A Manual of Moral Philosophy

by Andrew P. Peabody

But if with the dangerous classes of men the dread of capital punishment is a dissuasive from crimes of violence, so that the number of murders is less, and the lives of peaceable citizens are safer, than were murder liable to some milder penalty, then it is the undoubted right of the public to confiscate the murderer's right to life, and thus to sacrifice the smaller number of comparatively worthless lives for the security of the larger number of lives that may be valuable to the community. Or again if, by the profligate use of the pardoning power, the murderer sentenced to perpetual imprisonment will probably be let loose upon society unreformed, and with passions which may lead to the repetition of his crime, it is immeasurably more fitting that he be killed, than that he be preserved to do farther mischief. Yet again, if there be in the death-penalty for murder an educational force,—if by means of it each new generation is trained in the greater reverence for human life, and the greater detestation and horror of the crime by which it is destroyed,—then is capital punishment to be retained as a means of preserving an incalculably greater number of lives than it sacrifices. On these grounds, though in opposition to early and strong conviction, we are constrained to express the [pg 068] belief that, in our time and country, the capital punishment of the murderer is needed for the security of the public, and is justified as a life-saving measure.

In enforced military service, also, legal authority exposes the lives of a portion of the citizens for the security of the greater number. It is an unquestionable truth that, in its moral affinities, war is generated by evil, is allied to numberless forms of evil, and has a countless progeny of evil. But it is equally true that war will recur at not unfrequent intervals, so long as the moral evils from which it springs remain unreformed. Such are the complications of international affairs, that the most righteous and pacific policy may not always shield a people from hostile aggressions; while insurrection, sedition, and civil war may result not only from governmental oppression, but from the most salutary measures of reform and progress. In such cases, self-defence on the part of the nation or the government assailed, is a right and an obligation, due even in the interest of human life, and still more, in behalf of interests more precious than life. Moreover, even in a war of unprovoked aggression, the aggressive nation does not forfeit the right of self-defence by the unprincipled ambition of its rulers, and, war once declared, its vigorous pursuit may be the only mode of averting disaster or ruin. Thus war, though always involving atrocious wrong on the part of its promoters and abettors, becomes to the nations involved in it a necessity for which they are compelled to provide.

This provision may, in some cases, be made by voluntary enlistment; but in most civilized countries, it has been found necessary to fill and recruit the army by conscription, thus forcibly endangering the lives of a portion of the citizens, in order to avert from the soil and the homes of the people at large the worse calamities of invasion, devastation, and conquest. So far as this is necessary, it is undoubtedly right, and the lives thus sacrificed are justly due to the safety and well-being of the whole people. But in making this admission, we would say, without abatement or qualification, that war is essentially inhuman, barbarous, and opposed to and by the principles and spirit of Christianity, and that should the world ever be thoroughly Christianized, the ages when war was possible, will be looked back upon with the same horror with which we now regard cannibalism.

Associated with the right to life, and essential to its full enjoyment, is the right to liberty. This includes the right to direct one's own employments and recreations, to divide and use his time as may seem to him good, to go where he pleases, to bestow his vote or his influence in public affairs as he thinks best, and to express his own opinions orally, in writing, or through the press, without hindrance or molestation. These several rights belong equally to all; but as they cannot be exercised in full without mutual interference and annoyance, the common sense of mankind, uttering itself through law, permits each individual to enjoy them only so far as he can consistently with [pg 070] the freedom, comfort, and well-being of his fellow-citizens.

Slavery is so nearly extirpated from Christendom, that it is superfluous to enter into the controversy, which a few years ago no treatise on Moral Philosophy could have evaded. It was defended only by patent sophistry, and its advocates argued from the fact to the right, inventing the latter to sustain the former.

Personal liberty is legally and rightfully restricted in the case of minors, on the ground of their immature judgment and discretion, of their natural state of dependence on parents, and of their usual abode under the parental roof. The age of mature discretion varies very widely, not only in different races, but among different individuals of the same race, as does also the period of emancipation from the controlling influence of parents, and of an independent and self-sustaining condition in life. But, as it is impossible for government to institute special inquiries in the case of each individual, and as, were this possible, there would be indefinite room for favoritism and invidious distinctions, there is an intrinsic fitness in fixing an average age at which parental or quasi-parental tutelage shall cease, and after which the man shall have full and sole responsibility for his own acts. It is perfectly obvious that the liberty of the insane and feeble-minded ought to be restricted so far as is necessary for their own safety and for that of others. There is, also, in most communities, [pg 071] a provision by which notorious spendthrifts may be put under guardianship, and thus restrained in what might be claimed as their rightful disposal of their own property. This may be justified on the ground that, by persistent wastefulness, they may throw upon the public the charge of their own support and that of their families.

Imprisonment is, on the part of society, a measure, not of revenge, but of self-defence. The design of this mode of punishment is, first, to prevent the speedy repetition of the crime on the part of the person punished; secondly, so to work, either upon his moral nature by confinement, labor, and instruction, or at the worst, on his fears, by the dread of repeated and longer restraint, that he may abstain from crime in future; and lastly, to deter those who might otherwise be tempted to crime from exposing themselves to its penal consequences. As regards the prisoner, he has justly forfeited the right to liberty by employing it in aggression on the rights of others.

As regards acts not in themselves wrong, the freedom of the individual is rightfully restrained, when it would interfere with the health, comfort, or lawful pursuits of his neighbors. Thus no man has the right, either legal or moral, to establish, in an inhabited vicinage, a trade or manufacture which confessedly poisons the air or the water in his neighborhood; nor has one a moral right (even if there are technical difficulties in the way of declaring his calling a nuisance), to annoy his neighbors by an avocation [pg 072] grossly offensive or intolerably noisy. It is on this ground alone that legislation with reference to the Lord's day can be justified. Christians have no right to impose upon Jews, Pagans, or infidels, entire cessation of labor, business, or recreation on Sunday, and the attempt at coercive measures of this kind can only react to the damage of the cause in which they are instituted. But if the majority of the people believe it their duty to observe the first day of the week as a day of rest and devotion, they have a right to be protected in its observance by the suppression of such kinds, degrees, and displays of labor and recreation as would essentially interfere with their employment of the day for its sacred uses.

2. The right to property is an inevitable corollary from the right to liberty; for this implies freedom to labor at one's will, and to what purpose can a man labor, unless he can make the fruit of his labor his own? All property, except land, has been created by labor. Except where slavery is legalized, it is admitted that the laborer owns the value he creates. If it be an article made or produced wholly by himself, it is his to keep, to use, to give, or to sell. If his labor be bestowed on materials not his own, or if he be one of a body of workmen, he is entitled to a fair equivalent for the labor he contributes.

Property in land, no doubt, originated in labor. A man was deemed the proprietor of so much ground as he tilled. In a sparse population there could have been no danger of mutual interference; and in every [pg 073] country, governments must have been instituted before there was a sufficiently close occupation of the soil to occasion collisions and conflicts among the occupants. The governments of the early ages, in general, confirmed the titles founded in productive occupancy, and treated the unoccupied land as the property of the state, either to be held in common, to be ceded to individual owners in reward of loyalty or services, or to be sold on the public account.