best of his means of discovering, believes its real and true application. A relative right is that, the exercise of which, in whatever way an agent may apply the specification of it, no other agent has a right to prevent. In practice, an absolute right, and a right in conscience, must stand for the same. I shall therefore include the latter in the former denomination. A man has a right, relatively to his neighbours who have no right to prevent him - to spend his money as he pleases. He has an absolute right only to do so in a prudent and useful man ner. A man has a right to correct his children as he pleases, relatively to other men; but a right in conscience, and as a responsible being, only so far as may be necessary for purposes of moral discipline and improvement.* * On a neglect of the distinction between an absolute, and a relative right, was founded an argument employed some years ago in the House of Lords, against Catholic emancipation; and in the efficacy of which the opposers of that measure seemed to find considerable ground of triumph. It was simply this, that every government has a right to take such measures as it judges necessary for its own preservation: consequently, if government should determine that Catholic emancipation was dangerous to its existence, it had a valid right to refuse emancipation. - Now this was just the same as if a judge on the bench should defend an iniquitous decision by saying, “ I have a right to determine this matter in the way which I may deem just; and as I have pronounced that this is just, I have only done what I had a right to do, and no one has a right to complain;"- in other words, because the parties have not a right to prevent the judge from passing such a sentence, therefore it is a just sentence. Is it not plain that whatever might be the right of the judge, as relative to the parties, his right absolutely, and in conscience, was only to make such a decision as to the best of his belief was just? and is it not equally plain, that though the argument against Catholic emancipation might be conclusive against those who should maintain generally that the state had no right to exclude any of its subjects from its privileges, honours and employment, whatever apprehension of danger might exist, it could not operate against those who denied the danger altogether. The reality of the danger, not that of the right, was the point at issue. It is obvious that two absolute rights, on the part of different individuals, can never oppose one another. Rights in conscience may, - so long as the opinions and consciences of men differ. Two persons may each conscientiously judge himself to have right to the sovereignty of a nation: subjects may at once conscientiously oppose their rulers, and rulers enforce their commands on subjects. For this there is no remedy, but that of enlightening the judgments and consciences of men, and reducing to the greatest possible degree of precision, the specification of their duty - which is the province of the practical moralist. The obligation of subjects to obey, seems at first view contradictory to their right to oppose their rulers. The contradiction would be solved by more specific forms of stating the obligation and right. At present it may be sufficient to observe, that there is, in practice, little difficulty in distinguishing between those cases in which a subject ought to submit to a command, against his individual judgment as to the propriety of that command, and those cases where he may safely trust his own judgment in deciding upon resistance; just in the same way as the general propriety of a man's adhering closely to the directions of a physician, whether he perceives their fitness or not, is not inconsistent with his exercising a judgment as to the talents and conduct of any particular physician, and even dismissing him if he sees cause. In general, the actual external checks that repress the right of resistance in subjects is a sufficient guarantee against any abuse of the theoretical principle. The wickedness of men will always occasion instances of opposition between relative rights. So long as the right of rulers to use compulsion with their subjects exists at all, it will be used for purposes of oppression; so long as the right of subjects exists, in any circumstance, to resist authority, it will be rendered the pretext for insubordination. This can never be greatly bettered by improving moral rules, but by making men better. 299 CHAPTER V. THEORY OF PROPERTY. THE nature of property is to be explained from the general axiom, that it is wrong to occasion pain or uneasiness: * it being laid down, at the same time, as another axiom, - that, in the nature of things, it must occasion pain or uneasiness to deprive a person either of what is a source of present ease, comfort, or enjoyment; or what he intends, or expects to draw enjoyment from in future. † To take away any enjoyment, or to occasion actual pain, only differ in this, that the two things are in different parts of the scale both making the state of a being worse : and the loss of an enjoyment must occasion some degree of positive pain in the mind of the being who suffers the loss. It is obligatory then not to inflict that pain - a person has a right that that pain should not be inflicted; i. e. that he should not lose his property. * Ax. II. † Ax. XXIII. ing a man of that which he has impended pains and labour in procuring, the gratuitous infliction of that pain and labour upon him for the positive infliction of an evil is evidently nothing different from the taking away of that which an evil has been endured to obtain. Mr. Dugald Stewart (Phil. of Act. and Mor. Powers,*) maintains, that, previously to the establishment of civil laws, the impending of labour is the only foundation of property. He allows, however, apparently in contradiction to this, the right which actual present possession imparts; and for the rest, the instances he adduces in support of his doctrine only prove that, in a state of nature, the right of property is held to cease where a thing is abandoned without any indication of an intention to keep it for they do not prove that the mere leaving or removing from a possession is held to be a surrender of the right of property, where any indication is made of an intention to resume it. This intention or purpose is just that which makes the right to be perceived, and that without which, of course, it cannot appear to exist. * Book IV. Supplement to Chap. II. END OF VOL. I. イノッチなWANE AND CO. OLD BAILEY. |