Hindus, for example, hold that rights ought to be apportioned according to caste. In the Mohammedan world the doctrine of fate completely overtops and stifles the doctrine of equal rights. A considerable portion of the human race hold that women have no rights. A majority of the civilized races hold that woman's rights are inferior to man's rights, and we ourselves do not consider them embraced in the term “popular sovereignty.” Yet they are one half of the human race, and the more meritorious half.[1]
I shall assume, without further argument, that the rights of life, liberty, and property, including land, all rest upon experience, translated, after infinite trouble, conflict, and bloodshed, into law, and this notwithstanding any opinions of the Supreme Court that can be quoted to the contrary.
A title to anything, land or personal property, is defined to be “a just cause of exclusive ownership,” and a title-deed is the accepted evidence of the same. The law tells us what shall constitute just cause of exclusive ownership and what shall constitute good evidence of it. It is the same law, as to its origin, that fixes, prescribes, defines, and enforces all rights.
The law has prescribed in this country the following among other things: (1) That human life shall not be taken except in self-defense or by due process of law; (2) that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; (3) that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist except as a punishment for crime—this is placed last because it was enacted last.
On the ground of salus populi suprema lex the state holds command over the lives and fortunes of its citizens, and to this sovereignty land forms no exception. The state may draft the citizen into its army or navy, and send him into battle where he may be killed. It may likewise take his landed property or his personal property. It is the sole judge of the occasions and the reasons. But it must act in accordance with its own constitution. It must not arbitrarily choose A, B, and C to go to the wars. It must not take private property without just compensation. If it does these things, it subverts itself and plunges into chaos.
There is no peculiar sacredness about land titles as distinguished from other titles. If the annual tax on land is not paid,
- ↑ Jeremy Bentham has given an analysis of the phrases in common use which are synonymous with law of nature, such as moral sense, common sense, law of reason, natural justice, natural equity, and fitness of things. “Common sense,” he says, “means a sense of some kind or another which the author affirms is possessed by all mankind; the sense of those whose sense is not the same as his being struck out of the account as not worth taking... . If such a man,” he adds, “happens to possess the advantages of style, his book may do a considerable deal of mischief before the nothingness of it is understood.” (“Principles of Morals and Legislation,” chap, ii.)
