454 FALLACIES 



hinder you from doing it. But, in another sense, to 

 have a right to do a thing, is the opposite of having 

 no right to do it, viz., of being under a moral obliga- 

 tion to forbear from doing it. In this sense, to say 

 that you have a right to do a thing, means that you 

 may do it without any breach of duty on your part; 

 that other persons not only ought not to hinder you, 

 but have no cause to think the worse of you for doing 

 it. This is a perfectly distinct proposition from the 

 preceding. The right which you have by virtue of a 

 duty incumbent upon other persons, is obviously 

 quite a different thing from a right consisting in the 

 absence of any duty incumbent upon yourself. Yet 

 the two things are perpetually confounded. Thus a 

 man will say he has a right to publish his opinions ; 

 which may be true in this sense, that it would be a 

 breach of duty in any other person to interfere and 

 prevent the publication: but he assumes thereupon, 

 that in publishing his opinions, he himself violates no 

 duty; which may either be true or false, depending, 

 as it does, upon his having taken due pains to satisfy 

 himself, first, that the opinions are true, and next, that 

 their publication in this manner, and at this particular 

 juncture, will probably be beneficial to the interests of 

 truth on the whole. 



"The second ambiguity is that of confounding a 

 right of any kind, with a right to enforce that right 

 by resisting or punishing a violation of it. Men will 

 say, for example, that they have a right to a good 

 government, which is undeniably true, it being the 

 moral duty of their governors to govern them well. 

 But in granting this, you are supposed to have 

 admitted their right or liberty to turn out their 

 governors, and perhaps to punish them, for having 

 failed in the performance of this duty; which, far 



