Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/505

Rh weaker man's wife or property, and kills or enslaves him, as the case may be. It is safe to say that this has been the state of man in all countries “ere human statute purged the gentle weal.”

The village community, in which the land was held in common for the villagers (not for everybody), was the outgrowth of law, of art, of convention; but even this was subject to the law of the strongest, in the sense that every village community was liable to be dispossessed by any wandering tribe better armed, or more numerous or braver, that might suddenly emerge from the neighboring forest or mountain. The feudal system displaced the village community because the village could not protect itself against armed robbers.

The recent searching examination of “natural rights” by Prof. Sumner renders it unnecessary for me to go more deeply into this branch of the subject. What are commonly and loosely called natural rights are the outcome of centuries of hard knocks, the results of training, education, and experience, the very flower and last refinement of art as applied to society and government. Mr. Clarke cites certain decisions of the Supreme Court to show that natural rights have “their seat in the bosom of God and their voice in the harmony of the world,” to quote from Hooker's definition of law. But all such opinions are obiter to this discussion. That our ideas of natural rights, civilized though we be, change greatly in the progress of time, is proved by our own recent history, the right to liberty having been denied by a majority of Americans within our time.

Conjoined to the doctrine of natural rights, though not a necessary part of it, is the doctrine of equal rights, which I share as fully as anybody. But, if I attempt to draw generalizations from it, I am confronted by the fact that it is not universally held, but is really confined to a small portion of the human family. The