ABSTRACT
Bentham's most comprehensive and detailed criticisms of the doctrine of what he termed 'the natural pre-adamitical, ante-legal and anti-legal rights of man' are to found in the work published after his death under the title of Anarchical Fallacies. In most of the many different formulations of his criticism Bentham's account of the conceptual confusion which he took to be inherent in the doctrine of natural rights embraced all forms of the belief in rights which were not the 'creatures' of positive law. 'Rights are the fruits of the law and of the law alone; there are no rights without law—no rights contrary to law—no rights anterior to the law.' John Stuart Mill in his account of moral rights treats conventional morality, or as he terms it, 'opinion' as playing the same role in relation to moral rights as the law though his conception of that role is very different from Bentham's.
