Читать книгу Concerning Justice - Emery Lucilius Alonzo - Страница 2

The problem of Rights is also centuries old. There have been in later years glowing tributes to human rights even more than to justice, though the sentiment of rights is egoistic, while that of justice is in some measure altruistic. There have also been diverse opinions in the past, as now, as to the source, foundation, and nature of what are called Rights, as there were and are of justice. A brief review of these opinions and of the changes in them may present the problem more vividly.

In patriarchal times there could be no political questions about rights. The head of the family was supreme and sole ruler and judge. Even in Rome under an organized civil government the pater familias was long left the power of life and death over the members of his family. When families and tribes were combined in states, government was long conducted on the theory that as the individual had belonged to the family or tribe into which he was born or adopted, so he now belonged to the state, to be directed and disposed of as the state might order. What he might enjoy of life, liberty, or property was the gift of the state, subject to revocation at will. Plato reflects this theory in making Hippias declare that the measure of man's right is what the state commands. The total abolition of the liberty of innocent persons by holding them in slavery was not deemed any infringement of any right of theirs. This theory was acted upon in democratic as well as in monarchical states. Slavery was as lawful in Athens, Sparta, and republican Rome as in Persia or Egypt. True, there were rebellions and revolutions at times, but, though sometimes provoked by oppression, they were usually to acquire the power of government and not in defense of individual rights. The Plebeians revolted to obtain a greater share in the governing power. The civil wars of Marius and Sulla were not waged for liberty but for power. In Sicily, where the slaves under Eunus had for a time wrested the governing power from their masters, they did not hesitate to enslave in turn.

The doctrine that the individual man has some rights by nature which the state ought not to disregard had no place in ancient nor medieval governments. The English Magna Charta purports to be a grant from the king and, though framed by the barons and forced upon the king, it contains no assertion of rights by nature. The rights claimed were claimed as accustomed rights previously conferred and enjoyed, such as the laws and customs of the time of Henry I. Apart from provisions as to improved methods of administration, the language of the Charter implies restoration rather than revolution.

So in the Petition of Right in the reign of Charles I, no appeal was made to natural rights, but the demand was for accustomed privileges, for the observance by the king of the old laws and customs of the realm, especially those in force under Edward I and Edward III. In the Petition, the Charter of King John is cited, not as a schedule of the rights of man in the abstract, but as "The Great Charter of the Liberties of England," implying that the liberties therein named were not the natural heritage of men in general but the peculiar heritage of Englishmen, under English law. The prayer of the Petition is simply that the king shall accord the people of England "their rights and liberties according to the laws and statutes of the realm."

So in the Bill of Rights framed by Parliament and approved by William and Mary upon their accession to the throne, it was not asserted that the acts of James II complained of were contrary to any natural right of the subject, but that they "were utterly and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes and freedom of this realm." The purpose of the Bill of Rights was declared by the Parliament in behalf of the people to be "for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties." In the earlier remonstrances of the legislatures of the English colonies in America against various acts of the king and Parliament, only the accustomed rights of Englishmen were claimed to be violated. The colonists, at first, claimed as against king and Parliament no rights not accorded to Englishmen in England.

But though the notion that man has rights by nature, not granted by the state and which the state should respect as such, did not for centuries find expression in state papers or state action, it was by no means non-existent. It was early in the minds of many and found some expression in the writings of jurists and philosophers. In Rome it was a corollary of the doctrine of the existence of a jus naturale. The statement of that doctrine by Ulpian incorporated in the Digest implies a doctrine that man does have some rights anterior to and independent of the state. So far, however, as the statement was susceptible of that construction it was not generally acted upon and remained practically a dead letter. The doctrine itself survived, however, engaging the attention and receiving the support of various writers. It gradually gained ground among students of politics and spread rapidly after the Protestant Reformation, so-called, because of the impetus given by that event to the exercise of private judgment. As early as the 17th century, though finding little or no expression in the Petition of Right or Bill of Rights, the doctrine that individual rights were derived from nature rather than from the state was generally entertained by the Puritans and other dissenters from the Established Church, and was invoked by them to some extent as justifying the revolution of 1640. The doctrine also passed over to the Puritan Colonies in America and early found some expression there. In the Massachusetts "Body of Liberties" of 1641 there is a suggestion that the liberties, etc., therein recited, were those demanded by "humanity, civility and christianity" rather than "accustomed" liberties. It was further asserted that these liberties were to be enjoyed by the people of the Colony and their posterity forever.

The later disputes as to the proper limits of the power of the British King and Parliament over the American Colonies led the colonial lawyers and politicians to a study of the theory of natural rights advanced by various political writers, English and Continental. It has been said, I think with truth, that the writings of Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and even of Blackstone, were more widely read and studied in America than in Europe. The brilliant writings of Tom Paine also had great influence. The result was that the doctrine of natural rights came to be generally accepted by the people of the Colonies as the real foundation of their claims and the real justification for their resistance to the objectionable acts of the King and Parliament. In 1774 the first Continental Congress in its Declaration of Rights declared that the people of the Colonies had those rights by "the immutable laws of nature" as well as by their charters and the principles of the English Constitution. Two years later in the Declaration of Independence the representatives of the people made no reference to their charters nor to the principles of the English Constitution as the foundation of their claims, but based them exclusively on the theory of natural rights. They declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The same influences undoubtedly contributed to bring about the French Revolution of 1789, and the theory of natural rights again found expression in the French state papers of that period. In August of that year, in the early stages of the Revolution, the following "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" was put forth by the National Assembly and afterwards made the first two articles of the Constitution of 1791, viz., "Art. 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon public utility. Art. 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression."

Thus in the latter part of the 18th century the doctrine that man has some individual rights by nature, not by grant or prescription, and not alienable, obtained official recognition in two great nations. It has since been formally and officially iterated in the Constitutions of many American States and has been proclaimed and invoked as an impregnably established political truth. Nevertheless the doctrine is only a theory, not yet demonstrated nor undoubted. It has been assailed and in the opinion of many refuted, by Bentham, Mill, and other utilitarian writers, the successors of Epicurus, Carneades and the Sophists. Even in France and America it is now repudiated by many and declared to be an obstacle to social and political improvement. Still, despite the vigorous arguments against the doctrine, there remains the innate feeling and a general belief that society abridges individual rights instead of conferring them. In support of this notion may be cited the fact that the statutes of any state or nation are almost wholly restrictive or compulsory in character, and rarely, if ever, permissive. From the Decalogue down, the language of the law has been compulsive, "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not"; and men generally act upon the theory that what society does not forbid by statute or custom the individual may do.

In passing now from the region of theory, of speculative opinion, to what seems to me the region of facts, of actual conditions, of actual traits of human nature, I wish it to be understood distinctly that in what I may say about rights I am considering only the precepts of justice, and that I differentiate those precepts from the precepts of religion, charity, philanthropy, benevolence, and other similar virtues, and even those of what is loosely called humanity. If it be true as asserted by Addison that justice is the greatest and most godlike of the virtues, it does not follow that the just man, to be just, must possess all or any of the other virtues. One can be just without being religious, charitable, or philanthropic, and even without earning the reputation of being humane.

I wish further to premise that I am considering our subject only with reference to those who have grown to the age of self-maintenance and consequent freedom. I do not take into account the rights of children under that age.

With these premises borne in mind, I would now in the next chapter call attention to some propositions of fact, which I shall assume to be established by science and history and by the reader's own experience and observation, and which I think bear more or less directly on our subject.