CHAPTER II

RIGHT AND DUTY

"Judges ought to know that the poorest peasant is a man as well as the king himself; all men ought to obtain justice, since in the estimation of justice all men are equal, whether the prince complain of a peasant, or a peasant complain of the prince."

-Frederick the Great.

Every intelligent person has a sense of right and wrong. Take a thousand people in New York, or in San Francisco, or in Peking, or anywhere in the world. Examine them individually, and the chances are that all will agree to this: "Some things are right; some things are wrong"; although no two of them may agree as to what is right or what is wrong. The reason why they agree in the one thing and differ in the other is that the former is a matter of conscience while the latter is a matter of judgment. To this further consideration will be given in Chapter XV. What we wish to observe here is that all men everywhere recognize and assent to the one proposition:

"Some things are right; some things are wrong."

This gives us a starting-point for ethics and for character-building. These are but two phases of the same thing, upright manhood-good citizenship. Ethics defines and emphasizes good principles; character embodies good conduct. Ethics is the science of right, and character exemplifies it.

Right refers properly to action or conduct. For example, we say that it is right to pay one's debts; it is right to be honest and industrious; it is right to be patriotic. In other cases we use the term right as a noun. For example, we say that voting is a right of citizenship; education is a right of childhood; innocence has a right to protection. But in these several uses there is no real change in the sense of the term. We mean that it is right for the citizen to vote; that it is right for children to be educated; that it is right for the strong to protect the innocent.

Right as a noun is frequently used in the plural number. We speak of human rights, civil rights, political rights, the defence of rights, and the Bill of Rights. Mr. Jefferson said:

men are

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."1

Magna Carta is a great bill of rights. So in reality is the Petition of Right, signed in 1628 by Charles I. William and Mary signed a bill of rights in 1689, and George Mason in 1776 wrote another. Most constitutions, or fundamental laws, contain what is in essence if not in form a bill of rights. In the constitution of the United States the first ten amendments were made to take the place of a more formal bill of rights. In every instance a bill of

1. In the Declaration of Independence.

rights is intended to define and to defend certain important things that are regarded as right for the people concerned to have, to do, or to be. Constitutions do not create rights, but they are very useful in defining and protecting them.

The correlative of right is duty. Right and duty can exist only as they coexist. The legal force of duty is expressed by such terms as owing, obligation, debt; its moral or ethical force is above all sceptered sway and is concentrated in our strongest monosyllable, ought. Right establishes duty. Duty is obligation to right. When a right exists a duty cannot be escaped.

While right applies to an act, duty applies to an agent.2 In other words, while right distinguishes conduct, duty binds a person. Right cannot properly be predicated of the motion of a machine; neither can duty exist as a mere abstraction. Right action (or wrong action) must be voluntary personal action. All rights belong to persons or to other living beings. All duties are debts that intelligent beings owe to other beings, intelligent or sentient. It can hardly be said that the lower animals owe duties to man, but man certainly owes duties to them. It is the duty of humanity to treat them humanely. To this extent, at least, beasts and birds have rights.

It is a maxim of law that the owner of property shall so use it as not to injure the property of an

2. See N. K. Davis's Elements of Ethics, page 137.

other. It is because my neighbor has a right that I have a duty. To make it concrete: He has a garden; I have chickens. Because it is right for him to enjoy the fruits of his labors it is my duty to have a poultry fence high enough and tight enough to keep my birds at home. I cannot rob him of his right; neither can I escape my duty. If I do not respect his rights I cease to be his neighbor, but my duty does not cease. Moreover, if I do not respect his rights it becomes his duty to assist me in that respect. Without good reason, it is not right for him to surrender a right. A right is too sacred to be treated with indifference or surrendered through cowardice. And furthermore, my neighbor cannot weakly surrender his right without endangering the rights of the community. For if he should allow my chickens to fly over the fence into his garden, I might thereby be emboldened after awhile to leave the gate open and turn my chickens loose upon the whole neighborhood.

Rights and duties are both sacred. They stand or fall together. They are fundamental in all human relations; they are vital to welfare and happiness. Ethics is the science of right; but we may say, just as truly, that it is the science of duty, the science of obligation, the science of ought.

A right is inalienable so far as any outside agency is concerned. Neither force nor fraud can touch it or diminish it. A burglar may break into a house, but he has no right there. His presence, his success, does not affect the owner's right in any

measure. He may carry off the silver plate, but he cannot carry off the owner's right. A gang of ruffians may set upon a lone traveler; they may beat him and bind him; they may deprive him temporarily or permanently of his personal liberty; but they cannot deprive him of his right to liberty. Neither can unjust imprisonment do so.

A writ of habeas corpus does not confer the right of personal liberty. It is only an instrument intended, under the constitution, to enable the prisoner to secure the personal liberty to which he may have a right.

No man, no set of men, can rob me of a single right. But I can transfer certain of my rights to others, if I please. For example, if I sell my book to Mr. Jones, and he pays for it what I agree to take in exchange, he gets not only my book but also my right to that book. Voluntarily I transfer to him my right, along with the book. Moreover, by neglect, by misuse, by trespass, I may forfeit a right— even the right to live. No earthly power can rob me of any right; but I may, by my own misconduct, forfeit all my rights.

nature, in human Good health is a It is sometimes

This principle is recognized in nature, in civil law, in divine law. right, but it is not always realized. forfeited through bad habits by the individual himself; then nature takes it away. If his bad health is due to the fault of his parents or of his associates, his right to a strong body still remains intact. The confidence of our fellow men may be our right, but if we betray that confidence we lose it. This is ac