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or to the rights of the State. Accordingly, right is divided into two 

 parts, called respectively, after the Roman jurists, private right (jus 

 privatum) and public right (jus publicum), the former of which deals 

 with private rights, the latter with the rights of the State. 



Public right is commonly regarded as referring only to the rights of 

 the State as against its subjects, or, as they may be called, its internal 

 rights ; but according to its real sense, and the definition given of it, 

 it would seem to include also the external rights of the State, or the 

 rights of the State as against other States. But the latter constitute the 

 subject matter of International Right, or the Right or Law of Nations 

 (jus gentium), which, for many reasons, it will be better to consider as 

 an independent subject of investigation. Jurisprudence will, there- 

 fore, be regarded in our present investigation as dealing with three 

 subjects, namely, (1) Private Right; (2) Public Right, regarded as 

 denoting the internal rights of the State ; and (3) International Right, 

 or the right or law of nations. The last two constitute the peculiar 

 subject matter of the theory of the State. 



§40. Jurisprudence or Right, a Department of Morality. 



But Right itself, or Jurisprudence, is but a branch of a more exten- 

 sive science, namely. Morality or Ethics, which comprehends not only 

 the subject of duties but also that of rights or justice. The latter sub- 

 ject is indeed so broadly distinguished from the rest of Morality that 

 it may with convenience be considered independently ; but its connec- 

 tion with Morality generally must be borne in mind, if for no other 

 purpose than that of realizing the fact that the problem of rights, pri- 

 vate and public, is purely a problem of Morality, or of right and 

 wrong. For the term Right carries with it as an essential part of its 

 signification or connotation the quality of rightness, and hence, ex vi 

 termifii, all rights are moral rights, and there can no more be a right of 

 any other kind than there can be a two-sided triangle or a square circle. 

 Hence, in inquiring as to the nature and extent of the powers of the 

 State, the subject of our investigation is not the mere historical prob- 

 lem of defining the actual powers that are or have been exercised by 

 diflt'erent governments, but, in the accurate and profound language of 

 Hobbes, it is to determine "what are the rights or just power or 

 authority of a sovereign." * 



§41. Morality Distinguished from the Philosophy of Morality. 



But at this point we are confronted by an apparently formidable 

 problem, namely, the metaphysical problem as to the nature of the 

 distinction between right and wrong. This subject is one of great 

 importance and of absorbing interest to the philosophic mind ; but for- 

 tunately the solution of the problem is unnecessary to the jurist or the 



* Leviathan, Introduction. 



