Such selfish, absorbing, and destructive agitations could evidently find no place under institutions, which, instead of offering dazzling prizes to the few, should, on the contrary, secure to each individual, without discrimination, the full enjoyment of his right to labor, to hire capital on which to labor, and to hold all the legitimate fruits of his labor. The mass of men, under such circumstances, could not be withdrawn from the quiet enjoyment of their just and natural rights, and the pursuit of their highest interests, to enlist, as they now do, as mercenaries under the lead of ambitious, rapacious, and unprincipled men, or to lend themselves as tools in their iniquitous enterprises of avarice and aggrandizement. Ambition, therefore, for want of troops, if for no other reason, would be obliged to abandon its war upon the equal rights of men; and to apply itself to achievements that promise good, instead of evil, to man in the aggregate. Thus preëminent minds, that are now employed and exhausted in the projection and execution of great plans of rapacity and power, in fierce struggles for the elevation of the few, and the corresponding prostration of the many, would be driven, by a sort of moral necessity, to seek more peaceful employments. And these other employments would generally be of such philosophical, scientific, or literary kinds, as active minds delight in, and such as conduce to the physical, intellectual, or moral advancement of the human family at large. And mankind at large, being thus relieved from many of those turbulent collisions, which now inflame their passions, and pervert their judgments, and having more leisure and quiet for intellectual pursuits, would rapidly acquire a more humane and intellectual character.
Political Results. If the several propositions stated in chapter second, were recognized as law, and if their effects upon the pecuniary conditions of men should be such as it is here claimed they would be, the only true and rightful ends of all political institutions, so far as they relate to men’s pecuniary conditions, would seem to be very nearly accomplished. For what rightful objects have political institutions, in reference to pecuniary matters, beyond that of securing to each individual the free exercise of his natural right to acquire all he can by honest and moral means, and of his right to the control and disposition of all his honest acquisitions? Each man has the natural right to acquire all he honestly can, and to enjoy and dispose of all that he honestly acquires; and the protection of these rights is all that any one has a right to ask of government in relation to them. It is all that he can have, consistently with the equal rights of others. If government give any individual more than this, it can do it only by taking it from others. It, therefore, in doing so, only robs one of a portion of his natural, just, and equal rights, in order to give to another more than his natural, just, and equal rights. To do this, is of the very essence of tyranny. And whether it be done by majorities, or minorities, by the sword, the statute, or the judicial decision, it is equally and purely usurpation, despotism, and oppression.
Labor is one of the means, which every man has a natural right to employ for the acquisition of property. But in order that a man may enjoy his natural right to labor, and to acquire all the property that he honestly can by it, it is indispensable that he enjoy fully and freely his natural right to make contracts; for it is only by contract that he can procure capital on which to bestow his labor. And in order that he may obtain capital on the best possible terms, it is indispensable that his natural right of contract be entirely unrestricted by any arbitrary legislation; also that all the contracts he makes be held obligatory fully to the extent, and only to the extent, to which, according to natural law, they can be binding.
But nearly all the positive legislation, that has ever been had in this country, either on the part of the general or state governments, touching men’s right to labor, or their right to the fruits of their labor, or their rights of contract—whether such legislation has had reference directly to banks and banking, to the rates of interest, to insolvency and bankruptcy, to the distribution of the debtor’s effects among his creditors, or to the obligation or enforcement of contracts—nearly all has been merely an attempt to substitute arbitrary for natural laws; to abolish men’s natural rights of labor, property, and contract, and in their place establish monopolies and privileges; to create extremes in both wealth and poverty; to obliterate the eternal laws of justice and right, and set up the naked will of avarice and power; in short, to rob one portion of mankind of their labor, or the fruits of their labor, and give the plunder to the other portion.
Some of this legislation has probably been the result of an ignorance of natural law; but very much of it has undoubtedly been the result of deliberate design.
The system proposed would take men’s pecuniary interests, in a great measure, out of the hands of the legislative branch of the government, and leave them to rest upon immutable principles of natural law, to be ascertained by the judiciary. If this were accomplished, the “natural, inherent, and inalienable right of individuals to acquire, possess, and dispose of property,” would then have at least a semblance of reality in actual life; and would cease to be treated, as it now is, as a mere privilege to be enlarged, contracted, or utterly withholden, as those who administer the government may arbitrarily dictate. But so long as this right is admitted to be a subject of arbitrary legislation, so long it will be perpetually infringed, invaded, and denied, by innumerable legislative devices of the cunning and the strong, which a large portion of society, the ignorant, the weak, and the poor, can neither ferret out, nor resist.
If the judiciary should assert and maintain, (as they are constitutionally bound to do,) the natural right of all men to acquire, possess, and dispose of property, in accordance with the principles of natural law, they would do such a deed for freedom, humanity, and right, as has never yet been done since government was instituted. And why do they not do it? Many, if not all our state constitutions declare, either in form or substance, that “the right to acquire, possess, and dispose of property, is a natural, inherent, and inalienable right.” The legal authority of this constitutional declaration, is to prohibit and annul all legislative enactments whatsoever, that would infringe the right of any individual to acquire and dispose of property on the principles of natural law. This principle may not, perhaps, be distinctly asserted in all our state constitutions; but it is, nevertheless, everywhere law; law, by an infinitely higher authority than constitutions and statutes. The right, (whether practically acknowledged, or not,) is an “inherent, essential, inalienable right” of human nature: it is the natural and necessary right of providing for one’s own subsistence; and can no more be surrendered to government, (which is but an association of individuals,) than to a single individual. It is, therefore, in the nature of things, impossible that any government can have the right, (however it may have the power,) to infringe it. Why, then, do not the judiciary sustain this principle, and annul all the arbitrary legislation against banking? against particular rates of interest? and all the other legislation, by which individuals are deprived of their natural right to make contracts, naturally lawful, for the acquisition and disposal of property? and by which a few monopolists are enabled to control so large a portion of the labor and capital of the community? Is the reason to be found in their ignorance? their cowardice? their bigotry? or in their corrupt subserviency to the other departments of the government, from whom they receive their appointments and salaries, and to whom alone they are made amenable for their conduct?
Were