144. Thus to the question, Has the individual no rights against enactments founded on imperfect views of social well-being? we may answer, He has no rights against them founded on any right to do as he likes. Whatever counter-rights he has must be founded on a relation to the social well-being, and that a relation of which his fellow -citizens are aware. He must be able to point to some public interest, generally recognised as such, which is involved in the exercise of the power claimed by him as a right; to show that it is not the general well-being, even as conceived by his fellow-citizens, but some special interest of a class that is concerned in preventing the exercise of the power claimed. In regard to the right of teaching or harbouring the slave, he must appeal to the actual capacity of the slave for community with other men as evinced in the manner described above, to the recognition of this capacity as shown by the actual behaviour of the citizens in many respects towards the slave, to the addition to social well-being that results from the realisation of this capacity in all who possess it through rights being legally guaranteed to them. In this way he must show that the reference to social well-being, on which is founded the recognition of powers as rights, if fairly and thoroughly carried out, leads to the exercise of powers in favour of the slave, in the manner described, not to the prohibition of that exercise as the supposed law prohibits it. The response which in doing so he elicits from the conscience of fellow-citizens shows that in talking of the slave as 'a man and a brother,' he is exercising what is implicitly his right, though it is a right which has not become explicit through legal enactments. This response supplies the factor of social recognition which, as we have seen, is necessary in order to render the exercise of any power a right. To have an implicit right, however, to exercise a power which the law disallows is not the same thing as having a right to exercise that right. The right may be claimed without the power being actually exercised so long as the law prohibits its exercise. The question, therefore, would arise whether the citizen was doing his duty as such--acting as a member of the state--if he not merely did what he could for the repeal of the law prohibiting the instruction of a slave or the assistance of runaways, but himself in defiance of the law instructed and assisted them. As a general rule, no doubt, even bad laws, laws representing the interests of classes or individuals as opposed to those of the community, should be obeyed. There can be no right to disobey them, even while their repeal is urged on the ground that they violate rights, because the public interest, on which all rights are founded, is more concerned in the general obedience to law than in the exercise of those powers by individuals or classes which the objectionable laws unfairly withhold. The