Next we may consider the following hypothesis: ‘My mother is a murderer and a thief. I commit no such crimes as she does, and live a virtuous life, yet I still respect my mother despite her crimes and refuse to turn her in because she is my mother, and she bore me, endured much pain to raise me and even had to steal to feed me sometimes. Without her I would have perished. I love my mother. Am I correct in doing this?’8
This poses interesting dilemmata. On the one hand, this man’s mother has broken the law in the most grievous of ways. She has infringed on the liberty of others not merely by the acquisition of unowned property but also by the unjustified removal of life (by which we define murder). Yet we are under the impression that without these actions, the mother would not have been able to raise her child, and her child, rightfully respecting his moral duty to love and respect his mother, will not report her crimes. A just response would seem to be as follows: the man has every right to love his mother, for she has indeed endured both the hardship of childbirth and of life in general in order to raise her child. No son could ever do anything but respect his parents for the work they put in to keep him happy and prepare him for life in mainstream society. However, the very fact that the man can continue to respect his mother for her status does not excuse her crimes. He may continue to love her, but if he is just, he should turn her in. Why? Because her actions serve only the damage of complete liberty, and if her example is not punished, further such damage will be more readily inflicted by others. If this man recognises justice and his fellow citizens and feels a connexion with them, feels that he owes them security and liberty in political society, then for their sake he will help justice to be served. The fact that his mother was forced by whatever need or poverty to rob and to kill for her children must not go unnoticed either, and surely proves a certain deficiency of government or society, which must be taken note of. By punishing those who, out of whatever good or ill will, damage the complete liberty of society, but also recognising that the means for such damage often comes from deficiencies of society itself, we and our neighbours may begin to work to remove the means for damage in the future. Thus, justice also produces the means for self-improvement.
There is one further brief enquiry to be made about this contention: the man states, ‘I commit no such crimes as she does, and live a virtuous life’. We have already defined virtue as that which benefits our fellow man, for if virtue is moral excellence, then it is proof of one’s ability to excel to put something towards the benefit of mankind. Therefore, given the arguments we have put forward above, we might contend that this man cannot be considered wholly virtuous if he continues to refuse to turn his mother in. It would be an asset to his nation and a proof of his virtue if he were to remove that moral blight upon his nation, the one who has murdered and taken what is not hers to take — not only property, but life itself. Perhaps, then, we would be more correct to assert that one can be virtuous not merely by abstaining from vice but rather by being unselfish: going out of one’s way to help one’s fellow man and serve the progress of humanity in doing so is true virtue, for it is removing thought of the self and instead focussing entirely on the benefit of those other than the self. Of course it will be impossible, due to human nature, to remove all thoughts and actions conceived purely for self-benefit, but to strive for virtue, we must adopt the helping of others as our primary philosophy. In this way, we can strive for the creation of completely libertarian societies and a progressive and more virtuous race of men.
This principle of virtue, however, presents us with yet more dilemmata: ‘If a man in greater poverty than I approaches me and begs for something, am I, if I am a virtuous man, obliged to give him whatever he asks for, since I should strive to cast off all thoughts for self and think entirely for the sake of others?’
The answer ‘yes’ to this conundrum would seem to be consistent with the principle of virtue that we have laid out before; however, if we think more deeply about what such action would mean in the context of society, it is in fact not so. If this man were to acquiesce to every request that each beggar made to him as he passed, then we would end up with the same situation as we began with, the roles simply reversed — the richer man as beggar and the beggars as richer men. So, to cast one’s cares from oneself onto others does not mean to cast one’s property onto them. We have already discovered that the freedom to own private property is a crucial component of complete liberty in a nation, so instead of impoverishing himself, the man should instead use his other political rights to petition his government to house the beggars until such time as they can find income and pay for housing of their own.
A caveat: whilst there is a moral duty of government to ensure that each citizen has the opportunity to enjoy liberty and happiness, there is a certain culture of dependence which grows from having the state provide things such as housing and income for long periods of time. A just government would be strict in its provision, for whilst it has a moral duty to do so, it also has a moral duty not to kill off its people’s aspiration by providing for them. Short-term economic support can be justified, so long as it really is short-term, and the opportunity for self-provision and aspiration can be offered to the neediest. Due to the natural inequality of man, there will always be a divide between rich and poor — how we approach the problem of provision, however, is merely a question of scale and extent. If the gap between rich and poor is remarkably large, then government has probably created far too great a culture of dependence.
It is Godwin’s claim that money, either that earned by one’s own labours or that inherited from ancestors, should be considered a general trust for the betterment of humankind. That is to say, a man should not be able to spend his own money at his own will, but rather he should only be permitted to spend it on things that are considered to be ‘beneficial’ to others, or indeed, if his neighbour lacks £100 that the rich man can spare, provided there is no better use for the money, the neighbour has a strong case for the money to be forcibly moved from the rich man to him. Such ideas are in fact a threat to liberty itself. Contrary to Godwin’s claims, such policies can never further complete liberty in a society, since it does not merely remove the freedom from the individual to exercise his own discretion with his own money and property, but it also exerts a mental oppression — a fear that the citizen will never know what forces might descend upon him to order him to spend his money on this or that thing, purely because it is deemed to be ‘beneficial’ to others. It is in fact a tyrannical and despotic notion, rather than one of liberty, to force anyone to spend his money in a particular way. Now, if a man has money to spare and wishes of his own volition to use it for charitable means, then that is a different matter entirely. He may choose to house the beggar because he can afford to, but in a society which holds liberty as its chief aim, no one has the right to claim that he is owed an amount of anything purely because he lacks it. Such entitlement swiftly leads to the destruction of liberty and the enforcement of tyranny, since the only way to claim property rightfully owned by others is either by theft or legal theft, such as via state confiscation of goods. The question of whether or not the rich man should petition his government, and then whether the government should help the beggars in their time of need, is purely a matter of morals. The virtuous man will, out of his concern for fellow citizens, surely campaign for better treatment of those beggars, and the virtuous government, wishing to offer complete liberty of mind and body to all, including those deprived citizens, should surely set about its own charitable means to pursue this end.
It is generally a falsehood of great evil to assume that an equality of property or income will assist in the progress of mankind. In a world in which property, both financial and otherwise, is constantly adjusted to ensure that no one has want of anything, there is indeed no point in humankind striving for anything. If the progress of humankind is the most crucial goal of virtue, then an egalitarian society has failed in coming close to that goal. When all own the
same, there is no need to strive for higher ends; there is no need for others to seek wealth, to be morally upright or to use their wealth for virtuous ends. If all simply ‘have the same’, then humankind is shackled in the pool of its own mediocrity, or indeed, as is more likely the case, poverty and tyranny. It has often been the promise of tyrants throughout the ages to offer equality, to offer a society where none shall ever have want of anything ever again, but in every case, it is the sorry truth of nature that the citizens have been stripped of any semblance of liberty, while the implementers of this new ‘society’ have ruled over them with absolute power. As we have said above, there can be no freedom in such a system, since a demand for the property of others leads only to despotism and control of the citizens within society.
When citizens are pitted against each other in struggles of entitlement, they do nothing but damage their society. One man will claim that he is entitled to the property of another, and that other man will then seek to defend his own property, and bitter moral wars ensue over who has the right to what. Such systems only destroy society, and all connexions with our fellow citizens are destroyed over squabbles that are petty compared to what could be achieved under a system of complete liberty; we shall explore this further in Book VI. The most effective societies are indeed those whose members are bound to each other by moral obligations, not by legal obligations regarding wealth. Any attempt to enforce such wealth obligations is by no means just, for it only destroys liberty, happiness and the progress of mankind; it is the mark of tyrants and tyrants alone.
Chapter III
Suicide and Lawful Killing
As a response to a similar excursus in Godwin, we shall consider the morality of suicide and the potential for what we shall call ‘lawful killings’. The question posed regarding suicide is: ‘Do I have the right to destroy myself to avoid pain or disgrace?’ Godwin’s conclusion is ‘Probably not’ for the pure reason that the destruction of one’s own body provides no further opportunity for the benefit of others, thus rendering suicide a selfish and virtueless action. Our conclusion must be drawn from the perspective of those who believe in complete liberty, however. On the face of things, the destruction of one’s own body does not harm anyone else directly, though it may of course cause great distress to the loved ones of the deceased. Often, those who commit or attempt suicide are subject to extreme forces of mental pain and feel that they have no other means of escape from such pain, or even that they are doing others a service in death by alleviating the burden they place on them.
As we have stated before, the choices we make when liberty is afforded to us must primarily be guided by our moral judgement. If we destroy our own bodies, then it is indeed true: there is no way we could ever know whether we could get better, nor would we be able to help our fellow citizens after our death. But the decision whether or not to destroy oneself lies solely with the individual. It may seem perfectly moral to the individual to destroy himself, if it appears to him that the world is treating him immorally, or that he is placing undue restrictions upon others. The moral burden then, or rather, the virtuous course of action, is not to be borne by the suicide; it is to be borne by those that know the one contemplating such an act. The moral virtue lies in the role of others persuading the suicide not to do such a thing for the reasons we have established: the waste of life that it would be, the goodness he could no longer offer the world if he left it before his time, et cetera.
Therefore, we may say this: Does the individual have the right to take his own life? Absolutely. Should others stand idly by whilst another person decides that he should take his own life? Absolutely not. Often, the victimisation and abandonment of the mentally ill by society does little to aid the virtuous in these causes. So long as society is inhumane, insofar as the suicidal are labelled as so radically different to the rest of us so as to deserve disrespectful treatment, few will ever be saved, and the onus of such vice will lie on none other than those who prevented them from being saved.
What must never be tolerated in a libertarian society, however, is assisted suicide, or euthanasia. This can only ever be virtueless, because in a free society where privacy is closely guarded, a law permitting such things would only ever cloak those who wished to engage in calculated murder. Let us imagine a situation: There is a father, disabled and apparently dying; he is in so much pain that he is not even able to speak. His son opts for him to be administered a lethal dose, and the father dies, passing all of his estate to the son. Given human nature, would not even a fraction of the son’s mind be turned to the great personal gain he could achieve by deciding the time of his father’s own death, rather than waiting to see whether he might recover? No matter what doctors say, miraculous recoveries do occur. But let us assume that this is an inadequate offering; what would such a premise lead to? Would the elderly be smothered in their beds at night by wicked souls on the premise that they were ‘doing them a favour’ by ending their misery? Grave vice, such as the end of life before the right time, can only ever lead to yet more vice. The source of the vice must be rooted out by the virtuous, and if it is virtuous to encourage others to live as we have asserted above, then it is right to cut out the source of this vice: the desire to die before one’s allotted time.
***
What of other forms of legal killing? Godwin considers duelling to be an immoral form of killing, and indeed, I am glad to say that duels are almost entirely extinct in modern society. Such practices are derived only from barbarian societies which did not have an established judicial system, and thus justice had to be sought by other means. The rule for any society should be: if death can be avoided, let it not occur. Thus, murder should be punished. What then of a man defending his property or person from an intruder or assailant? What if he kills the intruder? If the killing is by accident, say, as a result of wounds inflicted, then does the defender not have a right to be excused of such killing? The thief was the first to assault his fellow citizen, thus severing his connexion with his citizenry and his nation — he has attacked not only a man but also liberty itself. It would be preferable if the defender could wound or arrest the assailant until such time as he could be brought to justice, but in the heat of armed struggle, this is much easier said than done. In all cases, the man or woman wronged should be given more benefit of the doubt than the criminal.
Our logic still stands, however, and a virtuous man would attempt to keep his assailant alive. All virtuous men would seek to bring those at fault to justice. If we can bring a wrongdoer to justice, he may be punished and rehabilitated enough to do some good, show some virtue perhaps, in the society to which he is reintroduced. I say again: if death can be avoided, let it not occur.
Chapter IV
Duty
Morality is a broad subject to discuss, and our attempt to provide a thesis for morality in the previous chapter will no doubt be inadequate in places, presumptuous, and imposing. Godwin himself finds this difficulty in establishing rational ways to create an abstract morality. It is for such reasons that people often used to turn to religion for a source of moral guidance and support, since the edicts of a bishop are far easier to follow than a comprehensive ethical system devised by oneself. But a comprehensive ethical system is necessary in any society, since it defines the duty that we owe each other as citizens of such societies.
Let us consider the following hypothetical problem: A man is put on trial for murder. The man is innocent of the crime he is accused of, but the evidence presented to the jury at the time provides a strong case to prove he is in fact guilty. The presiding judge would have no choice other than to suggest a guilty verdict, and a just jury would have to consider the interests of their fellow citizens and return a guilty verdict — condemning an innocent man. These sorts of miscarriages of justice are uncommon, but certainly not unheard of, yet unlike what Godwin and many on the left suggest, the practice of law is not an abstract science. He is right to assert that it is the duty of each citizen to pursue
justice — for a jury to acquit the innocent and convict the guilty — but such verdicts are not formed from the hypocritical opinions of individuals on a jury panel, as he seems to suggest. Law takes the furthest precautions to ensure that it is an empirical science, founded upon hard evidence and provable fact rather than mere opinion. This is precisely why accusations made against individuals are not enough to stand up in court, precisely why the baying of the mob for arrests and convictions is not heeded — all accusations must be supported with evidence, lest the conviction be even more unjust. Of course, miscarriages of justice occur from time to time, and this is why we must rule out capital punishment as a potential option after conviction. An imprisoned man can be released when later evidence comes to light; a dead man cannot, his life and potential for virtue merely wasted.
When we speak of duty, this is what we refer to: if we are bound to our fellow citizens by the values of our nationhood, we have a duty towards them, to ensure they enjoy maximum liberty where it is due and offer maximum virtue to their nation. An objection may be raised: that this could apply to anything! Indeed, Godwin mentions the Gunpowder Plot of 1605; surely those men who sought to blow up King James and his Parliament must have thought they had a duty to their fellows to do so? Surely they thought that the restoration of Catholicism to the Kingdom of England was the best thing for their fellow countrymen? Our initial rebuttal might be that since we have already established the principles of virtue to be the furtherance of liberty and human progression, an act of wanton killing such as this remains a criminal and undutiful act; rather than approach, petition and turn their fellow citizens to their side, these men chose to kill them instead, a gross act of barbarism, a gross vice! But let us approach this from yet another angle yet still.
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