Rights, in the common acceptation of the word, are of various kinds: they are natural or adventitious, alienable or unalienable, perfect or imperfect, particular or general. See the article Liberty.

Natural rights are those which a man has to his life, limbs, and liberty; to the produce of his personal labour; to the use, in common with others, of air, light, and water, &c. That every man has a natural right or just claim to these things, is evident from their being absolutely necessary to enable him to answer that purpose, whatever it may be, for which he was made a living and rational being. This shows undeniably, that the Author of his nature designed that he should have the use of them, and that the man who should wantonly deprive him of any one of them, would be guilty of a breach of the divine law, as well as act inconsistently with the fitness of things in every sense in which that phrase can possibly be understood.

Adventitious rights are those which a king has over his subjects, a general over his soldiers, a husband to the person and affections of his wife, and which every man has to the greater part of his property. That the rights of the king and the general are adventitious, is universally admitted. The rights of property have been considered elsewhere (see Property); and though the human constitution shows sufficiently that men and women have a natural right to the use of each other, yet it is evident that the exclusive right of any one man to any one woman, and vice versa, must be an adventitious right: but the important question is, How are adventitious rights acquired?

In answer to this question, the moralist who deduces the laws of virtue from the will of God, observes, that as God appears from his works to be a benevolent Being, who wills the happiness of all his creatures (see Metaphysics, No. 312), he must of course will every thing which naturally tends to promote that happiness. But the existence of civil society evidently contributes in a great degree to promote the sum of human happiness (see Society); and therefore whatever is necessary for the support of civil society in general, or for the conduct of particular societies already established, must be agreeable to the will of God: But the allegiance of subjects to their sovereign, the obedience of soldiers to their leader, the protection of private property, and the fulfilling of contracts, are all absolutely necessary to the support of society: and hence the rights of kings, generals, husbands, and wives, &c., though adventitious, and immediately derived from human appointments, are not less sacred than natural rights, since they may all be ultimately traced to the same source. The same conclusion may easily be drawn by the philosopher, who rests moral obligation on the fitness of things or on a moral sense; only it must in each of these cases partake of the instability of its foundation.

To the sacredness of the rights of marriage, an author already quoted has lately urged some declamatory objections. "It is absurd (says he) to expect, that the inclinations and wishes of two human beings should coincide through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and to live together, is to subject them to some inevitable portion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness. This cannot be otherwise, so long as man has failed to reach the standard of absolute perfection. The supposition that I must have a companion for life, is the result of a complication of vices. It is the dictate of cowardice, and not of fortitude. It flows from the desire of being loved and esteemed for some- thing that is not desert.

"But the evil of marriage, as it is practised in Eu- ropean countries, lies deeper than this. The habit is, for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex to come together, to see each other for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion, and then to vow to each other eternal attachment. What is the conse- quence of this? In almost every instance they find them- selves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are presented with the strongest imaginable temptation to become the dupes of falsehood. They are led to conceive it their wisest policy to shut their eyes upon realities; happy if by any perversion of intellect they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of their companion.

"So long as two human beings are forbidden by positive institution to follow the dictates of their own mind, prejudice is alive and vigorous. So long as I seek to engross one woman to myself, and to prohibit my neighbour from proving his superior desert and reaping the fruits of it, I am guilty of the most odious of all monopolies. Over this imaginary prize men watch with perpetual jealousy; and one man will find his de- sires and his capacity to circumvent as much excited, as the other is excited to traverse his projects and frustrate his hopes. As long as this state of society continues, philanthropy will be crossed and checked in a thousand ways, and the still augmenting stream of abuse will continue to flow.

"The abolition of marriage will be attended with no evils. The intercourse of the sexes will fall under the same system as any other species of friendship. Ex- clusively of all groundless and obstinate attachments, it will be impossible for me to live in the world without finding one man of a worth superior to that of any other whom I have an opportunity of observing. To this man I shall feel a kindness in exact proportion to my apprehension of his worth. The case will be pre- cisely the same with respect to the female sex; I shall assiduously cultivate the intercourse of that woman whose accomplishments shall strike me in the most powerful manner. But it may happen that other men will feel for her the same preference that I do. This will create no difficulty. We may all enjoy her conversa- tion; and we shall all be wise enough to consider the sensual intercourse as a very trivial object. This, like every other affair in which two persons are concerned, must be regulated in each successive instance by the un- forced consent of either party. It is a mark of the ex- treme depravity of our present habits, that we are in- clined to suppose the sensual intercourse anywise mate- rial to the advantages arising from the purest affection. Reasonable men now eat and drink, not from the love of pleasure, but because eating and drinking are essen- tial to our healthful existence. Reasonable men then will propagate their species, not because a certain sensi- ble pleasure is annexed to this action, but because it is right the species should be propagated; and the man- ner in which they exercise this function will be regulat- ed by the dictates of reason and duty."

It is right then, according to this political innovator, mutual; and though less endearing than assiduities which take their rise from affection, generally procure to the married pair a repose and satisfaction sufficient for their happiness."

So differently from our author does this judicious writer reason concerning the effects of a permanent union on the tempers of the married pair. Instead of subjecting them to some inevitable portion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness, it lays them, in his opinion, under the necessity of curbing their unruly passions, and acquiring habits of gentleness, forbearance, and peace. To this we may add, that both believing the children propagated during their marriage to be their own, (a belief unattainable by the father in a state of promiscuous concubinage), they come by a natural process of the human passions (see Passion) to love each other through the medium of their offspring. But if it be the duty of man to acquire a spirit first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, it must be agreeable to the will of God, and a branch of the fitness of things, that the sexual union last during the joint lives of the parties; and therefore the exclusive right of marriage, though adventitious, must be equally sacred with those which are natural.

But to return from this digression, into which the importance of the subject led us, rights, besides being natural or adventitious, are likewise alienable or unalienable. Every man, when he becomes the member of a civil community, alienates a part of his natural rights. In a state of nature, no man has a superior on earth, and each has a right to defend his life, liberty, and property by all the means which nature has put in his power. In civil society, however, these rights are all transferred to the laws and the magistrate, except in cases of such extreme urgency as leave not time for legal interposition. This single consideration is sufficient to show, that the right to civil liberty is alienable; though, in the vehemence of men's zeal for it, and in the language of some political remonstrances, it has often been pronounced to be an unalienable right. "The true reason (says Mr Paley) why mankind hold in detestation the memory of those who have sold their liberty to a tyrant is, that, together with their own, they sold commonly or endangered the liberty of others; of which they had certainly no right to dispose." The rights of a prince over his people, and of a husband over his wife, are generally and naturally unalienable.

Another division of rights is into those which are perfect and those which are imperfect. Perfect rights are such as may be precisely ascertained and asserted by force or in civil society by the course of law. To imperfect rights neither force nor law is applicable. A man's rights to his life, person, and property, are all perfect: for if any of these be attacked, he may repel the attack by instant violence, punish the aggressor by the course of law, or compel the author of the injury to make restitution or satisfaction. A woman's right to her honour is likewise perfect: for if she cannot otherwise escape, she may kill the ravisher. Every poor man has undoubted right to relief from the rich: but his right is imperfect, for if the relief be not voluntarily given, he cannot compel it either by law or by violence. There is no duty upon which the Christian religion puts a greater value than alms-giving; and every preacher of the gospel has an undoubted right to inculcate the practice of it upon his audience: but even this right is imperfect, for he cannot refuse the communion to a man merely on account of his illiberality to the poor, as he can to another for the neglect of any duty comprehended under the term justice. In elections or appointments to offices, where the qualifications are prescribed, the best qualified candidate has unquestionably a right to succeed; yet if he be rejected, he can neither seize the office by force, nor obtain redress at law. His right, therefore, is imperfect.

Here a question naturally offers itself to our consideration: "How comes a person to have a right to a thing, and yet have no right to use the means necessary to obtain it?" The answer is, That in such cases the object or the circumstances of the right are so indeterminate, that the permission of force, even where the right is real and certain, would lead to force in other cases where there exists no right at all. Thus, though the poor man has a right to relief, who shall ascertain the mode, season, and quantum of it, or the person by whom it shall be administered? These things must be ascertained before the right to relief can be enforced by law; but to allow them to be ascertained by the poor themselves, would be to expose property to endless claims. In like manner, the comparative qualifications of the candidate must be ascertained, before he can enforce his right to the office: but to allow him to ascertain his qualifications himself, would be to make him judge in his own cause between himself and his neighbour.

Wherever the right is imperfect on one side, the corresponding obligation on the other must be imperfect likewise. The violation of it, however, is often not less criminal in a moral and religious view than of a perfect obligation. It is well observed by Mr Paley, that greater guilt is incurred by disappointing a worthy candidate of a place upon which perhaps his livelihood depends, and in which he could eminently serve the public, than by filleting a book out of a library, or picking a pocket of a handkerchief. The same sentiment has been expressed by Mr Godwin, but in terms by much too strong, and such as show that he was not at the time complete master of his subject. "My neighbour (says he) has just as much right to put an end to my existence with dagger or poison, as to deny me that pecuniary assistance without which I must starve, or as to deny me that assistance without which my intellectual attainments, or my moral exertions, will be materially injured. He has just as much right to amuse himself with burning my house, or torturing my children upon the rack, as to shut himself up in a cell, careless about his fellow men, and to hide his talent in a napkin."

It is certainly true, that the man who should suffer another to starve for want of that relief which he knew that he alone could afford him, would be guilty of murder, and murder of the cruellest kind; but there is an immense difference between depriving society of one of its members, and withholding from that member what might be necessary to enable him to make the greatest possible intellectual attainments. Newton might have been useful and happy though he had never been acquainted with the elements of mathematics; and the late celebrated Mr Fergusson might have been a valuable member of society, though he had never emerged from his original condition of a shepherd. The remainder of the paragraph is too absurd to require a formal confutation. Had our author, burying his talent in a napkin, shut himself up seven years ago in a cell, careless about his fellow men and political justice, he would have deprived the public of what he doubtless believes to be much useful instruction; but had he at that period amused himself with burning his neighbour's house, and torturing on the rack two or three children, he would have cut off, for any thing he could know, two or three future Newtons, and have himself been cut off by the insulted laws of his country. Now, without supposing the value of ten Newtons to be equal to that of one Godwin, we are warranted to say, that however great his merits may be, they are not infinite, and that the addition of those of one Newton to them would undoubtedly increase their sum.

Rights are particular or general. Particular rights are such as belong to certain individuals or orders of men, and not to others. The rights of kings, of masters, of husbands, of wives, and, in short, all the rights which originate in society, are particular. General rights are those which belong to the species collectively. Such are our rights to the vegetable produce of the earth, and to the flesh of animals for food, though about the origin of this latter right there has been much diversity of opinion, which we have noticed in another place. (See Theology, part 1. sect. 2d.) If the vegetable produce of the earth be included under the general rights of mankind, it is plain that he is guilty of wrong who leaves any considerable portion of land waste merely for his own amusement: he is lessening the common stock of provision which Providence intended to distribute among the species. On this principle it would not be easy to vindicate certain regulations respecting game, as well as some other monopolies which are protected by the municipal laws of most countries. Mr Paley, by just reasoning, has established this conclusion, "that nothing ought to be made exclusive property which can be conveniently enjoyed in common." An equal division of land, however, the dream of some visionary reformers, would be injurious to the general rights of mankind, as it may be demonstrated, that it would lessen the common stock of provisions, by laying every man under the necessity of being his own weaver, tailor, shoemaker, smith, and carpenter, as well as ploughman, miller and baker. Among the general rights of mankind is the right of necessity; by which a man may use or destroy his neighbour's property when it is absolutely necessary for his own preservation. It is on this principle that goods are thrown overboard to save the ship, and houses pulled down to stop the progress of a fire. In such cases, however, at least in the last, restitution ought to be made when it is in our power; but this restitution will not extend to the original value of the property destroyed, but only to what it was worth at the time of destroying it, which, considering its danger, may be very little.