348 



NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS 



VIII 



will, wicked. But very little consideration will 

 show that hindrance or denial of " natural rights " 

 may not only be far from wrong, but is, in fact, a 

 necessary consequence of the existence of such 

 " natural rights." Grant that the tiger kills and 

 eats men in the exercise of his natural right to 

 preserve his own existence, and to do that for 

 which nature has expressly fitted him ; it is no less 

 true that men kill tigers in the exercise of their 

 equal natural right to preserve their existence. 

 If the tiger is entitled by the law of nature to use 

 his claws and teeth and soft-footed stealthy 

 cleverness for the purpose of his self-preservation, 

 the man may employ his hands and the weapons 

 they are so admirably adapted to fabricate and 

 wield, and use his still greater cunning, in tracking 

 and stalking tigers to the like end. 



Thus the natural rights of tigers and the 

 natural rights of men, though quite indisput- 

 able and alike safely founded on the " Law of 

 Nature," are diametrically opposed to one another. 

 It follows, therefore, that they are rights to which 

 no correlative duties correspond rights of which 

 the exercise may be impeded, or prevented, without 

 the perpetration of wrong. And that is just the 

 difference between "natural laws and rights," on 

 thr niic hand, and " moral and civil laws and 

 rights " on the other. Moral laws and civil laws 

 are commands of an authority which may be dis- 

 obeyed ; but the sanctioning authority thivaU'ns 



