Private right

“ But is it fair to judge of rights which appertain to the structure of our government, and are necessary for its proper administration, and the safety of the people, by analogy to a private association of individuals, whose rights, if not regulated by express contract, are regulated by the arbitrary dictates of positive law? You may suppose a private association to be regulated by any principles which you may please to fancy, and hence may suppose the right of instruction to exist or not at your pleasure. ”

“ The PUBLIC use of the reason always should be free, but the PRIVATE use ought always to be rigidly restricted. By public use, I mean the scientific, literary use; by private, that which may be taken advantage of by civil officials and public functionaries. Since the governmental machinery must be kept in motion, in order to preserve unity and attain our object, we must not reason; we must obey. But the same individual who is bound, from this point of view, to passive obedience, has the right to speak in his capacity of citizen and scholar. ”

“ Such is the difference between one government and another, and of such important concernment is the nature and administration of government to a people. And to say that private men have nothing to do with government, is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness and misery.
What is the publick, but the collective body of private men, as every private man is a member of the publick? And as the whole ought to be concerned for the preservation of every private individual, it is the duty of every individual to be concerned for the whole, in which himself is included. ”

“ I shall, therefore, says a writer on government, assume it as an incontrovertible position, as a first principle, that the right of private opinion, which is, in fact, no other than the right of private judgment upon any subject presented to the mind, is a sacred right, with which society can, on no pretense, authoritatively interfere, without a violation of the first principles of the law of nature. ”

“ Then, why is there any distinction to be made between relinquishing property and privilege, when the public good requires it, which in all exigencies must confessedly be just? for, if change of circumstances were to have no weight with the legislature in directing human affairs, what would the intercourse of mankind end in, but contention between private interest and public good? But so long as we are blessed with a happy constitution, and rulers possessing humanity united with wisdom, what have we to fear? ”

“ In the valleys of private law, in the very humblest relations of life, must be collected, drop by drop, so to speak, the forces, the moral capital, which the state needs to operate on a large scale, and to attain its end. Private law, not public law, is the real school of the political education of the people, and if we would know how a people, in case of need, will defend their political rights and their place among the nations, let us examine how the separate members of the nation assert their own right in private life. ”

“ The man of conservative ideas and interests means by the rights, which are to be equally exercised, only those rights which are defined and protected by the law—the more fundamental of which are the rights to personal freedom and to private property. ”

“ If we go outside the sphere of private, into that of public law, we find the list of personal rights greatly increased. Citizenship, honours, dignities, and official position in all its innumerable forms pertain to the law of status, not to that of property. ”

“ Thus, we may view the historical development of the privilege as one which groped for the proper scope of governmental power over the citizen. As a "noble principle often transcends its origins," the privilege has come rightfully to be recognized in part as an individual's substantive right, a "right to a private enclave where he may lead a private life. ”

“ In other words, it has been generally admitted by the wisest and broadest statesmanship, that private rights and personal liberty do not exist by the permission of municipal law. They are natural and founded upon the law of reason ”

“ But when a man is said to obey an authority from interest in a common good, some other good is meant than that which consists in escaping the punishment which the authority would inflict on disobedience. Is then the conception of common good which is alleged a conception of it on the part of those who founded or who maintain the institutions in question? But is it not certain that private interests have been the main agents in establishing, and are still in maintaining, at any rate all the more artificial rights of property? ”

“ In considering the harm done to civic duty by selfish personal interests we were led to observe that the fewer points of contact between government and the pecuniary interests of private citizens, the better both for the purity of government and for the conscience of the private citizen. ”

“ It is foolish to say, that Government is concerned to meddle with the private Thoughts and Actions of Men, while they injure neither the Society, nor any of its Members. Every Man is in Nature and Reason, the Judge and Disposer of his own domestic Affairs; and according to the Rules of Religion and Equity, every Man must carry his own Conscience: So that neither has the Magistrate a Right to direct the private Behaviour of Men ”

“ Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights, as modelled by the municipal law. In this, and similar cases the legislature alone can, and indeed frequently does, interpose, and compel the individual to acquiesce. ”

“ To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular Government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed: Let me add, that it is the great desideratum, by which this form of Government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. ”

“ But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. We are bound then to distinguish clearly between the respective rights of the citizens and the Sovereign,9 and between the duties the former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they should enjoy as men. ”

“ And even private persons, when the present laws of their country are very inconvenient and prejudicial to the interests of the people, may lawfully desire an alteration of them, and may commendably endeavour to effect it in a legal manner, by making humble and dutiful application to those who are vested with the legislative power. ”

“ But if any man, whig or tory, shall take it into his head to think for himself, that he has a right to take my property without my consent, however tender I may be of the right of private judgment and the freedom of thought, this is a point in which I shall be very likely to differ from him, and to think for myself, that I have a right to resist him. ”

“ Then the creation or recognition by courts of a new private right may work serious injury to the general public, unless the boundaries of the right are definitely established and wisely guarded. In order to reconcile the new private right with the public interest, it may be necessary to prescribe limitations and rules for its enjoyment ”

“ Now, let this doctrine be applied; for I hold it to be no unwarrantable invasion of private character to apply these principles to public men. When public men openly and notoriously practise vice, they make the vice public, and bring it within public jurisdiction. ”

“ But all the same the law cannot become the guardian of our private manners. No Decalogue could cover the vast area of offences and no court could administer a law which governed our social civilities, our speech, the tilt of our eyebrows and all our moods and manners. ”

“ Such men alone could be partners in the true ownership of property, or sue and be sued in their own right, [16] and such an exclusive right to a full personality in private law they claimed in virtue of their public services or privileges—the duty of taking the field on horseback or in heavy armour, the right of uplifting their voices in the assembly when they acclaimed a king or ratified a law. ”

“ The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the publick, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the publick: Publick and private interest will secure each other; all will cheerfully give a part to secure the whole, and be brave to defend it.
These certain laws therefore are the only certain beginnings and causes of honesty and virtue amongst men. ”

“ True private property, is a political being permanently guided by good moral principles, because its interest is to do right; spurious, one as permanently guided by evil, because its interest is to do wrong. ”

“ Publick faith is the moral principle, called upon to defend monopoly and law charter, under the name of private property. Let us consider what this sanction is in a free government. If the government should solemnly, by law, enter into a contract with a number of individuals, the object of which was to diminish the liberty and wealth of the people, by increasing the power and wealth of the government and these individuals, does publick faith require From the nation a fulfilment of this contract? ”

“ Still more salutary is the moral part of the instruction afforded by the participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public functions. He is called upon, while so engaged, to weigh interests not his own; to be guided, in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities; to apply, at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the general good ”

“ Let us go around the fold, which is an extensive one, and, through its extensions, reach into almost every nook of private life.—Each private domain, indeed, physical or moral, offers temptations for its neighbors to trespass on it, and, to keep this intact, demands the superior intervention of a third party. ”

“ Everybody answers, “No; the authority of man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and truth.” The private will counts for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to make the law ”

“ How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgment should that law be considered, which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. ”

“ Hence, that subordination and harmony of private and public will must not wait to be produced, but must exist from the very beginning in the power which is to carry out the law of compulsion; in other words, the private will of that power and the common will of all persons must be one and the same will; the common will itself, and none other, must be the private will of this power, and the power must have no other particular will of its own at all. ”

“ Even vested rights are subject to the law of welfare involved in the original act establishing special privileges. Public use, not private interest, is the true reason for the existence of any such privileges or protection. ”

“ The State is abdicating and appealing in its holy functions to private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted let us catch only a glimpse of what free agreement has in store for us in the future, when there will be no more State. ”

“ They propose not to leave a single concealed private advantage in the statutes concerning the duties that can possibly be eradicated without affecting the part of the business that is sound and legitimate and which we all wish to see promoted. ”

“ A regulation which, instead of the equality nature ordains, creates an odious distinction between members of the same community ... and vests in a favored class, not in consideration of their public services but of their private possessions, the highest of all privileges. ”

“ Experience shows that that country—as compared with the other civilised states of Europe—is the most backward in civil and criminal legislation, in the law and liberty of property, in arrangements for art and science, and that objective freedom or rational right is rather sacrificed to formal right and particular private interest; and that this happens even in the institutions and possessions supposed to be dedicated to religion. The desirability of private persons taking part in public affairs is partly to be put in their concrete, and therefore more urgent, sense of general wants. ”

“ The idea underlying it is that the government, and every agent of the government, possesses a body of rights, privileges, and prerogatives which are sharply marked off from those of the private citizen, and that the nature and extent of these rights and privileges are to be determined on principles essentially distinct from those which govern in the fixing of the rights and privileges of citizens in relation one to another. ”

“ But while the realization in practice of public law and of criminal law is assured, because it is imposed as a duty on public officials, the realization in practice of private law is presented to individuals under the form of their legal rights; that is, it is left exclusively to them to take the initiative in its realization, left exclusively to their action. ”

“ They think, therefore, that not only all contracts between private citizens should be kept, but also public laws, which either a good prince has legally enacted, or a people neither oppressed by tyranny, nor circumvented by fraud, has sanctioned by common consent for the apportionment of the conveniences of life ”

“ It is, however, a curious characteristic of our people, or of the vocal minority of them, that while they insist on every possible interference with every private and personal right, in the field of moral conduct, they nevertheless will tolerate no interference whatever with property rights. ”