A Moral Right

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 4, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 22.

THE State, then, can not give the person the right to liberty, nor can it deprive him of that right. True liberty is not a boon conferred on us by our fellow citizens, having its origin in sentimentality or utilitarianism, and withdrawable on a change in the mood or calculation of the ruling section; it is, as already insisted, the expression of our moral nature. True, even a State wholly given over to utilitarianism might allow numerous liberties to its citizens, but as it would not allow the “right” to liberty in general, or to any liberty in particular, the citizens, or sections of them, would hold their freedom on a most insecure tenure. Moreover the right to liberty not being allowed, liberties would be granted to which the recipients had no moral right—as the world rightly uses the term at present—and withheld where, as we at present should say, such right emphatically existed.

The effect of denying that personal right is the inspiration and constraining and directing force of the legislative activities of the ruling section of the nation, is to leave the nation and all the individuals composing it at the mercy of the doctrine that might is now right,—a doctrine to be modified, tho hardly improved, by the introduction of an element of unprincipled sentimentality and hysterical humanitarianism. —From “The Foundations of Liberty,” by E. F. B. Fell.