Rights are claims of moral beings upon one another: when we speak of rights to certain things, they are, strictly speaking claims of persons on persons,—in the case of proper ty, for instance, the claim of excluding oth ers from possessing it. The idea of right in dicates an ethical relation, and all moral re lations may be infringed ; claims may be made and established by law which are wrong in themselves and destitute of a corol lary obligation ; they are like every other wrong done by society or government ; they prove nothing concerning the origin or essen tial character of rights. On the other hand, claims are gradually more clearly acknowl edged, and new ones, which were not perceiv ed in early periods, are for the first time perceived, and surrounded with legislative protection, as civilization advances. Thus, original rights, or the rights of man, are not meant to be claims which man has always perceived or insisted upon or protected, but those claims which, according to the person who uses the term, logically flow from the necessity of the physical and moral existence of man ; for man is born to be a man,—that is, to lead a human existence. They have been called inalienable rights; but they have been alienated, and many of them are not perceived for long periods. Lieber, in his Political Ethics, calls them primordial rights: he means rights directly flowing from the na ture of man, developed by civilization, and always showing themselves clearer and clear er as society advances. He enumerates, as such especially, the following: the right of protection ; the right of personal freedom,— .that is, the claim of unrestricted action ex cept so far as the same claim of others ne cessitates restriction: these two rights in volve the right to have justice done by the public administration of justice, the right of production and exchange (the right of prop erty), the right of free locomotion and emi gration, the right of communion in speech, letter, print, the right of worship, the right of influencing or sharing in the legislation. All political civilization steadily tends bring out these rights clearer and clearer, while in the course of this civilization, from its incipiency, with its relapses, they appear more or less developed in different periods and frequently wholly in abeyance: never theless, they have their origin in the person ality of man as a social being.
Publicists and jurists have made the fol lowing further distinction of rights:— Rights are perfect and imperfect. When the things which we have a right to possess, or the actions we have a right to do, are or may be fixed and determinate, the right is a perfect one ; but when the thing or the actions are vague and indeterminate, the right is an imperfect one. If a man demand his property which is withheld from him, UR right that supports his demand is a perfect oue, because the thing demanded is or may be fixed and determinate; but if a poor man ask relief from those from whom he has rea son to expect it, the right which supports his petition is an imperfect one, because the re lief which be expects is a vague, indetermi nate thing. Rutherforth, Inst. c. § 4;
Grotius, lib. 1. c. 1, § 4.
Rights are also absolute and quatifted. k man has an absolute right to recover prop erty which belongs to him ; an agent has a qualified right to recover such property when it has been intrusted to his care and which has been unlawfully taken out of his posses sion.
Rights might with propriety be also di vided into natural and civil rights; but as all the rights which man has received from nature have .been modified and acquired anew from the civil law, it is more proper, when considering their object, to divide them into political and civil rights.
Political rights consist in the power to par ticipate, directly or indirectly, in the estab lishment or management of government. These political rights are fixed by the con stitution. Every citizen has the right of vot ing for public officers, and of being elected ; these are the political rights which the hum blest citizen possesses.
Civil rights are those which have no relation to the establishment, support, or management of the government. These consist in the pow er of acquiring and enjoying property, of ex ercising the paternal and marital powers, and the like. It will be observed that every one, unless deprived of them by a sentence of civil death, is in the enjbyment of his civil rights, —which is not the cast with political rights ; for an alien, for example, has no political, al though in the full enjoyment of his civil, rights.
These latter rights are divided into abso lute and relative. The absolute rights of mankind may be reduced to three principal or primary articles: the right of personal se curity, which consists in a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation ; the right of personal liberty, which consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situa tion or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's inclination may direct, without any restraint unless by due course of law; the right of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminu tion save only by the laws of the land. 1 Bla. Com. 124-139.
The relative rights are public or private: the first are those which subsist between the people and the government ; as, the right of protection on the part of the people, and the right of allegiance which is due by the people to the government ; the second are the recip rocal rights of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, master and servant.
Rights are also divided into legal and equi table. The former are those where the party has the legal title to a thing ; and in that case his remedy for an infringement of it is by an action in a court of law. Although the person holding the legal title may have no actual interest, but hold only as trustee, the suit must be in his name, and not, in general, in that of the cestui que trust; 8 Term 332 ; 1 Sound. 158, n. 1; 2 Bing. 20. The latter, or equitable rights, are those which may be enforced in a court of equity by the cestui que trust.