The English language is allowed to be one of great power, compass, and accuracy, and therefore eminently adapted to reasoning. It derives this quality in a good degree from its flexibility, the different varieties of idea, and often the different shades of meaning in these varieties that may be expressed by one word. No language is supposed to compare with it in this respect. But whilst this adapts it to the purpose of correct reasoning, it opens also a wide field for errors in argument. Men usually differ widely in _opinion_, but they do not often differ in sentiment. All intelligent and good men _feel right_, and _mean right_. They often differ in opinion because they differ in the meaning they attach to the language, the same language, which is the medium through which each views the same subject. Different men use the same word in different senses. The same man often uses the same word by habit in different senses in the same connection. They come to different conclusions, of course, and the same man often entoils himself by his own argument. Now, there are few words with which men have more to do in discussions and opinions about liberty and government--the next most important matters to personal religion--than with the word _rights_; and there are few words which are capable of more varied application, and which are in truth oftener applied to express different shades of meaning, than this word _rights_. Webster gives correctly some forty different meanings of this term, together with several subordinate senses in which it occurs, all of which are in common use. _Our_ language--and of what language is not the same true?--our literature, our theology, our politics--society on all sides--is bristling with _rights_! Now, is it not obvious that there must be some generic idea which classifies all the different meanings and applications of this term, and which has its foundation in the common sense, the common reason of all mankind? If, then, we inquire what are our rights in any given case, this question directly involves that other and ultimate question, What is _the right_ in itself? the solution of which solves at once the general question in regard to all cases. And although the case in which our _rights_ may appear must be first in point of time before our minds, to call up our idea of _the right_, still our definite antecedent idea of the right is the logical condition on which we determine whether the right appears in that case.