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The right of the weaker. If one party, a city under siege, for example, submits under certain conditions to a greater power, its reciprocal condition is that this first party can destroy itself, burn the city, and thus make the power suffer a great loss. Thus there is a kind of equalization, on the basis of which rights can be established. Preservation is to the enemy's advantage.
Rights exist between slaves and masters to the same extent, exactly insofar as the possession of his slave is profitable and important to the master. The right originally extends as far as the one appears to the other to be valuable, essential, permanent, invincible, and the like. In this regard even the weaker of the two has rights, though they are more modest. Thus the famous dictum: "unusquisque tantum juris habet, quantum potentia valet"³¹ (or, more exactly, "quantum potentia valere creditur").³²