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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
ley" * • ' it is merely the past tense and past participle of a Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb , .
which signifies ponere , and it means ( something or any thing , chose , cosa , aliqidd ) laid downas a rule of conduct . Thus , when a man demands his right , he
asks only that which it is ordered lie bhall have" •••••• " to have
right or on ones 9 to have in one ' s favour that which is ordered , or laid down . A right and just action is such a one as is ordered and commanded . A just man is such as he is
commanded to be—qui leges juratfue servat—who observes and obeys the things laid down and cowmanded . " • • • " Before there can be any thing rect-mw , there must be rcg-e ? iSy reg ^ s , rex , i . c . qui
or quod reg-it . I ad mi re more than ever , your favourite maxim of—rtx , lex lo iuens ; lev - rex
mutiis . I acknowledge the senses he has given us—the experience of those senses — and reason ( the effect and result of those senses and of that experience)—to be the assured iostimony of God ; a ° ainst which no jiuman lestimony ever can prevail . And I think I can discover , by the help of this etymology , a shorter method of determining disputes between
¦ -meaning men , concerning . quest ioas of u i o 11 t : ft > r , if r i o 11 t and J ust moan ordered and commanded ^ we must at once refer to the order and command ; and to the uufhurity which ordered and commanded /'—Divers . oj Purlty ^ Part II . p . 7 , 8 , y , 15 , 16 \
4 . But commands and laws are useless without sanctions to en force them , and sanctions vain without the power to reward andpunish . Human laws have the
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support only of temporal sane * tioiis . Obedience to the divine will , so far as that i $ declared by the course of nature or by revelation , is enforced by the awfu ] saneiions of futurity . Divine and human laws have this in common , that they deter from evil by the fear of punishment : to incite to
good by the hope of reward is , for the most part , peculiar to the divine administration . 5 . The term right , on one side , and its reciprocal obligation , on the other , derive all their signifi - cance and force from the previous establishment of laws , divine or
human , and from the power of the legislator to compel obedience , by making the delinquent suffer for his offences . Right , without a remedy ; obligation , without a penalty for the breach of it ; arid account able ness , without a superior to whom the account is to be given ; are words
altogether without . meaning . It follows , therefore , that , let the station and condition of a man he what it may , he has a rig / it to do any thing for which he is not liable to be called to account and punished . Accordingly , that is said to be right which is simply
not prohibited : bur lure the phraseology is a little diflennt . We do qot say , it is right to walk on either side of -lie street , but 1 have a right to do So ; nobody has a riidit to hinder me : on the contrary , it is not right to drive
my carriage on cither snie oi a crowded road , the law of . custom forbidding it . 0 . It is obvious that what is rig / ft * according to one code <) f laws and one set of legislators , may be wrong [ see Diver * , oj Put ' r h' \ W j ^ Part JJ . p . i ) . ]> according
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586 Of Right considered' as founded on Power * m % —
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1808, page 586, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2398/page/10/
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