to sound morals and to law based upon constitutional morality.

This rule of liberty is entirely compatible with a freedom of speech, and of the press, that does not run into a licentiousness of liberty, which ought never to be tolerated.

(3) It forbids idleness or the disuse of our faculties, since the proper use of them is an important factor in the well-being of the community, which protects the individual in his rights; hence, when a man is habitually idle, and without visible means of support, he is a vagrant and is properly sent to the workhouse, for "Idleness is the mother of vice."

49. RIGHTS: GENERAL VIEW.-The right is a moral idea arising from man's moral nature which distinguishes between the right and the wrong.

The lower animals, having no moral nature, have no idea of right or of wrong; but that this idea is universal with mankind is evident from the fact that all men, who for any reason have regard to the respect and good-will of men, predicate their acts-those that affect their fellow-men-on some ground of right.

A stakes out a piece of land in some new territory and claims it, on the ground of a squatter's right, the right of first occupation; but B, as the agent of a railroad corporation, claims the same land in virtue of a prior right through an alleged government grant.

Here are conflicting claims, both set up on the ground and under the idea of a right. A and B both say that they want only what is right. They would not dare to say that they want what is wrong—even

though they might be bad enough in disposition to say it, for a declaration of this sort would at once condemn them and their cause.

So, too, when one nation declares war against another, it is ostensibly on the ground of right. A government and people persuade themselves, and would persuade all men, the world over, that their rights have been violated and must be vindicated. In the American Revolution, England held that she had a right to tax America. On the other hand, America held that taxation without representation was not right: In the recent German-Samoan scrimmage, made famous by subsequent disaster, each party held that it fired on the other in selfdefence.

Thus it appears that the question, What is right? is often a question that requires, for its correct solution, an accurate knowledge of the facts involved, and a sound judgment and unprejudiced feelings in the consideration of them.

Hence the need and the function of the judiciary. These considerations and instances prove that right, as a moral idea, is implanted in the soul of man. It is the idea of adherence to what is true, just and conformable to facts. A right is something properly claimed or possessed, and is in accord with the laws of man's nature, physical, moral.

Thus any man has a right to the air he breathes, to water and fish from the river or ocean; in general, he has a right to the products of his toil.

A right is the substance of what is, or is possessed by right. Natural rights, then, are the rights a man

has in virtue of the endowments of his nature in its best estate.

Rights and duties are correlative and reciprocal. They are correlative when it is a duty to maintain a right; reciprocal, when duty results from another's right.

The right deals with the abstract; there is no question about its existence; all men are conscious of it.

A right deals with the concrete, and it is often difficult to determine what it is. Some rights called "natural rights" are intuitively seen; as a man's right, under proper limitations, to air, fire, water, life and liberty. Other rights require wisdom, judgment and experience for their proper determination. Of these are social rights, civil rights, property rights.

A right is quite different from a duty.

A right is something possessed or claimed by me; or else conceded or granted to another. A duty is nothing possessed or claimed, but is something that ought to be done.

In ethic rela

Duty, then, has the pre-eminence. tion the first inquiry is about duty-What ought I to do? The second inquiry is about rights that arise in view of duty.

Mutual obligation arises when each man is, by natural law, possessed of like rights with his neighbor.

50. PROPERTY RIGHTS: GENERAL VIEW.-We have seen that every man has a natural right to air, water, fire, the sunlight and heat, in common with

all men so far as bounteous nature affords enough of these necessary elements of existence, as she generally does.

But in some situations even water and fuel fail, and so far as this failure results from lack of foresight or from improvidence, the short-sighted and improvident have not the same rights as those who have exercised care and diligence. There were five wise maidens who put oil into their lamps, and five foolish ones, who failed to provide oil.

Besides air, water, sunlight, there are other things, the right to which must be acquired by some degree of exertion. If you would have a fish, you must catch it; a fire, you must make it, and must see to it that it does no harm, for fire, though a good servant, is a bad master; if a berry, you must pick it; a tree, you must plant it, unless you find one already planted and not claimed.

These things, and numerous others, as well as land for cultivation, become our property by acquisition and occupation, when not already occupied by the prior right of some other person.

In whatever way a man has acquired property, whether by priority of possession, by labor, by gift, by inheritance, he has a right to it. If property has been wrested from another contrary to law, moral or civil, the injured person may recover his rights by the use of such means as civil law and social institutions provide. If there are no remedial laws or institutions, then he should cheerfully abandon his rights, or else rely on his own individual power of redress in the use of means within the restrictions of

mat's moral nature; but when property has been obtained by force or by fraud, if there be no rightful polvoud dalmant, the property should revert to the state fle the public benefit.

31. ÚRIGIN OF RIGHT TO PROPERTY.-This is found in the Irvine grant given in Genesis 1: 28, 2 , 29, -And God said Replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

-And God said. "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat."

"And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it.” Genesis 2:15.)

The original title to property comes, then, from the Creator; and according to the terms of it, it consists in personals or movables, such as fish, fowl, herbs bearing seed, and fruit trees, and so much of soil as a man can dress and keep.

These are the general terms or outline of title. Particular instances of title must be determined or decided by the nature or constitution of man; and this determination or decision will be correct just in proportion as the true constitution of man is known and acted upon.

We see that the constitution of man tends to patriarchal relations and government, to tribal relations and government, to national relations and gov