other effort towards human emancipation have set
themselves up to destroy. Even the "right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" is conditioned by the manner of use, and the same
is true of every other and unspecified right. I do not propose to speak
here of more than one aspect of this self-evident truth, but the single
instance I cite is one that bears closely on the question of our
industrial and economic situation; it is the responsibility to society
of property or capital on the one hand and of labour on the other, when
both invoke their "rights" to justify them in oppressing the general
public in the pursuit of their own natural interests.

During the Middle Ages, just as the political theory maintained that
while a king ruled by divine right, this right gave him no authority to
govern wrong, so the social theory held that while a man had a right to
private property he had no right to use it against society, nor could
the labourer use his own rights to the injury of the same institution.
Power, property and labour must be used as a _function_, i.e., "an
activity which embodies and expresses the idea of social purpose."
Unless I am mistaken, this is at the basis of our "common law."

As Mediaevalism gave place to the Renaissance this Christian idea was
abandoned, and increasingly the obligation was severed from the right,
which so became that odious thing, privilege. Intolerable in its
injustice and oppression, this privilege, which by the middle of the
eighteenth century had become the attribute of the aristocracy, was
completely overthrown, in France first of all, and a new doctrine of
rights was enunciated and put in operation. Unfortunately the result was
in essence simply a transforming of privilege from one body to another,
for the old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitant
of acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the Middle
Ages; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusively
individualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists who
formulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgation
synchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion of
industrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead of
England in accepting the new system, they hardened into an iron-clad
scheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holders
and manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy of
Lock