NATURAL RIGHTS by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 26.

NATURAL RIGHTS.

By Editor

THERE are many—and it is strange, too—who hold that when an individual enters society he relinquishes a portion of his "natural rights." Never was there a greater fallacy. Government exists, if it rightly exists, for the purpose of protecting those rights common to all. This is well stated by Congressman James G. Maguire, in a speech in Metropolitan Temple, San Francisco, May 22:—

"One of the great menaces to free institutions and to popular rights is the pernicious doctrine that 'in social matters there is no such thing as natural right.' It is taught with all of its malevolent deductions in nearly every college and university in our country. It is the gospel of class privileges, of oppressions, of monopoly, and of all forms of social injustice. It is the doctrine of expediency as opposed to principle. It is the doctrine of monarchy as opposed to democracy.

"Against this doctrine of medieval injustice the New Democracy must raise aloft the flaming sword of Eternal Truth. It must stand for the rights of man as God has given them. It must assert and maintain that the true function of government is to preserve those natural rights to all men by preventing interference with them.

"It is said by the teachers of expediency that 'in entering the social state man necessarily surrendered his natural rights, taking in their stead social rights, in which all natural rights were merged.' I deny that in entering the social state man surrendered any of his natural rights. He entered the social state for the sole purpose of having his natural rights more perfectly protected, not for the purpose of having those rights sold and himself reduced to conditions of misery, helplessness, and dependence unknown to the savage state.

"But it is said men must surrender some of their natural rights in entering a state of society, because men must give up the right to kill and rob and defraud each other.

"That proposition ignores the fact that man is a moral being, and as such, never had the right to kill or rob or defraud his fellow-man. Man never had a natural right to interfere with any of the equal rights of his fellow-men; therefore, in entering society, and agreeing not to interfere with such rights, he surrendered none of his natural rights.

"That whole doctrine is a most vicious and enslaving fallacy, and is the foundation of most of the social injustice prevailing in the civilized countries of the world.

"It has led to the invasion of natural rights, and to the universal interference by men with the natural rights of others, which it is the first and highest function of government to prevent."

This perversion of natural rights, this fallacy which Judge Maguire so ably combats, lies at the foundation of all religious legislation.

IMPARTING AND RECEIVING.

"It is said in a St. Louis Catholic paper that 'Catholic children may not be sent to the public schools without mortal sin on the part of their parents.' We have seen no such proclamation by the church. . . . . We can not doubt that there are hundreds of Catholic children in the public schools of St. Louis; and the very paper from which we get the statement declares that there are not a few Catholics who are teachers in the public schools. Certainly if it is a deadly sin to attend a public school, it must be an even deadlier sin to teach in one. And yet, so far as we have noticed, the Catholic Church nowhere discourages Catholics from teaching in such schools."—Independent.

That last sentence but one is an awkward stumble in the Independent's logic. The difference in teaching and attending to be taught is just the difference between imparting and receiving. The Roman Catholic Church is always ready to impart instruction, because she believes herself to be the divinely appointed teacher; but receiving instruction is quite another thing. The editor of the Independent would be glad to have all Roman Catholics read his paper, but he would not consent to have them edit it or fill its pages—or would he?