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ho is allowed to live. But such cases are exceptional, and (as 

 is often the case) they prove the rule, because society must 

 punish outrages which tend to its own destruction, and it is 

 on the existence of society that the rights just mentioned are 

 founded. I am not forgetting, here, that Christians have a 

 still better foundation than society for the acknowledgment of 

 these rights, but it must be kept in mind that from the nature 

 of the case I am compelled to take ground which unbelievers 

 must, or ought to, acknowledge; and as these only acknow- 

 ledge what is natural, and man is naturally sociable, they must 

 hold that rights founded on society are natural. 



Now, the very idea of a man's having a right to anything, 

 involves moral distinctions. For, if A has a right, B does 

 wrong if he endeavours to deprive him of it. To do so would 

 be to do him an injury >an injustice.* It is something more 

 than merely inflicting pain upon him, which is cruelty. The 

 idea of its being an offence against right is also included. On 

 this account I look upon moral distinctions as having a 

 foundation in nature in human nature at any rate. And it 

 is because we have no right to injui-e our neighbour that the 

 precepts of the Decalogue those of them, at least, which 

 inculcate our duty to our neighbour were given. The object 

 of those precepts was to enforce morality, not to supersede it; 

 and therefore it is that I look upon Mr. Mallock as going 

 much too far in his laudable zeal for religion when he says 

 that without it there would cease to be any distinction between 

 virtue and vice, as such. I so far concur with him, however, 

 as to believe that men would have much less regard to moral 

 distinctions even than they have now, little as, alas ! they 

 now regard them ; and, therefore, that with the extinction of 

 religion, morality would receive a most severe blow, and 

 perhaps be in danger of perishing altogether. 



I have mentioned natural rights, such as the right to the 

 possession of life and limb. There are, however, other rights, 

 founded on the rules and customs of society, which may be 

 different in different countries, and which may be looked upon 

 as natural in a secondary sense, because society itself has its 

 foundation in nature in human nature especially, but we see 

 the germs of it in the lower animals also. .In civilised society 

 these rules and customs include the laws of the country, and 

 as life and limb are possessions to which nature itself gives 

 every one a right, there are other possessions, external to the 

 individual, the right to which is given by the law of the land. 



* From Latin in, signifying not, and jvs, right. 



