+72. Might and right.+ Modern civilized states of the best form are often called jural states because the concept of rights enters so largely into all their constitutions and regulations. Our political philosophy centers around that concept, and all our social discussions fall into the form of propositions and disputes about rights. The history of the dogma of rights has been such that rights have been believed to be self-evident and self-existent, and as having prevailed especially in primitive society. Rights are also regarded as the opposite of force. These notions only prove the antagonism between our mores and those of earlier generations. In fact, it is a characteristic of our mores that the form of our thinking about all points of political philosophy is set for us by the concept of rights. Nothing but might has ever made right, and if we include in might (as we ought to) elections and the decisions of courts, nothing but might makes right now. We must distinguish between the anterior and the posterior view of the matter in question. If we are about to take some action, and are debating the right of it, the might which can be brought to support one view of it has nothing to do with the right of it. If a thing has been done and is established by force (that is, no force can reverse it), it is right in the only sense we know, and rights will follow from it which are not vitiated at all by the force in it. There would be no security at all for rights if this were not so. We find men and parties protesting, declaiming, complaining of what is done, and which they say is not "right," but only force. An election decides that those shall have power who will execute an act of policy. The defeated party denounces the wrong and wickedness of the act. It is done. It may be a war, a conquest, a spoliation; every one must help to do it by paying taxes and doing military service or other duty which may be demanded of him. The decision of a lawsuit leaves one party protesting and complaining. He always speaks of "right" and "rights." He is forced to acquiesce. The result is right in the only sense which is real and true. It is more to the purpose to note that an indefinite series of consequences follow, and that they create or condition rights which are real and just. Many persons now argue against property that it began in force and therefore has no existence in right and justice. They might say the same of marriage or religion. Some do say the same of the state. The war of the United States with Mexico in 1845 is now generally regarded as unjustified. That cannot affect the rights of all kinds which have been contracted in the territory then ceded by Mexico or under the status created on the land obtained by the treaty of peace with that country. The whole history of mankind is a series of acts which are open to doubt, dispute, and criticism, as to their right and justice, but all