics, for the exercise of rights, which are free powers of action, implies no moral quality whatever. A man may exert his right of acquiring or holding property with entire selfishness or disregard of others' welfare, and yet their obligation arising from, or correlative with his right of property continues. Only when he injures them—that is, violates one of their rights and

his own obligation in the use of this property, is he jurally accountable. And yet he may commit a moral wrong in the use of the same property all the time.

for moral develop

ment.

The possession of rights is necessary for the highest moral Rights necessary development. This is shown by two considerations. The person deprived of all rights is cut off from almost all the ways of doing good to others, and from nearly all the motives which raise one above a listless, sensual life. Let but the acknowledgment of the right of property disappear from the minds of men, and there could be no property and no civilization. At the same time there could be no industry, no life with plans looking far ahead; and in relation to other human beings there would be constant suspicion and fear. Thus, although rights may be exercised without any morally good quality by him who is endowed with them, they are essential to the manhood of the individual, to the proper development and the perfection of human life. They are franchises, and man cannot be a man unless he is free.

The feeling of obligation which is collateral to rights cannot be regarded as a benevolent grant or tribute paid to another, nor can it be explained merely as a deduction from principles of utility, as the teaching of experience in regard to the greatest amount of individual and social happiness. It is true that the utilitarian, when he looks at the part which this feeling or conviction plays in securing the sway of justice and keeping society together, has a sound reason for accepting of it as necessary in the social and jural system. But it is more deeply implanted in our nature than any utility, than any. means to a desired end. It is as inevitable a rule for conscience and for abstaining from an invasion of the rights of others, as the rights are a justification of free action. Let me believe that a man is free—that is, has a right to the use of a given thing or to the performance of a given action, and, whether this be true or not, I cannot avoid the conviction that it is wrong for me to interfere with his freedom in that particular.

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We are now prepared to show the relations between the Relations of rights jural and moral departments of ethics, or between the sphere of rights and obligations and the sphere of moral claims and duties.

and morals.

1. The moral comprehends the jural. Let it be conceded that a man ought, according to right reason, to have the power of free action and to be a law to himself within certain limits; this does not remove his exercise of his rights in each particular case from the control of the law of duty; that is still supreme and universal. He may have, for instance, the right to burn up a roll of bank-bills or destroy a precious picture; but it may be wrong for him to use his property in this way, although his right may make it wrong for others to control him. So, in very innocent actions, as in acting according to the right of locomotion, it may be wrong for him to do this in his circumstances. The law of free action and the rules of duty must be reconciled by giving the supreme control to the latter. Duty follows the man endowed with rights by the side of his freedom, telling him that the freeman has his responsibilities from which no amount of freedom can deliver him. Nay, the greater the freedom, the greater the responsibilities. It can never be too often repeated in this age that duty is higher than freedom, that when a man has a power or prerogative, the first question for him to ask is, "How and in what spirit is it my duty to use my power or prerogative? What law shall I lay down for myself so that my power shall not be a source of evil to me and to others ?"

The principle thus laid down, however, does not imply that a man who commits immoral acts in the exercise of a general right, as, for instance, one who uses his property to circulate obscene books or to set up a cockpit, is to be the sole law for himself, and is not to be interfered with herein by the state. The contrary, which we hold to be true, we shall endeavor to show in another place. ($81.)