in geometry, signifies the same with straight; thus, a straight line is called a right one.

Right is a title conferred, 1. Together with Reverend, upon all bishops. 2. Together with Honourable, upon earls, viscounts, and barons. 3. By courtesy, together with Honourable, upon the sons of dukes, marquises, Right is a word which, in the propriety of the English language, is used sometimes as an adjective and sometimes as a substantive. As an adjective it is nearly of the same import with fit, suitable, becoming, proper; and whilst it expresses a quality, it indicates a relation*. Thus, when we say that an action is right, we must not only know the nature of the action, but, if we speak intelligibly, must also perceive its relation to the end for which it was performed; for an action may be right with one end in view which would be wrong with another. The conduct of that general would be right, who, to save an army that could not be otherwise saved, should place a small detachment in a station where he knew they would all be inevitably cut off; but his conduct would be very wrong were he to throw away the life of a single individual for any purpose, however important, which he knew how to accomplish without such a sacrifice.

Many philosophers have talked of actions being right and wrong in the abstract without regard to their natural consequences; and converting the word into a substantive, they have fancied an eternal rule of right, by which the morality of human conduct is in every particular case to be tried. But in these phrases we can discover no meaning. Whatever is right must be so on some account or other; and whatever is fit, must be fit for some purpose. When he who rests the foundation of virtue on the moral sense, speaks of an action being right, he must mean that it is such as, through the medium of that sense, will excite complacency in the mind of the agent, and gain to him the general approbation of mankind. When he who rests moral obligation on the will of God, speaks of some actions as right and of others as wrong, he must mean that the former are agreeable to the divine will, however made known to men, and the latter disagreeable to it; and the man who deduces the laws of virtue from what he calls the fitness of things, must have some end in view, for which things are fit, and denominate actions right or wrong as they tend to promote or counteract that end.

But the word right, used as a substantive, has in common as well as in philosophical language a signification which at first view appears to be very different from this. It denotes a just claim or an honest possession. Thus we say, a father has a right to reverence from his children, a husband to the love and fidelity of his wife, and a king to the allegiance of his subjects. But if we trace these rights to their source, we shall find that they are all laws of moral obligation, and that they are called rights only because it is agreeable to the will of God, to the instinctive dictates of the moral sense, or to the fitness of things, if such a phrase has any meaning, that children reverence their parents, that wives love their husbands, and that subjects pay allegiance to their sovereign. This will be apparent to any man who shall put himself such questions as these: "Why have parents a right to reverence from their children, husbands to the love of their wives, and sovereigns to the allegiance of their subjects?" As these questions contain in them nothing absurd, it is obvious that they are each capable of a precise answer; but it is impossible to give to any of them an answer which shall have any meaning, and not imply that right and obligation are reciprocal, or, in other words, that wherever there is a right in one person, there is a corresponding obligation upon others. Thus to the question, "Why have parents a right to reverence from their children?" it may be answered, "because, under God, they were the authors of their children being, and protected them from danger, and furnished them with necessaries, when they were in a state so helpless that they could do nothing for themselves." This answer conveys no other meaning than that there is an obligation upon children, in return for benefits received, to reverence their parents. But what is the source of this obligation? It can only be the will of God, the moral sense, or the fitness of things.

This view of the nature of right will enable us to form a proper judgment of the assertion of a late writer, "that man has no rights." The arguments by which this apparent paradox is maintained, are not merely ingenious and plausible; they are absolutely conclusive. But then our philosopher, who never chooses to travel in the beaten track, takes the word right in a sense very different from that in which it has been used by all other men, and considers it as equivalent to discretionary power. "By the word right (says he) is understood a right of full and complete power of either doing a thing or not doing it, without the person becoming liable to condemnation or censure from another; that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt." In this sense of the word he affirms, and affirms truly, that a man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever, except in things of such total indifference as, whether "he shall sit on the right or on the left side of his fire, or dine on beef to day or to-morrow."

A proposition so evidently true as this stood not in need of argument to support it; but as his arguments are clearly expressed, and afford a complete confutation of some popular errors sanctioned by the respectable phrase rights of man, we shall give our readers an opportunity of studying them in his own words.

"Political society is founded on the principles of morality and justice. It is impossible for intellectual beings to be brought into coalition and intercourse without a certain mode of conduct, adapted to their nature and connection, immediately becoming a duty incumbent on the parties concerned. Men would never have associated if they had not imagined that, in consequence of that association, they would mutually conduce to the advantage and happiness of each other. This is the real purpose, the genuine basis, of their intercourse; and, as far as this purpose is answered, so far does society answer the end of its institution. There is only one postulate more that is necessary to bring us to a conclusive mode of reasoning upon this subject. Whatever is meant by the term right, there can neither be opposite rights, nor rights and duties hostile to each other. The rights of one man cannot clash with or be destructive of the rights of another: for this, instead of rendering the subject an important branch of truth and morality as the advocates of the rights of man certainly ly understand it to be, would be to reduce it to a heap of unintelligible jargon and inconsistancy. If one man have a right to be free, another man cannot have a right to make him a slave; if one man have a right to inflict chastisement upon me, I cannot have a right to withdraw myself from chastisement; if my neighbour have a right to a sum of money in my possession, I cannot have a right to retain it in my pocket. It cannot be less incontrovertible, that I have no right to omit what my duty prescribes. From hence it inevitably follows that men have no rights.

"It is commonly said, 'that a man has a right to the disposal of his fortune, a right to the employment of his time, a right to the uncontrolled choice of his profession or pursuits.' But this can never be consistently affirmed till it can be shown that he has no duties, prescribing and limiting his mode of proceeding in all these respects.

"In reality, nothing can appear more wonderful to a careful inquirer, than that two ideas so incompatible as man and right should ever have been associated together. Certain it is, that one of them must be utterly exclusive and annihilatory of the other. Before we ascribe rights to man, we must conceive of him as a being endowed with intellect, and capable of discerning the differences and tendencies of things. But a being endowed with intellect, and capable of discerning the differences and tendencies of things, instantly becomes a moral being, and has duties incumbent on him to discharge: and duties and rights, as has already been shown, are absolutely exclusive of each other.

"It has been affirmed by the zealous advocates of liberty, 'that princes and magistrates have no rights;' and no position can be more incontrovertible. There is no situation of their lives that has not its correspondent duties. There is no power intrusted to them that they are not bound to exercise exclusively for the public good. It is strange, that persons adopting this principle did not go a step farther, and perceive that the same restrictions were applicable to subjects and citizens."

This reasoning is unanswerable; but it militates not against the rights of man in the usual acceptation of the words, which are never employed to denote discretion-ary power, but a just claim on the one hand, implying a corresponding obligation on the other. Whether the phrase be absolutely proper is not worth the debating: it is authorised by custom—the jus et norma loquendi—and is universally understood except by such as the demons of faction, in the form of paradoxical writers on political justice, have been able to mislead by sophistical reasonings.