This essay was published in the magazine Zhejiang chao, which was put out by students from China’s Zhejiang province who were studying in Japan; the magazine lasted only one year. The essay draws extensively—and to some extent, critically—on nineteenth-century German jurisprudence, and bears comparison with Text 2, above. Like Liang Qichao, the present author stresses the need to develop “rights consciousness.” Also like Liang, we see here some ambiguity over the ultimate justification of rights: we are told in no uncertain terms that rights come from state law, but also that there are rights that “civilized” people know they “ought” to enjoy, and thus demand their states codify into law. It is important to note that the specific freedoms to which the author thinks people ought to have rights are all what we would now call civil and political rights.
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