action; and combining this condition with the two others of which we have spoken, we are led to this conclusion : That in order that Moral Rules may exist, there must be abstract Conceptions, including the principal objects of human desire and affection; which abstract Conceptions must be Realities, vested in particular Persons as attributes or possessions, according to Rules subordinate to the Supreme Rule of Human Action.

But Abstractions vested in particular Persons, as possessions, by Rules subordinate to the Supreme Rule, are Rights; and our conclusion may be expressed by saying, That in order that Moral Rules may exist, Men must have Rights.

We have already given examples of Rights; such as a man's Right to his Personal Safety, to his Property, to his Debts, to his Wife. Without supposing the existence of such Rights, no Moral Rules can be given.

79. What has been said in general (65 and 78), to prove the necessary existence of Moral Rules, and therefore, of Rights, among men; may be further illustrated by considering, separately, the principal Springs of Action of which we have spoken; and especially the Mental Desires; for these include the Appetites and the Affections (49). It is evident that the Desire of Personal Safety (39) 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. But a Right of Personal Safety, when actually established, holds in check the impulses which give rise to such assaults, and reduces the tempest to a calm. In this calm, man, free from extreme agitations of Fear and Anger, can act with a reference to Rules founded on other men's Rights; and can thus, and no otherwise, exercise his rational and moral nature. And in like manner, the Desire of Having requires

that there should exist a Right of Property: for without the establishment of such a Right, the possession of any objects of desire would, in like manner, give rise to Fear and Anger; and to an agitation of men's minds, in which rational and moral action could not take place. But a Right of Property once established, there may be a state of repose, in which the Reason and the Moral Sentiments can act. Again, the Need of Mutual Understanding requires that a Right of Contract should exist. If no man could depend upon the actions of other men, every man's actions must be performed in a tumult of vague conjectures, hopes and fears, like the actions of a man when surrounding objects are whirled about him by shifting winds. Each man having no certainty as to what another man would do, Society must be dissolved by the repulsion of conflicting Desires and mutual Fears. But if the Right of Contract be established, so that one man can depend upon what another has contracted to do, as something certain; the mutual Fears are removed; the objects included in the Contracts, and the intentions of the Contractors, become stable things; and man can act with reference to fixed moral Rules, as his moral nature requires. Again, the Desire of Family Society requires the establishment of Family Rights; that is, of those peculiar Rights, respecting the Members of the Family, to which the Desires point. The Husband must have an exclusive Right to the Society of the Wife, as a Wife. The Father must have Rights over his Children, which other men have not. Without these ties, which bind Families together in a manner in some respects exclusive, ungoverned bodily Desire and irregular Affection would tend to transient and capricious unions of man and woman; and these would lead to storms of angry rivalry, and the pains of deserted affection. Moreover, on this supposition, the suffering mother and the starving child have no

one to depend on the child has no one to educate him; to introduce him into Human Society; to bring him acquainted with the Rules of Action of mankind; and thus to evoke his rational and moral nature. In the bosom of the Family, when its inclosure is protected by Family Rights, the woman and the child are sustained through seasons of helplessness, the desires of Family Society are gratified, and the moral nature of man is unfolded; and thus Family Rights necessarily exist.

In the same manner, the Desire of Civil Society requires a peculiar Class of Rights, which we shall call the Rights of Government. For the actual establishment of Rights is the actual enforcement of Rules; and this requires that the office of enforcing Rules should be committed to some special body of men, as the guardians of the Rules. In order that Rights may really exist in a society, the Governors of the Society must have the Right of enforcing the Rules by which such Rights are defined. If such a Right be not vested in the Governors, other Rights, however they may be nominally acknowledged, do not really exist in the Society. If Personal Security and Property, and Contract, and Marriage be spoken of as actual realities; but if, notwithstanding this, the Right of Government to inforce the consequences of these realities be not upheld; there are, in fact, no real Rights in such a Society; and in proportion as the unreality of the Rights of Government becomes manifest, the Society loses its social character; and the moral character of man cannot find its sphere of action in such a condition.

80. There are other Rights, required by other De sires but none of so primary and universal a character as those which I have now mentioned. The Desire of Knowledge requires Rights which, under the names of the Right of Self Culture, the Right of Education, the Right of Freedom of Opinion, and the like, may come to be of importance,

in the Stages of Society in which men's habits of thought are much developed; but which may be omitted in our primary system of Rights. The Desire of Superiority, as we have said (53), requires that men, in a Society, shall have their Rights assigned by equal Rules; and thus strengthens such Rights when they exist. The Reflex Sentiments have also, in some Stages of Society, their corresponding Rights. Thus, men have a Right to their Reputation allowed them in the Laws of many Societies.

But the primary and universal Rights of men are those five which we first enumerated: the Right of Personal Security; the Right of Property; the Right of Contract; Family Rights; and the Rights of Government.

81. The opposite of Rights are Wrongs. A man's Rights may be infringed, transgressed, violated, by the actions of other men. Thus, a man infringes my Right to Personal Safety by striking me; my Right to my Property, by stealing it; my Right to a Contracted Debt, by not paying me. He who thus violates a man's Rights, does him a Wrong.

The word Injury is also especially used to designate the infraction of a Right. This is sometimes used merely to express harm; but in correct language harm is distinguished from wrong, damnum from injuria.

82. It has been said that Rights must be Realities in human Society. Rights are made Realities in human Society by its conduct as a Society. The conceptions of personal security, property, contract, marriage, and the like, are realized among men by their actions. Men, existing in the condition of a Society, regulate their conduct by these conceptions: they appropriate to each his Rights: for the most part they respect each other's Rights; and they constrain, expel, or otherwise punish, those who by their actions contradict these realities, or disturb the appropriation of them. The appropriation of Rights is established and de

clared by the Law; or by Custom, which is Law expressed in actions instead of words; and the Law also gives Rights validity or reality, by assigning Punishment to those who violate them.

83. Punishment is itself a Reality, and thus gives reality to the Rights which Laws establish. The various forms of Punishment, constraint, bodily pain, loss of possessions, exile, death, are among the most common and palpable of the real things from which the human affections and desires recoil. And by the existence of Law, supported, when necessary, by Punishment, Personal Safety, Property, Contracts, Marriage, become things no less real than the most palpable objects of bodily desire. Through the reality of such things, human Society, instead of being a mere struggle of appetites, desires, and affections, tending to and from different quarters, is a balanced system, governed by a coherent body of Rules. And all these Rules spring, not from Desire or Affection, which know nothing of Rules, or of the terms in which they are expressed; but from Reason, which, apprehending Rules, directs us to right actions, as those which are conformable to the Supreme Rules; and to Rights, as the Terms in which Subordinate Rules must be expressed.

84. From what has been said, it will be seen that the adjective right has a much wider signification than the substantive Right. Every thing is right which is conformable to the Supreme Rule of human action; but that only is a Right which, being conformable to the Supreme Rule, is realized in Society, and vested in a particular person. Hence the two words may often be properly opposed. We may say that a poor man has no Right to relief, but it is right he should have it. A rich man has a Right to destroy the harvest of his fields, but to do so would not be right.

85. To a Right, on one side, corresponds an Obliga