Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard BosanquetGreen, Thomas Hill
Philosophy
Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation: Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet
Green, Thomas Hill
Liberty; Natural law; Political obligation
135. That, however, is the beginning, not the end, of the state.
When once it has come into being, new rights arise in it (1) through
the claim for recognition on the part of families and tribes living
on the same territory with those which in community form the state,
but living at first in some relation of subjection to them. A common
humanity, of which language is the expression, necessarily leads to
the recognition of some good as common to these families with those
which form the state. This is in principle the recognition of rights
on their part; and the consequent embodiment of this recognition in
the laws of the state is their admission as members of it. (Instances
of this process are found in the states of Greece and the early
history of Rome.) (2) The same thing may happen in regard to external
communities ('external' territorially), whether these have been
already formed into states or no. It may happen through the conquest
of one by another, through their submission to a common conqueror,
as under the Roman empire, or through voluntary combination, as
with the Swiss cantons and the United States of America. However
the combination may arise, it results in new rights as between the
combined communities within the system of a single state. (3) The
extended intercourse between individuals, which the formation of the
state renders possible, leads to new complications in their dealings
with each other, and with it to new forms of right, especially in
regard to property; rights as far removed from any obvious foundation
on the _suum cuique_ principle as the right of a college to the great
tithes of a parish for which it does nothing. (4) The administration
of the state gives rise to rights, to the establishment of powers
necessary for its administration. (5) New situations of life may
arise out of the extended dealings of man with man which the state
renders possible (e.g. through the crowding of population in certain
localities) which make new modes of protecting the people a matter
virtually of right. And, as new rights arise in the state once
formed, so further purposes are served. It leads to a development and
moralisation of man beyond the stage which they must have reached
before it could be possible.
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