The duty of benevolence is a moral duty to help others to achieve their good, and not simply not to bring harm to them. The duty of benevolence is not function of a right demanding such performance. Positive and Negative Rights and Duties 1. Negative rights are rights against interference or a legitimate demand not to be harmed, and they are correlated with negative duties. For example, if the right to life is a negative right, then it is a right not to have one's life taken away, and others have a duty not to murder.
Positive rights are rights to aid, and the correlated positive duty to provide it.
If the right to life is a positive right, then there is a positive duty to help to maintain life. The Sentiment of Justice 1. The sentiment of justice Mill analyses as a composite of a belief and a desire. The desire to punish arises from two more elementary feelings, the desire for self-defense and sense of sympathy. Thus, the sense of resentment, repulsion, and the desire retaliate for harm done either to oneself or to another with whom one sympathizes manifest these natural feelings which, according to Mill, are virtually instinctual.