This is the age of human rights. Everyone proclaims them; they are listed in various documents; a special court sits at Strasbourg to adjudicate claims based on them; other courts, longer established, allow them to influence their decisions. Progressive opinion in one country after another seeks to promote solemn documents defining them. Portentous bills of rights are the ambition, for instance, of New Zealand liberals and English social democrats. To anyone versed in the lessons of history and the facts of human nature, it will come as no surprise that these alleged rights probably have never been more widely disregarded and broken in every part of the globe, especially in countries which erected new governments upon claims to human rights. Commonly, successful revolutions fighting under the banner of human rights violate every one of these same rights with greater efficiency than the regime they overthrew had done. Thus, there is something disquieting about the constant claims and proclamations of these new governments.

Where and when did the whole notion of human rights actually originate? The term ‘human rights’ as it is currently used has been used since the end of the Second World War. ‘Human rights’ replaced an earlier version which spoke of the rights of man. No doubt it will not do today to use language which to certain fanatics will suggest that those rights do not extend to women.