NATURAL RIGHTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4172, 14 August 1939, Page 2

NATURAL RIGHTS

“ A NOW DISCREDITED. DOCTRINE.” CENTENARY OF HENRY GEORGE. September 2nd of this year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henry George, and it will be celebrated as such by his many followers throughout the democracies of the world. It is avowedly in view of this* centenary that the editors of “Discussion Books,” brought out at the beginning of the year, as No. 20 of their series, “Single-Tax George,” by Arthur Birnie.

The author reviews, not only the books but the life of Hanry George, and his. book will repay perusal. Referring to “The Condition of Labour,” Henry George’s reply to Pope Leo XIII’s Enteyclical Letter on Labdur, Mr Birnie says: “In his controversy with the Pope, George had the advantage of starting from the same major premise as his adversary. Both 'believed in the famous, but now discredited doctrine of natural rights.” “It is a pity,” he adds in a footnote, “that George thought it necessary to hitch his economic theory to this obsolescent political philosophy. It exposed him to damaging attacks of that of T. H. Huxley and others.

Much as if one were to say, “It is a pity that George budded his house upon a rock, thereby exposing it to damaging attacks by wind and rain and flood. He should have built it upon the sand, as any wordly man would.” /

Fbr Henry George not merely hitched his economic theory to the doctrine of natural rights, he founded his political economy upon it as upon the bedrock of eternal justice. . As Louis F. Post, well put it, in dedicating to George his “Ethics of Democracy,” Henry George was “a Philosopher who profoundly explored the principles of social life for very love of mankind, a Political Economist who scientifically traced economic lalws to their roots in the moral law, a popular leader who quailed before no moral wrong, a devoted champion whose faith was grounded in moral right, a constructive Statesman who saw in the ethics of democracy the natural laws of human progress.” Mr James Truslow Adams, writing in Harper’s Monthly some years ago, said: “There are, of course, no ‘natural rights.’ l Nature knows nothing of rights. She knows only laws.” But why “of course ? ” Surely, “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal,” two of the Ten Commandments, are natural laws. And surely the necessary corrollaries from these natural laws are that each and every man, woman and chfld has a natural right —an equal natural right—not to be killed and not to be stolen from. Surely, no man-made law can make it right to murder and right to steal; or make it less wrong to murder one person than another, or less wrong to steal from one person thon from another. The whole case for Democracy can be argued from the two natural laws above-cited; for the lives of all and the property rights of all can only be safe in the hands of all. And surely, no other form of Government but a Democracy is consistent with the Christ-given natural

law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Hence, no doubt, the anti-God tendencies of all totalitarian States. What had that great seer, Thomas Carlyle, to say about the matter?—■ “Foolish men imagine that because judgement for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice but an accidental one here below, . . In the centre of the whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God. The great soul of the World is juat. In this, God’s world, with its wild, whirlwind eddies and mad foam oceans where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgement for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou therefore think that there is no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart.”