PRIMARY NATURAL RIGHTS. CHAPTER II. Primary Natural Rights-1. To Personal Freedom-2. To the Common Bounty of Heaven-3. To Property-4. To Good Government. MAN's natural rights may, perhaps, be usefully classed under four simple and primary heads: should be hanged. But it is as clearly his interest to escape such a fate, if he possibly can. 3. But the greatest fallacy of all is, that the doctrine in question assumes every individual to be capable of perceiving, even at the very commencement of his course of moral education, (that is, while yet an infant,) and with infallible accuracy, the real ultimate tendency of all actions to benefit or injure mankind, and to be influenced accordingly to embrace or abstain from them. For without such supernatural penetration, how is he to be operated on by a sense of their moral or immoral character? He is to be taught,' the Utilitarians would say, 'that such and such actions are moral, and therefore conducive to his happiness.' But if he is taught at the same time that the production of pleasure to himself is the only reason why he should prefer the moral to the immoral course, he will answer, and not without reason, that he is a better judge than you of what pleases him-he will disbelieve what you tell him, but cannot prove to him, of ultimate tendencies-he will be actuated only by those immediate contingencies that he is capable of perceiving; and those which require a difficult process of reasoning, and a long course of experience and observation to develope, will be to him as if they had no existence. Even if it were true, therefore, (which we have shown it is not,) that the ultirnate interests of every individual are always identified with those of society, a system of morals founded on a cultivation of the selfish principle would be dangerously destructive of 1. The right to personal freedom; 2. The right to the common bounty of Heaven; 3. The right to property; 4. The right to good government. I. Of the Natural Right to Personal Freedom. The first and most important of the natural rights of mankind is that to personal freedom; all morality. There would be much risk that every one would take his own propensities as the measure of his own moral code. All persons acknowledge that, in the great majority of instances, the interests of individuals and of the mass are the same; and, therefore, those who teach morality are right in urging, in addition to all other sanctions, that its habitual observance by all individuals would be to the infinite advantage of each. But to put forward self-interest as the sole fit and proper motive for individual action, to the exclusion of the desire of gratifying others, of the wish for human or divine approbation, and of the hopes and fears of future reward or punishment, here or hereafter,-seems to me about as likely a scheme for securing the general observance of morality, as it would be for collecting the public revenue to allow every one to drop his portion of the taxes secretly into a box, freed from all other motive for contributing his due share, than his sense of a common in terest in the full payment of the revenue. How many would pay their taxes in full upon the strength of the conviction that it is for the interest of each that all should pay? How many would keep their money in their pockets, and trust to others for the plenishing of the Exchequer? Suppose the defaulters to be only one in a hundred-by what process of reasoning is this one to be persuaded that it is not his in terest to save his money, and be protected in his person and property at the expense of his neighbours? The old saw, What is everybody's interest is nobody's interest,' ought alone to have convinced the Utilitarians of the fallacy of their leading principle. It is curious that the same pub lication which habitually puts forward this doctrine, often unconsciously refutes itself in the most direct manner.- See Westminster Review, xxxiv. p. 422. RIGHT TO PERSONAL FREEDOM. 15 which is the right of every man to do whatever does not injure others more than it benefits himself; in other words, whatever is not inconsistent with the general welfare, of which his own forms an integral part. This right follows directly from the definition of natural justice; since it evidently tends to augment the general happiness that every one should please himself whenever he can do so without taking from others more than he gains himself. Nor is there any other natural liberty than this. Absolute freedom of action can only be attained by complete isolation from the rest of the species a state unnatural to man. In order to reap the advantages of social existence, he must renounce a portion of his free will, and submit to such restraints as are necessary for the common good. Slavery itself is a wrong, utterly opposed to the principles of natural justice; not because it is an interference with the abstract freedom of man, but because it is such an interference as cannot be compensated by any benefit accruing to his master or others, because the evil resulting from it to mankind at large infinitely exceeds all the possible gain. The determination of the specific acts which are or are not permissible to a free member of society, is the province of the codes of law and morality, to which we have already adverted. A just code of law and morals will restrain the free action of each individual only so far as is clearly necessary for the benefit of the whole, and will therefore rob no one of the full extent of his natural right to personal freedom. II. Of the Natural Right to the Bounties of Creation. The second great natural right, coequal perhaps with that of personal freedom, is the equal right of all mankind to the common bounties of the Creator. Man is placed by his Maker on a world whose surface abounds with a variety of spontaneous natural productions, many of them more or less useful and desirable to him, and evidently intended for his use. It is perfectly clear that all men being equal in the sight of their Creator, no one can have any greater natural right to any of these gifts than another. Therefore, the earth, the air, the waters, and all their produce, must be common property; of which each individual has a right to make such use as shall not prejudice the rest of mankind in a greater degree than it benefits himself. And this right rests upon the same principle to which we have referred every other. Whatever limitation, therefore, is established to the right of man to use or consume any natural productions, can be justified (or shown to be conformable to natural justice) only by proof that such limitation is necessary for the general welfare. And this brings us to the third great natural right-the right to property,-which constitutes in itself the principal limitation here spoken of. III. Of the Natural Right to Property. In the same way as it is clearly perceivable by reason that the right of individuals to personal freedom of action must be limited by regard for NATURAL RIGHT TO PROPERTY. 17 the general good, so is it with respect to their right to the use of the desirable productions of nature. Without such limitation practically enforced, there must arise perpetual strife between individuals anxious to use the same thing, the same fruit or wild animal, for instance; and the will of the stronger prevailing, the equal rights of the weaker party would be overthrown. The continual recurrence of such contests must be completely destructive of the general happiness; and, therefore, the adoption of some rule is absolutely necessary for limiting and determining the right of individuals to the sole use or consumption of natural products: in other words, to an exclusive property in them. One simple rule of this sort appears to have been universally adopted by every fraction of the human family, in every quarter of the globe, and from the first traces we possess of their history. And it is this; that what a man obtains from nature by his own exertions becomes his property. No tribes, even of naked and wandering savages, have yet, we believe, been discovered in which the right of private property in the things each had appropriated by his labour, was not recognized. Barbarians have been met with, who had no ideas of religion or of God, or only such as were fashioned upon their own wretched existence and untamed passions; but even of their community each member was as sensible that the stone hatchet he had made, the canoe he had hollowed out with it, or the bow for which he had exchanged a hatchet of his own making, was his, as are the members of the most law-regulated community, that they have a right |