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‘Natural rights’... a true way of putting things—and certainly not the most useful and fertile way. Nature simply the mastery of the strongest . Two savage tribes contend for a tract of land of wh. they are in need for their subsistence: nature gave the right to this land to the tribe wh. was strong enough to thrash the other. No right is worth a straw apart from the good that it brings: and all claims to rights must depend—not upon nature—but upon the good that the said rights are calculated to bring to the greatest number. General utility, public expediency, the greatest happiness of the greatest number—these are the tests and standards of a right; not the dictate of nature. (en) |
