The "_Vossische Zeitung_" presents to us the "commonwealth of right." There everything is to be decided by the judge and a _court_. It ranks the supreme court of censorship as a "court" where "right is declared" What sort of a right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court as right one must regard the censorship as right. But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor's error: it protects only the censorship-legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the "sacred power of right," all the firmer against writers.
Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for them too.
In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic communities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as sacred. A "sense of right" and "law-abiding mind" of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new "sacred law," the "law of society," the law of mankind, the "right of all," and the like. The right of "all" is to go before _my_ right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a _right of all_ will I defend it, but as _my_ right; and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (_e. g._ to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right unabridged for _himself_, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take care for all though,--let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all.
But the social reformers preach to us a "_law of society_." There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society _makes him out_ in the right, _i. e._ when he lives according to society's _statutes_ and so is--_loyal_. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a "society" _à la_ Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have not _my_ right but _foreign_ right.