RIGHT. This word occurs under some form in all the Teutonic languages ; and bears a double meaning equivalent to the significatious of the Latin word jus.
Iu its strict sense it means a legal claim ; in other words, a claim which can be enforced by legal remedies, or a claim the infringement of which can be punished by a legal sanction. It follows from this definition that every right presupposes the existence of positive law.
The causes of rights, or the modes of acquiring them, are various, and ean only be explaiued in a system of jurisprudence ; for example, a person may acquire a right by contract, by gift, by succession, by the non-fulfilment of a condition. But every right co-relates with a legal duty. Thus a right arising from contract (for example, a con tract to perform a service, or to pay a sum of money) is a right against a determinate person or persons ; a right of property in a field or house is a right to deal with the field or house, availing against the world at large. On the other hand, every legal duty does not co relate with a right ; for there are certain absolute duties which do not co-relate with a right in any determinate person. Such are the duties which are included in the idea of police ; as the duties of cleanliness, order, quiet at certain times and places.
The wont right is sometimes used, improperly and secondarily, to signify not legal but moral claims ; that is to say, claims which are enforced merely by public opinion, and not by the legal sanction.
In this sense the right of a slave against his master, or of a subject against his sovereign, may bo spoken of ; although a slave has rarely any legal right against his master, and a subject never has a legal right against his sovereign. It is in the same sense that a sovereign govern ment is sometimes said to have rights against its subjects,. although in a sovereign government creates rights, and does not possess them. In like manner, one sovereign government is said to have rights against another sovereign government ; that is to say, moral rights, derived from the positive morality prevailing between inde pendent nations, which is called international lair.
Wo likewise sometimes hear of certain rights, styled natural rights, 1 which are supposed to be anterior to civil government, and to be para mount to it. Hence these supposed natural rights sometimes receive also the additional epithets of indefeasible, indestructible, inalienable, and the like. This theory of natural rights is closely connected with the fiction of a social compact made between persons living iu a state of the projectile, and it is placed in the lore in a tin cartridge which romaine in until after the gun is fired, when it is removed ; a wadi of lubricating enbetance closes the front of the cartridge, and hi intended to prevent the fouling of the bore." With the 3-pounders the extraordinary range of 9688 yards (more than b I make) was obtained at 35' of elevation. The Armstrong 321ounder with the mine elevation ranged 9130 yards.
Some of the practice with the Whitworth pins was also very accurate. It also Appian; to have an advantage over the Armstrong gun in range with espial elevation, and can Ise used either as a breech loafer or as a muzzle loader, while, as explained under RIFLE, ease in loading is obtained without windage. But until careful experiments have been ctueluets1 with both under the same e.onditions, which has me bean the case hitherto, no deciths1 opinion can he given as to the relative merits. The penetration power of the flat-headed projectile sgainet iron Otte« is very great, and in fact has been more el/et:th; of nature; which theory, though recommended by the deservedly high authority of Locke, has now been abandoned by nearly all political speculators.