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
two forms previous to the establishment of what Grotius calls the
right of property by contract. There is (1) a right of property in
what each can 'take to his use and consume' out of the raw material
supplied by nature; (2) a further right of each man in that on which
he has expended labour. Grotius does not indeed expressly call this
a right, but if there is a right, as he says there is, on the part
of each man to that which he is able 'ad suos arripere usus,' much
more must there be a right to that which he has not only taken but
fashioned by his labour. On the nature and rationale of this right
Grotius throws no light, but it is clearly presupposed by that right
of property which he supposes to be derived from contract, and must
be recognised before any such contract could be possible.
[2] 'There is annexed to the sovereignty the whole power of
prescribing the rules whereby every man may know what goods he may
enjoy and what actions he may do without being molested by any of
his fellow-subjects: and this is it men call propriety. For before
constitution of sovereign power all men had right to all things,
which necessarily causeth war; and therefore this propriety, being
necessary to peace, and depending on sovereign power, is the act
of that power in order to the public peace.' (_Leviathan_, pt. II,
chap. xviii.) 'The nature of justice consisteth in keeping of valid
covenants, but the validity of covenants begins not but with the
constitution of a civil power, sufficient to compel men to keep them;
and then it is also that propriety begins.' (_Ibid_. chap, xv.)
215. Locke [1] treats property--fairly enough so long as only its
simplest forms are in question--as derived from labour. By the same
law of nature and reason by which a man has 'a property in his
own person,' 'the labour of his body and the work of his hand are
properly his' too. Now that the right to free life, which we have
already dwelt on, carries with it a certain right to property, to
a certain permanent apparatus beyond the bodily organs, for the
maintenance and expression of that life, is quite true. But apart
from the difficulty of tracing some kinds of property, in which men
are in fact held to have a right, to the labour of anyone, even of
someone from whom it has been derived by inheritance or bequest (a
difficulty to be considered presently), to say that it is a 'law of
nature and reason' that a man should have a property in the work
of his hands is no more than saying that that on which a man has
impressed his labour is recognised by others as something which
should be his, just as he himself is recognised by them as one that
should be his own master. The ground of the recognition is the same
in both cases, and it is Locke's merit to have pointed this out; but
what the ground is he does not consider, shelving the question by
appealing to a law of nature and reason.
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