the community or in the members of it, are not derived originally from positive enactment, or from calculations of profit and loss, or from desire of pleasure, comfort, or agreeable feeling: but arise in the nature of things. The fact of their gradual evolution in no sense militates against their natural origin. And the rights of the individual are deducible from that personality which he possesses as an ethical being. As a person he is free, and is entitled to the exercise and development of his various faculties, subject to the moral law. His rights are exercised, however, in a finite, material world, peopled by others who have the like rights. The fact that individuals, though conscious and reasonable, depend upon one another for their perfection, is the origin of society, and limits the idea of personality by the idea of solidarity. No individual exists who has no duty to other individuals. No individual exists who has not rights which are exclusively his own: rights in relation to other individuals; rights in relation to the social organisms of which he forms part. These social organisms, again, have rights against the individuals composing them, or coming into contact with them. And it is from the consideration of the reciprocal rights between men that the notion of duty between men-not the notion of duty in itself-arises. Human rights, then, whether in the community or in the members of it, have as their fons et origo, the nature of things. It will be remembered that

VII.]

ETHICS AND INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE. 219

I am speaking of that which belongs to moral beings as moral; and so to man, whose nature is ethical. Hence we arrive at Kant's definition of freedom: "the rights of an individual so far as they do not conflict with the rights of other individuals." But they do conflict. The conflict of rights in The moral beings, is a counterpart of that "struggle forale existence" of which Nature, "red in tooth and claw with ravine," everywhere gives testimony. And here comes in the office of Justice, in which, according to the Hellenic poet, "lies the whole of virtue's sum." Supply and Demand, Competition, Value, Price, all must be governed by Justice, all must be subordinated to the dictates of Eternal Righteousness, all must be brought under the moral law, or they are but other words for wrong and robbery.

But

We must account, then, of Political Economy as a branch of ethics. The doctrine of the moral responsibility of man is absolutely necessary to any human system of industrial science. We talk of the rights of capital, the rights of labour, and with reason. no man has the right to do a wrong. The very ideas of property and contract rest on duty: the duty of respecting another's possessions; the duty of fulfilling one's own pacts. And duty, let us insist, in passing, is no limitation of liberty.* It limits, * See pp. 57-61.

'indeed, the impulses of the natural will, the arbitrariness of the moral will. But it emancipates from the tyranny of passion; it delivers from the strife of ethical conflict. All this is hidden from the eyes of the political economists who pass as orthodox. One and all they are liable to the re'proach of Sismondi, that they regard "wealth as everything and men as nothing." Their conceptions are mechanical, not human; their doctrines induce atrophy of the moral sense.

"England! the time is come when thou shouldst purge Thy heart from its emasculating food;

The truth should now be better understood."

Wealth must be regarded, not as an end, but as a means subserving the higher life. Of that higher life the anarchy now prevailing in the economic order is destructive. In the extreme individualism, which is the outcome of material selfishness, consecrated under the formula of Supply and Demand, every man's hand is against every man. The employer asks how little he can give his workmen; the workman how much he can get out of his employer. The very notion of a just price has vanished from men's minds. It must be restored. Supply and Demand must be brought under the eternal rule of Right and Wrong. The salvation of society depends upon the recognition of the fundamental truth that the relations of men are ethical: that the moral law is the supreme rule of economics.

Let us consider the matter-not in detail, for that

VII.]

ABSOLUTE OWNERSHIP.

221

would want a volume to itself-but in a few of its bearings. The ordinary contention of the capitalist is that he has a right to do what he likes with his own. The proposition is wholly false. Νο man has a right to do what he likes. He has a right to do only what he ought. Again, what is his title to that which he calls "his own "? How did he, or how did those from whom it came to him, acquire it—justly or unjustly? Consider the number of noble houses in this country enriched with the spoils of the monasteries, the patrimony of the poor. Reflect upon the horrible wrongs, the systematic cruelty-you may read the sickening story in the pages of William Cobbett, of Robert Owen, or in Reports of Royal Commissions-by which colossal fortunes. were built up at the beginning of the present century. Well, you invoke prescription. And, no doubt, the principle of prescription is sound, and, indeed, necessary for the maintenance of society. But if we view the matter not from a legal, but from an ethical standpoint, can it be doubted that the present possessors of those illgotten gains owe a "ransom" to the community ? Supposing, however, that what a man calls "his own" has been justly acquired, how far is it really his own? Absolute ownership springs only from creation. Does the landlord create the harvest? Does the manufacturer create his wares? Ah, no. Neither the landlord nor the manufacturer- neither the labourer nor the operative-creates. They

merely develope the bounty of nature. To the Creator alone belongs absolute ownership. "The earth hath He given to the children of men indeed. But not as absolute owners: rather as usufructuaries, as stewards, as trustees. Nor, again, is the gift to individuals. It is to the race. By the law of nature, which is prior to all positive law, all men have a common right to the things which were created for them and their sustenance. It is the doctrine of the canonists-and, indeed, has from the first been held in the Catholic Church-that extreme necessity, in virtue of this aboriginal law, makes all things common, so that a person, in imminent danger of death by starvation, not by his own culpable fault, has the right to take, and therefore may without sin take from another, even against that other's will-etiam invito domino -enough food to save his own life. The right of private property is not a primary nor a specific part of the law of nature, but belongs to its secondary sphere. "It is not against the natural law," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "but is added thereto by the finding (adinventionem) of human reason." + To perfect social unity, variety and distinction of possession are requisite. Private property is necessary for the ordinary development of personality in the work-a-day world." It is neces

For the justification of what I say concerning the law of nature, see On Right and Wrong, pp. 113-115.

† Summa, 2, 2, q. 66, art. 2, ad. 1.