term of art in law, and signifies all that a man may lawfully do, all that he may lawfully possess and use, and all that he may lawfully claim of any other person. This comprehensive meaning of the word right, and of the Latin word jus, which corresponds to it, though long adopted into common language, is too artificial to be the birth of common language. It is a term of art, contrived by Civilians when the civil law became a profession.

The whole end and object of law is to protect the subjects in all that they may lawfully do, or possess, or demand. This threefold object of law, Civilians have comprehended under the word jus, or right, which they define, Facultas aliquid agendi, vel possidendi, vel ab alio consequendi: A lawful claim to do any thing, to possess any thing, or to demand some prestation from some other person. The first of these may be called the right of liberty, the second that of property, which is also called a real right, the third is called personal right, because it respects some particular person or persons of whom the prestation may be demanded.

We can be at no loss to perceive the duties corresponding to the several kinds of rights.

What I have a right to do, it is the duty of all men

not to hinder me from doing. What is my property or real right, no man ought to take from me; or to molest me in the use and enjoyment of it. And what I have a right to demand of any man, it is his duty to perform. Between the right, on the one hand, and the duty on the other, there is not only a necessary connection, but, in reality, they are only different expressions of the same meaning; just as it is the same thing to say, I am your debtor, and to say, you are my creditor; or, as it is the same thing to say, I am your father, and to say, you are my son.

Thus we see, that there is such a correspondence between the rights of men and the duties of men, that the one points out the other; and a system of the one may be substituted for a system of the other.

But here an objection occurs. It may be said, that although every right implies a duty, yet every duty does not imply a right. Thus, it may be my duty to do a bumane or kind office to a man who has no claim of right to it; and therefore a system of the rights of men, though it teach all the duties of strict justice, yet it leaves out all the duties of charity and humanity, without which the system of morals must be very lame.

In answer to this objection, it may be observed, that, as there is a strict notion of justice, in which it is distinguished from humanity and charity, so there is a more extensive signification of it, in which it includes those virtues. The ancient moralists, both Greek and Roman, under the cardinal virtue of justice, included beneficence; and, in this extensive sense, it is often used in common language. The like may be said of right, which, in a sense not uncommon, is extended to every proper claim of humanity and charity, as well as to the claims of strict justice. But, as it is proper to distinguish these two kinds of claims by different names, writers in natural jurisprudence have given the name of perfect rights to the claims of strict justice, and that of imperfect rights to the claims of charity and humanity. Thus, all the duties of humanity have imperfect rights corresponding to them, as those of strict justice have perfect rights.

Another objection may be, that there is still a class of duties to which no right, perfect or imperfect, corresponds.

We are bound in duty to pay due respect, not only to what is truly the right of another, but to what,

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through ignorance or mistake, we believe to be his right. Thus, if my neighbour is possessed of a horse which he stole, and to which he has no right; while I believe the horse to be really his, and am ignorant of the theft, it is my duty to pay the same respect to this conceived right as if it were real. Here, then, is a moral obligation on one party, without any corresponding right on the other.

To supply this defect in the system of rights, so as to make right and duty correspond in every instance, writers in jurisprudence have had recourse to something like what is called a fiction of law. They give the name of right to the claim which even the thief has to the goods he has stolen, while the theft is unknown, and to all similar claims grounded on the ignorance or mistake of the parties concerned. And to distinguish this kind of right from genuine rights, perfect or imperfect, they call it an external right.

Thus it appears, that although a system of the perfect rights of men, or the rights of strict justice, would be a lame substitute for a system of human duty; yet when we add to it the imperfect and the external rights, it comprehends the whole duty we owe to our fellow men.

But it may be asked, why should men be taught their duty in this indirect way, by reflection, as it were, from the rights of other men?

Perhaps it may be thought, that this indirect way may be more agreeable to the pride of man, as we see that men of rank like better to hear of obligations of honour than of obligations of duty, although the dictates of true honour and of duty be the same; for this reason, that honour puts a man in mind of what he owes to himself, whereas duty is a more humiliating idea. For a like reason, men may attend more willingly to their rights, which put them in mind of their dignity,

than to their duties, which suggest their dependence. And we see that men may give great attention to their rights who give but little to their duty.

Whatever truth there may be in this, I believe better reasons can be given why systems of natural jurisprudence have been contrived and put in the place of systems of morals.

Systems of civil law were invented many ages before we had any system of natural jurisprudence; and the former seem to have suggested the idea of the latter.

Such is the weakness of human understanding, that no large body of knowledge can be easily apprehended and remembered, unless it be arranged and methodised, that is, reduced into a system. When the laws of the Roman people were multiplied to a great degree, and the study of them became an honorable and lucrative profession, it became necessary that they should be methodised into a system. And the most natural and obvious way of methodising law was found to be according to the divisions and subdivisions of men's rights, which it is the intention of law to protect.

The study of law produced not only systems of law, but a language proper for expressing them. Every art has its terms of art, for expressing the conceptions that belong to it; and the Civilian must have terms for expressing accurately the divisions and subdivisions of rights and the various ways whereby they may be acquired, transferred, or extinguished, in the various transactions of civil society. He must have terms accurately defined, for the various crimes by which men's rights are violated, not to speak of the terms which express the different forms of actions at law, and the various steps of the procedure of judicatories.

Those who have been bred to any profession, are very prone to use the terms of their profession in

speaking or writing on subjects that have any analogy to it. And they may do so with advantage, as terms of art are commonly more precise in their signification, and better defined, than the words of common language. To such persons it is also very natural to model and arrange other subjects, as far as their nature admits, into a method similar to that of the system which fills their minds.

It might, therefore, be expected, that a Civilian, intending to give a detailed system of morals, would use many of the terms of civil law, and mould it, as far as it can be done, into the form of a system of law, or of the rights of mankind.

The necessary and close relation of right to duty, which we before observed, justified this: and moral duty had long been considered as a law of nature; a law, not wrote on tables of stone or brass, but on the heart of man; a law of greater antiquity and higher authority than the laws of particular states; a law which is binding upon all men of all nations, and therefore is called by Cicero the law of nature, and of nations.

The idea of a system of this law was worthy of the genius of the immortal Hugo Grotius, and he was the first who executed it in such a manner, as to draw the attention of the learned in all the European nations; and to give occasion to several princes and states to establish public professions for the teaching of this law.

The multitude of commentators and annotators upon this work of Grotius, and the public establishments to which it gave occasion, are sufficient vouchers of its merit.

It is, indeed, a work so well designed, and so skilfully executed; so free from the scholastic jargon which infected the learned at that time, so much addressed to the common sense and moral judgment of mankind,