340 



NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 



VIII 



are fit for his enjoyment." Truly a vague enough 

 definition, and one that would need a great deal 

 more defining before it could be safely turned to 

 any practical account. Quesnay's friend and 

 collaborateur, Dupont de Nemours, in the intro- 

 ductory discourse prefixed to the collection entitled 

 " Physiocratie : ou constitution naturelle du 

 gouvernement le plus avantageux au genre 

 humain," published in 1768, has somewhat im- 

 proved upon it. " Natural Right," he says, is " the 

 right a man has to do that which is to his 

 advantage." He considers that this right is 

 founded upon the condition that we are " charged 

 with our own preservation under penalty of 

 suffering and death." And he adds : " The final 

 degree of punishment decreed by this sovereign 

 law is superior to every other interest and to every 

 arbitrary law." " Natural Right," then, is the 

 right of a man to do anything necessary for his 

 own preservation, and to possess himself of any 

 means of enjoyment. It is possessed to its full 

 and literal extent by any and every wholly 

 isolated man. " Natural Right," by this account 

 of it, must vest in the individual before he has 

 entered into the social state, and must be ante- 

 cedent to all forms of relative justice and injustice. 

 But the contemporaneous and contiguous existence 

 of many such individuals, all of whom assert their 

 natural rights, must also necessarily end in the 

 Hobbesian state of war of eurh against all, unless 



