XIX. The Law of Nature Divine and Supreme

(The American Catholic Quarterly lie view, 1HSH.)

THE LAW OF NATUEE DIVINE AND SUPREME.

€ARLYLE says somewhere in his History of the French Revolution, " Nature rests on dread foundations, and Pan, to whose music the nymphs dance, has in him a cry which drives men distracted." The cry of Nature in behalf of starving men seems to have robbed some people of their wits.

The Atlantic cable has so fully explained the circumstances under which I appealed to the law of Nature that I hardly like to weary the reader with a repetition. Nevertheless, I may so far return upon the past as to say that my words were spoken in a Conference, not a mere public meeting, and written for use in one of out most literary, I may say esoteric, reviews.

My object was to show the foundations, both natural and legal, of our English Poor Law, and to prove that its administration has drifted from its first prin ciples and deviated from its essential obligations. The relief of the poor in England until the 5 Elizabeth cap. 3 was by the voluntary action of private and ecclesiastical charity. Both in the tithes and in the lands of the Church the poor had a share by right. The bona.ecclesiastica were described as " Vota fidelium, pretia peccatorwn, patrimonia pauperum" (the oblations of the faithful, restitution for sin, the patrimony of the poor). I am not one of those who believe that the relief of the poor before the suppression of the monas teries was adequately discharged by the monasteries. They were, indeed, a thousand centres from which alms daily flowed. But this must have been partial and local. Their lands were one-third of the land in Eng land, but the population of the remaining two-thirds were not relieved by them. For these the palaces of the Bishops, the homes of the clergy, the castles of the rich, and the houses of the faithful at large afforded such relief as was given and received. The whole of this almsgiving was voluntary, springing from the law of Christianity, and resting ultimately on the law of Nature.

When the Act of Elizabeth made this natural obligation compulsory by law it did not extinguish nor suspend the Christian or the natural law. Nor did this law recognise only the obligation of those who possess by the positive and human law. It also recognised the natural riijht of the poor to share in the common sustenance of the earth.

Now, this high and sacred foundation of our Poor Law has been absolutely denied by many. It has been the habit to denounce it in all notes and tones. Even so moderate a man as Mr. Fawcett asks whether it might be wise and just to abolish the Poor Law, and answers only that " it would not be wise and just to abolish it precipitately." If put to the vote of the rate payers I fear that it would certainly be abolished. But if there be a natural right in the poor to sustenance in time of extreme need, the Poor Law can never be abolished. Nevertheless, even good and generous people do not know or remember that such a natural right, with its correlative natural obligation, exists. They pay their poor-rate, so they think, as a tax, or out of pure benevolence and gratuitous charity. This habit of mind rests on a denial of the rights and obligations of Nature, and generates an essentially erroneous and even immoral habit of mind. To combat this perversion of morals and to recall people, if possible, to a higher sense of duty, I affirmed that the foundation of our Poor Law is the natural right of the poor to work or to bread. The next morning the Times newspaper rebuked me for countenancing this " popular fallacy." Truths are not fallacies, and fallacies are not truths. To call it a fallacy is to call it a falsehood, and to propagate such a denial of truth both natural and Christian is fraught with consequences both harsh and dangerous.

It can hardly be necessary to justify what I have said among Catholics, I might even say among Christians; but both Catholics and Christians are often not fully aware of the broad and solid ground on which they habitually rest. I will, therefore, draw out in full what the other day I gave only in reference. I do this not out of pedantry, but out of prudence, for some good men may, for want of knowledge, be misled.

The doctrine of the Catholic Church may be briefly stated in the words of S. Thomas Aquinas, who sums up what had been always and everywhere taught before him; and his Summa Theologica, with the Holy

Scripture, has been laid open in (Ecumenical Coun cils as the highest authority in the traaition of Catholic doctrine.

I. By the law of Nature all men have a common right to the use of things which were created for them nnd for their sustenance.

II. But this common right does not exclude the possession of anything which becomes proper to each. Tho common right is by natural law, the right of property is by human and positive law, and the positive law of property is expedient for three reasons:

1. What is our own is more carefully used than what is common.

2. Human affairs are better ordered by recognised private rights.

3. Human society is more peaceful when each has his own, protected by the law of justice: sunm cuique.

III. Theft, therefore, is always a sin, for two reasons:

1. It is contrary to justice.

2. It is committed either by stealth or by violence.

IV. But the human and positive law cannot derogate from the natural and Divine law. According to the Divine law all things are ordained to sustain the life of man. and therefore the division and appropriation of things cannot hinder the sustenance of man in case of necessity. Therefore, also the possessions of those who have food superabundantly are due by the natural law for the sustenance of the poor. 8. Ambrose, quoted in the "Decretals," says: "It is the bread of the famishing that you keep hack and the clothing of the naked that you lay by; the money you hury in the earth is the release and liberation of those who are in misery."

For the sake of those who may not have ready access to the works of S. Alphonsus, the following passages may be given.

The text of Busenbaum is as follows: " Qui pro *e rel allo in cxtrema necessitate constitute alienum acclplt quantum nccessarium cst, ncc furatur nee tcnctur rcstituere postca sic assumptum, si quidcm reet spe indigens fuit."

It is to be remembered that S. Alphonsus consulted for his theology some eight hundred authors, and his decisions, therefore, rest upon the widest foundation, and may be safely followed.

S. Alphonsus says that this doctrine is certain, and is founded upon the doctrine of S. Thomas, that in such a case " all things are common;" for the law of nations, by which the division of goods was intro duced, cannot derogate from the law of nature. " Though in extreme necessity a poor man has a right (jus halet) to the goods of others, he has not a right to the extra ordinary goods of others, but only to those which ordinarily suffice for the sustenance of life." He says that "as the poor man has a right (jus liabet} to take what he needs, no one -ought to hinder his taking it." "Forasmuch as in extreme necessity all things are common, a rich man is bound in justice to give help

1 S. Thomas Aquin., Summa Thcolog., 2da 2drc, quasst. Ixvi art 1, 2, 5, 7.

to the poor, because the poor mail may justly take it, even without the will of the owner " (cum ille juste possit eain surripere etiam invito domino, ct suant facere). Throughout the whole treatise S. Alphonsus repeats over and over again the word^s or right possessed by the poor man.2

This doctrine lies at the foundation of the positive law of property in all Christendom. It exists as an unwritten law in all Catholic countries; in France it is the droit <iu travail, in England it is clothed in a legal statute in our Poor Law, under which every one has " a right either to work or to bread without work." In the old Scotch law it was recognised under the title of Burden sech: A starving man had a right to carry away as much meal as he could on his back. All these authorities I give not by way of example or exhortation to larceny, but in proof of the natural right from which they flow.

My friends in America have kindly sent me the newspapers which have commented upon my words, and I learn from them that the opinions of judges, barristers, and divines have been asked and obtained on what I have said. I have read their opinions with great care. Those of Judge Altfield, Judge Preudergast, Judge Baker, and Mr. Brady are calm, solid, and judicial opinions, all the more remarkable because, not having the context of my words before them, they were compelled, like comparative anatomists, to construct the whole skeleton by proportion and measurement.

7 Thcologia Moralis, lib. iii. tract v. cap. i. torn. i. pp. 333, 334, 335. Ed. Bassano, 1647.

In this they have shown a true judicial acumen, for which I thank them. Judge Waterman wisely says that to clothe the lawfulness of taking a neighbour's bread, in extreme necessity, in the form of a legal enactment would be unwise and mischievous. In this I fully agree. Such questions belong to conscience and moral theology. The right to bread or to work may be clothed in positive law, but to erect the lawfulness of breaking a law into an enactment would lead at least to confusion. I wish I could equally commend the answers of the divines. The discernment of jurists at once perceived the law of Nature which underlies all positive law. It may seem strange that the divines did not even more rapidly discern it. Any Catholic priest would have at once seen that the question was one not of courts of law, but of moral theology. But here moral theology hardly exists except in the Catholic Church. I do not pretend to know how this may be among the Protestant communions of America. I speak only of England. In the Established Church the chief and almost the only works of moral theology are Bishop Andrewes on the Ten Commandments, Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, and Bishop Sander son's Cases of Conscience. All three are nearly forgotten. Jeremy Taylor's works are voluminous, elaborate, and eloquent. He believed, however, that his chief and most enduring work would be his Ductor Dubitantium. It is simply forgotten. It is a large folio of casuistry, the nearest approach in Protestant literature to the moral theology of the Catholic Church. No one now but a student here and there reads it VOL. in. c c

Few even know of its existence. It forms no part of the education of non-Catholic divines. The truth is that three hundred years ago the chairs of Canon Law and Moral Theology were abolished.

It must always he home in mind that my purpose was to justify and elevate the Poor Law of England, by showing that it was founded upon the natural right of man to life and to the sustenance of life. In proving this I was compelled to show that this natural law is supreme over all positive law. The two questions, though distinct, are indivisible, as we have seen in tho texts°already cited from S. Thomas and S. Alphonsus. The opponents of the Poor Law, to evade the main question, promptly seized on the latter to escape the former. My words were as follows: " The obligation to feed the hungry springs from the natural right of every man to life, and to the food necessary for the sustenance of life. So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all positive laws of property. Necessity has no law; and a starving man has a natural right to his neighbour's bread. I am afraid that those who speak so confidently about rights, obligations, and laws have not studied, or have forgotten the first principles of all human positive law. If the law of property did not rest upon a natural right it could not long exist. They who deny it justify the dictum, La propru'te cest levo[ Before the natural right to live all human laws must give way."3 I gave the example of the natural law of self-defence, before which the commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," gives way.¹

The calm and business-like way in which you in America have treated this matter contrasts with the hasty utterances of some of my countrymen, and brings out the historical difference of your fresh and vigorous commonwealth as compared with our old, traditional, unreflecting society in England. We are like the Great Babylon of old, with its massive walls and gates and hanging gardens, on which time has no power. In our city of three days' journey the minds of men are slow to move. The past is forgotten in the present, the present is the rule of opinion; old truths revived are looked on as novelties and modern errors; whatsoever is the popular opinion of the day is supposed to be the tradition of all time. Most men believe that all things are as they were from the beginning, and that what is new to them cannot be true. Mr. Lowell has sketched to the life our confidence in the supremacy of our wis dom:

" England really thinks The world is all in darkness if she only winks."

I have committed Use majestc by rudely reminding some who rule over public opinion in London of the fresh mother earth and of the primeval laws which protect her offspring. I was unconscious of my audacity. I thought I was uttering truisms which all educated men knew and believed. But I found that these primary truths of human life were forgotten, and that on this forgetfulness a theory and a treatment of our poor had formed a system of thought and action which hardens the hearts of the rich and " grinds the faces of the poor." I am glad, therefore, that I said and wrote what is before the public, even though for a time some men have called me Socialist and Revolutionist, and have fastened upon a subordinate consequence, and neglected the substance of my contention in behalf of the natural rights of the poor.

Footnotes

1. Fortnightly Review, January 1888, p. 154. ↩