THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY
yo the assertion that - before the rights of property must stand the rights of man,” the answer is that property has no t iglit.s. Only man has rights. Property is a dead thing, it cannot thcici'ore possess anything. Alueh less can it exercise rights, because rights arc personal functions and, therefore, the exercise of rights can onlv be indulged in by individual members of society. Whoever heard of a house exercising a right of way’’ The only time a house moves without human assistance is during the occurrence of an earthquake wdien, if it moves at all, it mo\es, or rather is moved, to destruction. ’J o talk about the rights of property” then, is pure nonsense. It is only a way of referring to one set of rights. Property lights are personal rights, and the rights, of property cannot be invaded without invading the rights of some men. It is as well to bear this in mind when talking about putting property on the one side and humanity on the other. No such division can ever be made.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WC19360114.2.49
Bibliographic details
Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 11, 14 January 1936, Page 6
Word Count
183THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 11, 14 January 1936, Page 6
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Wanganui Chronicle. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.