The New Zealand Tablet WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1925. LIMITATION OF RIGHTS IN THE STATE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 40, 21 October 1925, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1925. LIMITATION OF RIGHTS IN THE STATE

THE State arises from the nature of man, • and is consequently a natural entity. More closely, the State is a fellowship

of persons — is of beings endowed with reason and free will and capable subjects of moral responsibility. As a result the Stale must not only have an existence, but a reasoned existence, in accord with man’s highest attribute, Reason. Thus Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the State was formed that men might not only live, but live nobly. A German puts it in a nutshell in the phrase which describes the State as the realised order of Right. It is an organic being; it is a person— a moral personality “capable of taking up into itself the feelings and thoughts of a people, of uttering them in laws, and of realising them in facts.” It is no metaphor to call it a person, for rights and duties and such notes of personality really attach to it. But now if the business of the State is to define, maintain, and secure not only its own rights but those of individuals, this means that both its own rights and the rights of individuals must necessarily limit each other at times.

The old Schoolmen taught the sound doctrine that kings exist for the people, but Tudor tyrants and sycophant parsons abolished this wholesome teaching and in its place held that the people existed for the Icings, whose “right divine to govern wrong” in their wrong-headed way they defended, just as they defend all sorts of stupid and foolish things to-day. It was not until the searing sword of the French Revolution burnt out that sort of moonshine that common people began to realise that they had any sort of rights at all—beyond that of being chattels for some Norman Lord or other tyrant. If the Revolution did nothing else that was good it brought home to men that « ?s. they had certain natural rights, not acci- & dental but belonging to their very person's" ality and human nature. Among those rights fundamental were and are: — The right to live; 2. The right to use the human Y faculties, or in other words to exercise per-

sonal liberty; 3. The right to possess property, which is the exercise of personal liberty; 4. The right to share in the legislation and to be a vital pari in the organisation of the commonwealth. These rights are fundamental but they are not absolute; they are conditioned by duties and are subject to the moral law, and also to limitations arising from relationship to other rights, and particularly to those of the State. It is true that even aboriginal rights are conditioned by duties : even the right . to live is conditioned by the duty of living in a rational manner; for, as St. Paul says, “if any man would not work, neither should he eat.” Again, personal freedom is to a great extent conditioned by limits which arise from relations with the State. Thus, though thought is free, morality and good order might demand the punishment of a person whose thoughts are expressed aloud, or, though men have, a,right to meet publicly, they have no right to meet in places where they become a nuisance to others. We cannot, therefore, hold that man's right to personal liberty means a right to do what he likes with his personal, faculties of soul and body ; and in the same way, thong!) man lias t lie right to possess property, he lias no- L , tlie right to exercise unlimited dominion over it at all times. Not only is man a steward for God iii the administration of the goods he holds, but also there is such a thing as the a]him dominium of the State, whereby man's property is fiduciary and held not merely lor the benefit of the individual, hut also for 1 lie commonwealth: hence, the view of Aquinas that the relief of poor members of the community is not only a debt of charity but even a debit it in legale. The Schoolmen would put this another way by saying that property is a natural right, but only in the secondary sphere of such rights, while the right to live is a natural right belonging to the primary sphere. In conflict the right of property must yield to the higher right to live. Thus, whatever an unjust positive law might declare, a starving man has a perfect right to take from another in order to save himself from dying of hunger. We are aware that this conclusion will not recommend itself to the profiteering class, but it is quite true all the same.

Human law lias wandered from the right road of ethics, and what is right ami just comes as a shock to persons who have been imbued with the false notions generated by wrong laws. In truth, rights and duties go hand in band, though we hear so much about rights nowadays and so little about duties. The dictates of right reason often run counter to the perverted conclusions of the English school of Utilitarian politics, which has so debased the public mind in our time. Laws made in the interests of the rich —and of the unscrupulous rich — are apt to ignore the fact that society, or the commonwealth, for which laws ought to be made, is an organism subject to the same eternal principles of Right and Justice by which rational man is bound and limited. If we examine in this light the right to vote, we must grant that it is limited by the duty to vote rightly. Hence, to sell a vote for money- ought to be reason enough for depriving a.man of his right to

vote for ever; and a pari of the man who prostitutes his vote to personal interest, to class interest, or to bigotry is guilty of an unworthy and an immoral action: such a man is a traitor to the commonwealth, and ought to be treated as a traitor instead of being rewarded and promoted as he too often is in corrupt communities in our day. thHritg