Vlii NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 343 



horrible stories, but because the tale led me, and 

 therefore may easily lead my readers, into a train 

 of fruitful reflections upon this very question of 

 " Natural Rights." 



A tigress carried off an unfortunate Indian 

 villager as a cat may carry off a mouse without 

 doing the man any mortal injury. Tracked to her 

 lair in the jungle, the brute was seen to set down 

 the half-disabled captive before her cubs, who 

 commenced mumbling and mauling him to the 

 best of their infantine ability, while the tender 

 mother complacently watched their clumsy efforts 

 to deal with the big game she had brought home. 

 But, if the man, driven desperate, succeeded for a 

 moment in beating off his small tormentors and 

 crawling away a few yards, a judiciously adminis- 

 tered grip with the thoughtful parent's strong 

 jaws, or a cuff from her heavy and sharp-clawed 

 paw, at once reduced the victim to a state 

 in which the cubs could safely resume their 

 worrying and scratching. 



I suppose that no one in whose imagination 

 these words suffice to body forth a vision of the 

 thing will fail to be horrified at the apparently 

 wanton infliction of such grievous mental and 

 bodily torture upon a harmless peasant ; nor think, 

 without satisfaction, of the justice done by the 

 rifle-shots that eventually laid the tigress and her 

 ferocious progeny low. The assertion that the 

 tigress had a " natural right " to do what she did. 



