Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation / Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet

by Thomas Hill Green

229. This has affected the condition of the industrial classes in at least two ways: (1) When the application of accumulated capital to any work in the way of mining or manufacture has created a demand for labour, the supply has been forthcoming from men whose ancestors, if not themselves, were trained in habits of serfdom; men whose life has been one of virtually forced labour, relieved by church—charities or the poor law (which in part took the place of these charities); who were thus in no condition to contract freely for the sale of their labour, and had nothing of that sense of family—responsibility which might have made them insist on having the chance of saving. Landless countrymen, whose ancestors were serfs, are the parents of the proletariate of great towns. (2) Rights have been allowed to landlords, incompatible with the true principle on which rights of property rest, and tending to interfere with the development of the proprietorial capacity in others. The right to freedom in unlimited acquisition of wealth, by means of labour and by means of the saving and successful application of the results of labour, does not imply the right of anyone to do as he likes with those gifts of nature, without which there would be nothing to spend labour upon. The earth is just as much an original natural material necessary to productive industry, as are air, light, and water, but while the latter from the nature of the case cannot be appropriated, the earth can be and has been. The only justification for this appropriation, as for any other, is that it contributes on the whole to social well-being; that the earth as appropriated by individuals under certain conditions becomes more serviceable to society as a whole, including those who are not proprietors of the soil, than if it were held in common. The justification disappears if these conditions are not observed; and from government having been chiefly in the hands of appropriators of the soil, they have not been duly observed. Landlords have been allowed to 'do what they would with their own,' as if land were merely like so much capital, admitting of indefinite extension. The capital gained by one is not taken from another, but one man cannot acquire more land without others having less; and though a growing reduction in the number of landlords is not necessarily a social evil, if it is compensated by the acquisition of other wealth on the part of those extruded from the soil, it is only not an evil if the landlord is prevented from so using his land as to make it unserviceable to the wants of men (e.g. by turning fertile land into a forest), and from taking liberties with it incompatible with the conditions of general freedom and health; e.g. by clearing out a village and leaving the people to pick up house-room as they can elsewhere (a practice common under the old poor-law, when the distinction between close and open villages grew up), or, on the other hand, by building houses in unhealthy places or of unhealthy structure, by stopping up means of communication, or forbidding the erection of dissenting chapels. In fact the restraints which the public interest requires to be placed on the use of land if individual property in it is to be allowed at all, have been pretty much ignored, while on the other hand, that full development of its resources, which individual ownership would naturally favour, has been interfered with by laws or customs which, in securing estates to certain families, have taken away the interest, and tied the hands, of the nominal owner—the tenant for life—in making the most of his property.

230. Thus the whole history of the ownership of land in Europe has been of a kind to lead to the agglomeration of a proletariate, neither holding nor seeking property, wherever a sudden demand has arisen for labour in mines or manufactures. This at any rate was the case down to the epoch of the French Revolution; and this, which brought to other countries deliverance from feudalism, left England, where feudalism had previously passed into unrestrained landlordism, almost untouched. And while those influences of feudalism and landlordism which tend to throw a shiftless population upon the centres of industry have been left unchecked, nothing till quite lately was done to give such a population a chance of bettering itself, when it had been brought together. Their health, housing, and schooling were unprovided for. They were left to be freely victimised by deleterious employments, foul air, and consequent craving for deleterious drinks. When we consider all this, we shall see the unfairness of laying on capitalism or the free development of individual wealth the blame which is really due to the arbitrary and violent manner in which rights over land have been acquired and exercised, and to the failure of the state to fulfil those functions which under a system of unlimited private ownership are necessary to maintain the conditions of a free life.

231. Whether, when those functions have been more fully recognised and executed, and when the needful control has been established in the public interest over the liberties which landlords may take in the use of their land, it would still be advisable to limit the right of bequest in regard to land, and establish a system of something like equal inheritance, is a question which cannot be answered on any absolute principle. It depends on circumstances. Probably the question should be answered differently in a country like France or Ireland, where the most important industries are connected directly with the soil, and in one like England where they are not so. The reasons must be cogent which could justify that interference with the control of the parent over his family, which seems to be implied in the limitation of the power of bequeathing land when the parent's wealth lies solely in land, and which arises, be it remembered, in a still more mischievous way from the present English practice of settling estates. But it is important to bear in mind that the question in regard to land stands on a different footing from that in regard to wealth generally, owing to the fact that land is a particular commodity limited in extent, from which alone can be derived the materials necessary to any industry whatever, on which men must find house-room if they are to find it at all, and over which they must pass in communicating with each other, however much water or even air may be used for that purpose. These are indeed not reasons for preventing private property in land or even free bequest of land, but they necessitate a special control over the exercise of rights of property in land, and it remains to be seen whether that control can be sufficiently established in a country where the power of great estates has not first been broken, as in France, by a law of equal inheritance.

232. To the proposal that 'unearned increment' in the value of the soil, as distinct from value produced by expenditure of labour and capital, should be appropriated by the state, though fair enough in itself, the great objection is that the relation between earned and unearned increment is so complicated, that a system of appropriating the latter to the state could scarcely be established without lessening the stimulus to the individual to make the most of the land, and thus ultimately lessening its serviceableness to society.

O. THE RIGHT OF THE STATE IN REGARD TO THE FAMILY.

233. In the consideration of those rights which do not arise out of the existence of the state, but which are antecedent to it (though of course implying society in some form), and which it is its office to enforce, we now come to family or household rights—also called, though not very distinctively, rights in private relations—of which the most important are the reciprocal rights of husband and wife, parent and child. The distinctive thing about these is that they are not merely rights of one person as against all or some other persons over some thing, or to the performance of or abstention from some action; they are rights of one person as against all other persons to require or prevent a certain behaviour on the part of another. Right to free life is a right on the part of any and every person to claim from all other persons that course of action or forbearance which is necessary to his free life. It is a right against all the world, but not a right over any particular thing or person. A right of property, on the other hand, is a right against all the world, and also over a particular thing; a right to claim from any and every one certain actions and forbearances in respect of a particular thing (hence called 'jus in rem'). A right arising from contract, unlike the right of property or the right of free life, is not a right as against all the world, but a right as against a particular person or persons contracted with to claim a certain performance or forbearance. It may or may not be a right over a particular thing, but as it is not necessarily so, while it is a right against a particular person or persons in distinction from all the world, it is called 'jus in personam' as distinct from 'in rem.' The right of husband over wife and that of parent over children (or vice versa) differs from the right arising out of contract, inasmuch as it is not merely a right against the particular person contracted with, but a right against all the world. In this respect it corresponds to the right of property; but differs again from this, since it is not a right over a thing but over a person. It is a right to claim certain acts or forbearances from all other persons in respect of a particular person: or (more precisely) to claim a certain behaviour from a certain person, and at the same time to exclude all others from claiming it. Just because this kind of right is a right over a person, it is always reciprocal as between the person exercising it and the person over whom it is exercised. All rights are reciprocal as between the person exercising them and the person against whom they are exercised. My claim to the right of free life implies a like claim upon me on the part of those from whom I claim acts and forbearances necessary to my free life. My claim upon others in respect of the right of property, or upon a particular person in respect of an action which he has contracted to perform, implies the recognition of a corresponding claim upon me on the part of all persons or the particular party to the contract. But the right of a husband in regard to his wife not merely implies that all those as against whom he claims the right have a like claim against him, but that the wife over whom he asserts the right has a right, though not a precisely like right, over him. The same applies to the right of a father over a son, and of a master over a servant.

234. A German would express the peculiarity of the rights now under consideration by saying that, not only are persons the subjects of them, but persons are the objects of them. By the 'subject' of rights he would mean the person exercising them or to whom they belong; by 'object' that in respect of which the rights are exercised. The piece of land or goods which I own is the 'object' of the right of property, the particular action which one person contracts to perform for another is the 'object' of a right of contract; and in like manner the person from whom I have a right to claim certain behaviour, which excludes any right on the part of anyone else to claim such behaviour from him or her, is the 'object' of the right. But English writers commonly call that the subject of a right which the Germans would call the object. By the subject of a right of property they would not mean the person to whom the right belongs, but the thing over which, or in respect of which, the right exists. And in like manner, when a right is exercised over, or in respect of a person, such as a wife or a child, they would call that person, and not the person exercising the right, the subject of it. By the object of a right, on the other hand, they mean the action or forbearance which someone has a right to claim. The object of a right arising out of contract would be the action which the person contracting agrees to perform. The object of a connubial right would not be, as according to German usage, the person in regard to, or over, whom the right is exercised—that person would be the subject of the right—but either the behaviour which the person possessing the right is entitled to claim from that person, or the forbearances in respect to that person, which he is entitled to claim from others. (Austin, I. 378 and II. 736.) Either usage is justifiable in itself. The only matter of importance is not to confuse them. There is a convenience in expressing the peculiarity of family rights by saying, according to the sense of the terms adopted by German writers, that not only are persons subjects of them but persons are objects of them. It is in this sense that I shall use these terms, if at all.

235. So much for the peculiarity of family rights, as distinct from other rights. The distinction is not merely a formal one. From the fact that these rights have persons for their objects, there follow important results, as will appear, in regard to the true nature of the right, to the manner in which it should be exercised. The analytical, as distinct from the historical, questions which have to be raised with reference to family rights correspond to those raised with reference to rights of property. As we asked what in the nature of man made appropriation possible for him, so now we ask (1) what it is in the nature of man that makes him capable of family life. As we asked next how appropriations came to be so sanctioned by social recognition as to give rise to rights of property, so now we have to ask (2) how certain powers exercised by a man, certain exemptions which he enjoys from the interference of others, in his family life, come to be recognised as rights. And as we inquired further how far the actual institutions of property correspond with the idea of property as a right which for social good should be exercised, so now we have to inquire (3) into the proper adjustment of family rights, as determined by their idea; in what form these rights should be maintained; bearing in mind (a) that, like all rights, their value depends on their being conditions of which the general observance is necessary to a free morality, and __(b)__ their distinctive character as rights of which, in the sense explained, persons are the objects.

236. (1) We saw that appropriation of that kind which, when secured by a social power, becomes property, supposes an effort on the part of the individual to give reality to a conception of his own good, as a whole or as something permanent, in distinction from the mere effort to satisfy a want as it arises. The formation of family life supposes a like effort, but it also supposes that in the conception of his own good to which a man seeks to give reality there is included a conception of the well-being of others, connected with him by sexual relations or by relations which arise out of these. He must conceive of the well-being of these others as a permanent object bound up with his own, and the interest in it as thus conceived must be a motive to him over and above any succession of passing desires to obtain pleasure from, or give pleasure to, the others; otherwise there would be nothing to lead to the establishment of a household, in which the wants of the wife or wives are permanently provided for, in the management of which a more or less definite share is given to them (more definite, indeed, as approach is made to a monogamistic system, but not wholly absent anywhere where the wife is distinguished from the female), and upon which the children have a recognised claim for shelter and sustenance.

237. No doubt family life as we know it is an institution of gradual growth. It may be found in forms where it is easy to ignore the distinction between it and the life of beasts. It is possible that the human beings with whom it first began—beings 'human' because capable of it—may have been 'descended' from animals not capable of it, i.e. they may have been connected with such animals by certain processes of generation. But this makes no difference in the nature of the capacity itself, which is determined not by a past history but by its results, its functions, that of which it is a capacity. As the foundation of any family life, in the form in which we know it, implies that upon the mere sexual impulse there has supervened on the part of the man a permanent interest in a woman as a person with whom his own well-being is united, and a consequent interest in the children born of her, so in regard to every less perfect form out of which we can be entitled to say that the family life, as we know it, has developed, we must be also entitled to say that it expresses some interest which is in principle identical with that described, however incompletely it has emerged from lower influences.