=It is Membership in the Group Which Gives the Individual Whatever
Rights He Has.=--According to present conceptions this is still largely
true of legal rights. A State may allow a citizen of another country to
own land, to sue in its courts, and will usually give him a certain
amount of protection, but the first-named rights are apt to be limited,
and it is only a few years since Chief Justice Taney's dictum stated the
existing legal theory of the United States to be that the negro "had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." Even where legal
theory does not recognize race or other distinctions, it is often hard
in practice for an alien to get justice. In primitive clan or family
groups this principle is in full force. Justice is a privilege which
falls to a man as belonging to some group--not otherwise. The member of
the clan or the household or the village community has a claim, but the
stranger has no standing. He may be treated kindly, as a guest, but he
cannot demand "justice" at the hands of any group but his own. In this
conception of rights within the group we have the prototype of modern
civil law. The dealing of clan with clan is a matter of war or
negotiation, not of law; and the clanless man is an "outlaw" in fact as
well as in name.
=Joint Responsibility= and mutual support, as shown in the blood feud,
was a natural consequence of this fusion of political and kindred
relations. In modern life States treat each other as wholes in certain
respects. If some member of a savage tribe assaults a citizen of one of
the civilized nations, the injured party invokes the help of his
government. A demand is usually made that the guilty party be delivered
up for trial and punishment. If he is not forthcoming a "punitive
expedition" is organized against the whole tribe; guilty and innocent
suffer alike. Or in lieu of exterminating the offending tribe, in part
or completely, the nation of the injured man may accept an indemnity in
money or land from the offender's tribe. Recent dealings between British
and Africans, Germans and Africans, France and Morocco, the United
States and the Filipinos, the Powers and China, illustrate this. The
State protects its own members against other States, and avenges them
upon other States. Each opposes a united body to the other. The same
principle carried out through private citizens as public agents, and
applied to towns, is seen in the practice which prevailed in the Middle
Ages. "When merchants of one country had been defrauded by those of
another, or found it impossible to collect a debt from them, the former
country issued letters of marque and reprisal, authorizing the plunder
of any citizens of the offending town until satisfaction should be
obtained." Transfer the situation to the early clan or tribe, and this
solidarity is increased because each member is related to the rest by
blood, as well as by national unity. The Arabs do not say "The blood of
M. or N.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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