A Manual of Moral Philosophy

by Andrew P. Peabody

Chapter VI.

Rights And Obligations.

Of the things that are fitting and right, there are some which, though they may be described in general terms, cannot be defined and limited with entire accuracy; there are others which are so obvious and manifest, or so easily ascertained, that, in precise form and measure, they may be claimed by those to whom they are due, and required of those from whom they are due. These last are rights, and the duties which result from them are obligations. Thus it is right that a poor man should be relieved; and it is my duty, so far as I can, to relieve the poor. But this or that individual poor man cannot claim that it is my duty rather than that of my neighbor to minister to his needs, or that I am bound to give him what I might otherwise give to his equally needy neighbor. He has no specific right to any portion of my money or goods; I have no specific obligation to give him anything. But if a man has lent me money, he has a right to as much of my money or goods as will repay him with interest; and I am under an obligation thus to repay him. Again, it is right that in the public highway there should be, among those who make it their thoroughfare, mutual [pg 062] accommodation, courtesy, and kindness; but no one man can prescribe the precise distance within which he shall not be approached, or the precise amount of pressure which may be allowable to his abutters in a crowd. Nor yet can the individual citizen occupy the street in such a way as to obstruct those who make use of it. He has no exclusive rights in the street; nor are others under obligation to yield to him any peculiar privileges. But he has a right to exclude whom he will from his own garden, and to occupy it in whatever way may please him best; and his fellow-citizens are under obligation to keep their feet from his alleys and flower-beds, their hands from his fruit, and to abstain from all acts that may annoy or injure him in the use and enjoyment of his garden.

Rights—with the corresponding obligations—might be divided into natural and legal. But the division is nominal rather than real; for, in the first place, there are no natural rights, capable of being defined, which are not in civilized countries under the sanction and protection of law; secondly, it is an open question whether some generally recognized rights—as, for instance, that of property—exist independently of law; and, thirdly, it may be maintained, on the other hand, that law is powerless to create, competent only to declare rights.

One chief agency of law as to rights is exercised in limiting natural rights. Considered simply in his relation to outward nature, a man has a manifest right to whatever he can make tributary to his enjoyment [pg 063] or well-being. But his fellow-men have the same right. If, then, there be a restricted supply of what he and they may claim by equal right, the alternative is, on the one hand, usurpation or perpetual strife, or, on the other, an adjustment by which each shall yield a part of what he might claim were there no fellow-claimant, and thus each shall have his proportion of what belongs equally to all. To make this adjustment equitably is the province of law. The problem which it attempts to solve is, How may each individual citizen secure the fullest amount of liberty and of material well-being, consistent with the admitted or established rights of others? Under republican institutions, this problem presents itself in the simplest form, society being in principle an equal partnership, in which no one man can claim a larger dividend than another. But where birth or condition confers certain peculiar rights, the problem must be so modified, that the rights conceded to the common citizens shall not interfere with these inherited or vested rights. In either case, the rights of each member of the community are bounded only by the conterminous rights of others. Obligations correspond to rights. Each member of the community is under obligation, always to refrain from encroachment on the rights of others, and in many cases to aid in securing or defending those rights, he on like occasions and in similar ways having his own rights protected by others.

We will consider separately rights appertaining to the person, to property, and to reputation.

1. Rights appertaining to the person. The most essential of these is the right to life, on which of course all else that can be enjoyed is contingent. This right is invaded, not only by direct violence, but by whatever may impair or endanger health. The corresponding obligation of the individual member of society is to refrain from all acts, employments, or recreations that may imperil life or health, and of society collectively, to furnish a police-force adequate to the protection of its members, to forbid and punish all crimes of violence, to enact and maintain proper sanitary regulations, and to suppress such nuisances as may be not only annoying, but harmful.

But the citizen is entitled to protection, only so long as he refrains from acts by which he puts other lives in peril. If he assault another man with a deadly weapon, and his own life be taken in the encounter, the slayer has violated no right, nay, so far as moral considerations are concerned, he is not even the slayer; for the man who wrongfully puts himself in a position in which another life can be protected only at the peril of his own, if his own be forfeited, has virtually committed suicide. Nor is the case materially altered, if a man in performing an unlawful act puts himself in a position in which he may be reasonably supposed to intend violence. Thus, while both law and conscience would condemn me if I killed a thief in broad daylight, in order to protect my property,—if a burglar enter my house by night with no intention of violence, and yet in the surprise [pg 065] and darkness of the hour I have reason to suppose my life and the lives of my family in danger from him, the law regards my slaying of such a person as justifiable homicide; and my conscience would acquit me in defending the right to life appertaining to my family and myself, against one whose intention or willingness to commit violence was to be reasonably inferred from his own unlawful act.

Society, through the agency of law, in some cases and directions limits the right of the individual citizen to life, and this to the contingent benefit of each,—to the absolute benefit of all. So long as men are less than perfect in character and condition, there must of necessity be some sacrifice of life; but this sacrifice may be reduced to its minimum by judicious legislation. Now, if without such legislation the percentage of deaths would be numerically much higher than under well-framed laws, the lives sacrificed under these laws are simply cases in which the right of the individual is made to yield to the paramount rights of the community. Thus, there can be no doubt, that contagious disease of the most malignant type could, in many cases, be more successfully treated at the homes of the patients than in public hospitals. But if by the removal of patients to hospitals the number of cases may be greatly diminished, and the contagion speedily arrested, this removal is the right of the community,—yet not under circumstances of needless privation and hardship, not without the best appliances of comfort, care, and skill [pg 066] which money can procure; for the public can be justified in the exercise of such a right, only by the extension of the most generous offices of humanity to those who are imperilled for the public good.

It is only on similar grounds that the death-penalty for murder can be justified. The life of the very worst of men should be sacrificed only for the preservation of life; for if it be unsafe to leave them at liberty, they may be kept under restraint and duress, without being wholly cut off from the means of enjoyment and improvement. The primeval custom of the earlier nations required the nearest kinsman of the murdered man to kill the murderer with his own hand, and in so doing to shed his blood, which was believed to have a mysterious efficacy in expiating the crime. This form of revenge was greatly checked and restricted by the institutions of Moses; it fell into disuse among the Jews, with their growth in civilization; and was certainly included in the entire repeal of the law of retaliation by Jesus Christ.[5]