negatively defining them. Every faculty of body, mind, and spirit has its right to development and to the means of development, but so far as we have proceeded, nothing more. A man cannot claim the globe, he cannot claim a continent, unless that globe or that continent is essential to compliance with the law of self-preservation, properly understood. Hobbes' theory of unlimited right finds no place here. Natural law does not admit it; is inconsistent with it. Rights are only the reverse of duties, and exist only as they are implied in duties. In this division of natural law, rights and duties may even be said to be identical, except that they wear different aspects according to our point of observation. Viewed from the point of natural law, rights are simply duties, or what is involved in them. Viewed from the position of the subject of obligation, duties are rights, or involve rights.

Leaving for after consideration such modification of these conclusions as result from their relation to the second department of natural law, we find that rights result from duties, and that their inviolability consists in the fact that they are implied in them. We can logically approach the subject of rights only from the direction of duty, and through the portals of natural law. This may not be in accordance with some popular, or even some elaborated theories, but it is the inevitable conclusion of sound reasoning, and it is the only fitting basis for a science of rights. Ulrici (Grundzüge der Practischen Philosophie, Naturricht, &c.) has well said, "In truth, man is not born with rights, but only with duties, and therefore he has only the right to demand that the possibility to discharge his duty be assured him. His rights flow only from his duties, and can be deduced from them alone." The objections to this position which are noticed and met in his pages cannot here be considered. It is enough to say that they vanish before his lucid argumentation.

But when man is considered as a social being, and is found sustaining social relations, our attention is invited to another of the great divisions o natural law, and here we find that the rights which man possesses in virtue of the duties incumbent upon him are brought into contact with the rights of others, and to some extent are modified by the new class of duties corresponding to these rights. He meets with others, who, like

himself, are born under natural law, and have duties to themselves to discharge, while possessing the rights involved in the discharge of those duties. In these new relations, his freedom is necessarily subjected to new conditions and limitations. It becomes therefore an important question, what these are, and how far, and how far only, do they extend.

He must surrender what is actually requisite to the common good, what is necessary to put others, as subject to common duties, and claiming common rights, on an equality with himself. He must respect their rights, as they do his. But here the question meets us, how can he surrender his rights, if he holds them as essential to the discharge of duty, and possesses none which are not covered and protected by the sanctity of duty?

In reply to this, it may be said that in that aggregate of rights which man, as the subject of obligation, takes with him into society, there is a diversity which becomes manifest, when he assumes new relations to his fellow men. Existing by himself, it might be his duty to consume the entire portion of food which in given circumstances he has at his command. His duty to regard his own health and strength might require it. But place a starving brother at his side, and that duty is modified. Now he is under obligations to divide with another his scant store. In like manner, countless other instances might be supposed in which he would be brought under obligation to do or forego that which but for society would have been a matter, possibly of indifference, or perhaps one in which duty to himself would have dictated a different course.

Here then is a broad field of social and civil duties which must be so adjusted that social equality shall result, and just those rights which the individual takes with him into society be surrendered, and these only, which are requisite to the end in view. Some of these, as we have seen, can and must be surrendered. Their exercise is limited by new social relations. But how far may this surrender extend, and what is its necessary limit?

Here, again, we must have recourse to what is prescribed by the law of self-preservation. That law imposes duties, but these duties admit of a classification subordinate to the great end or ultimate duty of the perfection of the moral nature. Just as it

is the duty of a man to sacrifice his finger rather than his hand, his arm rather than his life, when the alternative is presented, and this is demanded by the law of self-preservation, so when the question is raised between physical comfort on one side, and a concession to the claims of humanity or conscience on the other, the former, which in other circumstances might have claims of duty to enforce it, must give way to the latter, and the means which a man might employ to beautify or furnish his dwelling may be, and should be, surrendered to feed the starving, clothe the naked, or protect the community from impending calamity. A man might even feel himself justified -like the Moravian missionaries in one instance-in parting with his freedom, in order that as a slave he might accomplish for his fellow slaves a work of humanity and Christian charity, which otherwise would be impossible.

But to this surrender there are limits, and these are reached when a man is called to part with anything which is essential to the discharge of those duties on which his moral integrity, and the attainment of the great end recognized in the law of self-preservation, depend. Here we are confronted with that which is inalienable-that which the man, however favorably disposed, is not himself at liberty to surrender. Thus natural law at once indicates how rights originate, and at the same time, how they are or may be limited. It shows us on what ground we may predicate of some that they are alienable, and of others that they are inalienable. It sweeps aside all those theories of right which give them the logical precedence of duties, or made them independent of duty. It puts a check upon the radical and ruinous tendencies of the age which would disintegrate society in the interests of individualism, and impel men to clamor for all sorts of rights which approximate to the standard of unrestricted license.

But it is in natural law that we are steadily confronted with the truth of manifold application in constitutional and international spheres-that rights and duties are correlatives. This is not true in the same sense, or in the same respect, in the first department of it, as in the second. In the first, rights and duties are, in their substance, identical, since what is a duty is also a right, and what is absolute duty, no man or body of men may arbitrarily limit, so that duties and rights are only different as

pects of the same thing, according to the point from which they are viewed. But in the second department, where we have to consider the relation of the individual to society, those rights which are identified with duty must by all others be conceded to him, while what he owes to others, they have the right to demand. His duty to them limits his rights, or rather, so far as his social relations are concerned, what these do not forbid or preclude, out of respect to the common welfare, and the rights of all others, belongs to him as his right.

Civil organization must accept these conclusions, and recognize rights for what they are-sacred in some cases as the duties out of which they spring became essential to the discharge of these duties,-inviolable in others, because encroachment upon them would be an unwarrantable intrusion upon a sphere to be legitimately reached by no measure designed simply to promote the common welfare and the equal rights of all. But a wise legislation will be cautious in admitting as rights what happens to assume the name, and what can give no warrant for itself in its being the necessary condition for the discharge of duties. We have been drifting of late years upon strange theories of human rights. We have been quiet when rights have been elevated to a position above duties, and we have silently sanctioned certain postulates fundamental to a political philosophy, from which only a political chaos can legitimately result.

It is time for us to retrace our steps-to recognize in human government something more than a compact of convenience, which expediency has made and expediency can unmake,—to trace it back to those foundations of natural law upon which alone it can safely and securely rest, to frame our legislation with strict regard to those principles of justice which constitute the eternal unwritten law of Sophocles, Cicero, and Hooker-in short, to do that which Daniel Webster, for once, with a sneer unworthy of himself, characterized as re-enacting the law of God. Let there be no assertion of rights that can only be arbitrarily defined, or which are shaped by the various fancies, temperaments, or interests of men, but rather let those be recognized which can assert their validity as derived from duties enjoined by natural law, and which the common welfare must allow to remain unrestricted and undisturbed.

ARTICLE VIIL-THE HEROIC AGE OF AMERICA, AND ITS LEGACY.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE AMERICAN CHAPEL AT BERLIN, ON THANKSGIVING DAY, Nov. 26, 1874,

BY JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D.*

THIS day belongs to Americans, and surely none will begrudge them in foreign lands the observance of a national festival which brings them into conscious and cheerful unison with the millions of their countrymen at home, in the grateful' and adoring recognition of Almighty God. The spirit of nationality, in which and through which the peoples are striving toward a higher form of civil and social life, must cause each nation to respect in every other that observance of patriotic days and festivals which it would cherish for itself. As an American far from home, I keep in remembrance the birthday of Washington, the Fourth of July, the National Thanksgiving; and because I feel thus free to exhibit my own nationality, I never fail to run up my American flag in honor of the birthday of the Emperor of Germany, under whose protection I live, and on other festal days, in sympathy with the great and noble German nation, which having done so much for Science, Letters, and Art, is now, under its new political form, to do its noblest work for the peace of Europe, and for the deliverance of civil society from the curse of ecclesiastical control.

The better this festival of ours is understood, the more will it be appreciated and perhaps imitated also in Europe. Our German friends, however, will get a strange notion of its history and significance if they trust to the American correspondents

*The Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., LL.D., now a resident of Berlin, formerly one of the editors of the New Englander, has been, from the first, one of the most frequent contributors to its pages. The subscribers to this Journal will read with pleasure the Thanksgiving Address, delivered by him Nov. 26, 1874, in the American Chapel at Berlin, to his countrymen who are living in that city. We republish the Address from the International Gazette of Berlin.-EDS. NEW ENGLANDER.