s own person and property would still
be as much one's own as before, and whoever outraged either would not be
the less a wrong doer because society permitted his wrong doing to
remain unpunished. In all ethical investigations it is impossible to
guard too watchfully against the smallest approach to confusion of might
with right.

Instead of being valueless, the particular rights of which Mr. Mill
speaks so disparagingly, appear to me to possess a value which can
scarcely be exaggerated. They are, as may be readily perceived,
identical with the two which I have termed 'natural,' and of which I
began by saying that they are exceedingly elementary, but of which I
have now to add that they are also all-comprehensive, for that there are
no genuine rights whatever, however numerous or complex, which neither
are included within, nor branch out from, them. This will be manifest on
comparison of them with the items enumerated in any other catalogue of
rights; as, for instance, with the one drawn up by Mr. Mill, according
to whom all rights may be classified as follows:--(1) Legal rights; (2)
moral rights; (3) the right of every one to that which he deserves; (4)
the right to fulfilment of engagements; (5) right to impartiality of
treatment; (6) right to equality of treatment.[9] Each of these
varieties will repay a brief examination.

Under the head of 'legal' rights are commonly placed, not those only
which are conferred, but those also which are confirmed, by law. Such as
law has merely confirmed, however, are of course not the creatures of
law. But it is admitted on all hands that a law may be unjust--that is
to say, it may without consent from the parties concerned, infringe some
previously existing right--and as the right so violated cannot have been
created by law, inasmuch as what law had been competent to create, law
would be equally competent to cancel--it is clear that there must be
rights other than those created by law, rights whose origin was
independent of, and anterior to, law. It is apparently to rights of this
description that Mr. Mill applies the name of 'moral' rights. Examples
of them are a man's rights to personal liberty and to property in
whatever belongs to him as having become his by honest means, to both of
which, unless he had forfeited them by misconduct, he would be equally
entitled, whether his title to them were or were not recognised by law.
The only genuine rights which law can create, or conse