hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demand
for punishment on the other. An examination of our own minds, I think,
will show, that these two things include all that we mean when we speak
of violation of a right. When we call anything a person's right, we mean
that he has a valid claim on society to protect him in the possession
of it, either by the force of law, or by that of education and opinion.
If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on whatever account, to
have something guaranteed to him by society, we say that he has a right
to it. If we desire to prove that anything does not belong to him by
right, we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society ought
not to take measures for securing it to him, but should leave it to
chance, or to his own exertions. Thus, a person is said to have a right
to what he can earn in fair professional competition; because society
ought not to allow any other person to hinder him from endeavouring to
earn in that manner as much as he can. But he has not a right to three
hundred a-year, though he may happen to be earning it; because society
is not called on to provide that he shall earn that sum. On the
contrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds three per cent. stock, he _has_
a right to three hundred a-year; because society has come under an
obligation to provide him with an income of that amount.

To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society
ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask
why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility. If
that expression does not seem to convey a sufficient feeling of the
strength of the obligation, nor to account for the peculiar energy of
the feeling, it is because there goes to the composition of the
sentiment, not a rational only but also an animal element, the thirst
for retaliation; and this thirst derives its intensity, as well as its
moral justification, from the extraordinarily important and impressive