RIGHT. A well-founded, claim.
2. If people believe that humanity itself establishes or proves certain claims, either upon fellow-beings, or upon society or government, they call these claims human rights ; if they believe that these claims inhere in the very nature of man himself, they call them inherent, inalienable rights; if people believe that there inheres in monarchs a claim to rule over their subjects by divine appoint ment, they call the claim divine right, jay ofivinqnt; if the claim id founded or given by law, it is a legal right. The ideas of claim and that the claim must be well founded always 'constitute the idea of right. Rights can only inhere in and exist between moral beings; and no moral beings can coexist without rights, consequently without obli gations. Right and obligation are correlative ideas. The idea of a claim,becomes in law a claim founded in or established by the law: so that we may say a right in law is an acknowledged claim.
Men are by their inherent nature moral and social beings : they have, therefore, mutual claims upon one another. Every well-grounded claim en others is, called a right, and, since the social cha racter of man gives the element of mutuality to each claim, every, right conveys along with it the idea of obligatiOn. Right and obligation are cor relatives. The consciousness of all eonstitutes the first foundation of the right ,or makes the plaim ,well grounded. Its incipiency arises, instinctively out of the nature of man. ,Man feels that he has a right of ownership over that which he has prOduced out of appropriated matter,—for instance, the bow he has made of appropriated wood ; he feels that he has a right to exact obedience from his children, long before lows formally acknowledge or protect these rights; but he feels too, that if he claims the bow which he made as own, he ought to acknowledge. (as correlative obligation) the same right in another man to the bow which he may have made ; or if he as father, has, a right to the obedience of his chifdren, they have a corre sponding claim on him for protection as long as they are incapable to protect themselves. The idea of rights is.coexistent with that of authority (or government); both are ioherent in man ; bnt if we understand by government a coherent system of laws by which a state is ruled, and if we under stand by state a sovereign society, with distinct authorities to make and execute laws, then rights precede government, or the establishment of states, which le expressed. in the ancient law maxim : Ne
ex regula jus sumatur, (Jed ex jure quod est, regula fiat. See GOVEUNMENT. We cannot refrain from 'referring the reader to the noble passage of Sopho cles, CEdyp. Tyr.. 876 et seq., and to the words of Cicero, in his oration for Milo : Est enim htee, judiees, non scripts, aed nata lex ; quam nen di dicimus, aeccpimus, legimus ; verum ex nature ipsa arripuimus, heusimus, expreasimns; ad quam non doeti sed facti ; non institnti Red imbuti EIUMUS.
3. As rights precede,government, so we find that new rights are acknoxvledged above governments and, their states, in the case of iuternatienal law. International law is founded on righte,, that is, well-grounded claims which civilized states, as indi viduals, make upon one another. As governments 'come to be mote and more clearly established, rights are more clearly acknowledged and pro tected by the laws, and right comes to mean a claim auknowledged and protected by the law. A legal,right, a conatitntional right, means a rigbt protected by the law, by the eonatitution ; but government does not create the idea of right or ori ginal.rights; it acknowledges them; just as govern ment doea not create property or values and money, it ackoowledges and regulates them. If it were otherwise, the question would present itself, whence does government come ? whence does it derive its own right to create rights? By compact? But whence did the contracting parties derive their right to create a government that is to make rights ? We would ba consistently led.to adopt the idea of a government jue divinuen,—thet is, a government deriving its authority to introduce and establish rights (bestowed on it in particular) from a source wholly separate from human society and the ethical character of man, in the aame manner in which we acknowledge revelation to come from a source net human.