Chapter II. Objects of Ownership

WE will here consider the various objects which can be owned by men, and to the exclusive use of which they can lay claim as being due to them in justice. We saw above that God has reserved to himself the dominion of human life; he is the God of life and of death, so that an injury is done to God by suicide or by unjustifiable homicide. Not even the State can have the absolute ownership of human life; it can never directly kill the innocent, although, as far as the common good demands it, the State may take the life of malefactors, and may require that each and all should be ready to defend the common weal even at the risk of life itself. No one, then, but God has the absolute ownership of human life or of man’s limbs and members.

Each one, however, has a qualified ownership in the faculties which God has given him. His activities of mind and body have been granted to man that by using them in a proper way he may do good and avoid evil, and thus secure the end of human existence. A man, therefore, is under the obligation imposed by God of making use of his mental and bodily faculties, and he has a consequent right to do so, as far as he does not thereby injure others.

When man by his labour has produced something which serves his wants and convenience, he has a right to the fruit of his toil; this is his property, and he cannot be deprived of it without injustice. This applies to what he has produced with his own toil, out of his own material, with his own resources.

A man’s reputation, then, inasmuch as it is the fruit of his merit and industry, is his property, and he cannot be unwarrantably deprived of it without injustice. He may, however, surrender it himself for good reason; he may write his confessions, like St Augustine, for the purpose of self-humiliation and for the instruction and edification of others; otherwise he must have a care of his own good name, without which he can do little good, and may do great harm to others,

Similarly, by the law of nature a book, design, or composition belongs to the author, and a new invention to the inventor. These things and others of the same kind are the fruit of the author’s or inventor’s thought and labour, and anyone who stole them and published them without their owner’s consent would commit a sin against justice.

Among modern civilized nations these rights are protected by municipal laws and international agreements, and, inasmuch as these determine the vague and uncertain prescriptions of the natural law, they bind in conscience.

The exclusive right of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of books, etc., is called in English law copyright. It extends not only to books, but to every volume, part, or division of a volume, pamphlet, sheet of letterpress, sheet of music, map, chart, or plan separately printed; to engravings, prints, sculpture, models, busts, paintings, drawings, photographs, designs, dramatic and musical representations.

Copyright is protected throughout the British dominions and the principal countries of Europe, which form the Copyright Union. On certain conditions copyright is now protected in the United States of America, and foreign authors may acquire copyright within the States by complying with those. conditions.

English law grants copyright for the author’s natural life and for fifty years longer.

In the United States the original terms run for twenty-eight years; it may, however, be renewed for a further term of fourteen years, making forty-two years in all.

In the same way patent right, or the right of the inventor to reap the benefit of a new contrivance, is protected in England on certain conditions for fourteen years, which protection may be extended for a further period of seven or fourteen years if the inventor has not yet reaped the full benefit of his invention, and such patent is for the public benefit. The period to which patent right extends in the United States is seventeen years.

There is a controversy among theologians as to whether the natural law of itself forbids the reissue by another without the author’s consent of a book which has once been published. Some deny this on the ground that by being published, apart from the prescriptions of positive law, a book becomes public property, and anyone who buys a copy may make what use of it he pleases. He is merely disposing of what is his own. The contrary opinion, however, seems better grounded, for the author in publishing a book makes over indeed to the buyers of it certain advantages, but there is nothing to prevent him reserving the right of issuing it again to himself. The buyer of a copy may make the contents of the book his own and work them up again in any form of his own that he chooses; he buys the material part of the book, paper, binding, etc., and may make what use of them he pleases; but he does not purchase the right to issue the book again, and he violates justice if he does so against the author’s wish. The same holds with regard to patent right.

This controversy is of little practical importance, for sufficient protection is provided in most civilized countries by positive law.

We saw above that no one except God can have an absolute property in man’s life or members. No man, then, can become the chattel of another so that he may lawfully be disposed of like a brute beast. Christian teaching has banished such an idea from Christendom at least. On the other hand, there is no difficulty in admitting that one man may make over his services to another for as long as he pleases. Theoretically, therefore, there seems no reason for saying that slavery is against the law of nature. We here understand by the term the state of perpetual subjection of one to another so that he owes that other his life service in return for board, lodging, and clothes. Practically, great abuses usually accompanied slavery, and we must allow that it is out of harmony with the spirit of the Gospel. Chiefly through the wise and gradual action of the Church, it has ceased to exist as an institution among civilized nations. However, we must not forget that penal servitude is still the just and recognized punishment for grave crime. Merely looking at the question from the point of view of the strict law of nature, we must acknowledge that a state of slavery arising from contract, or birth, or in punishment for crime, or as the result of a just war, is not in itself immoral.

Animals and the earth, together with all that they produce, may become man’s absolute property. God has imposed on him the obligation of maintaining himself and those who are dependent upon him, and he has-a consequent right to make his own whatever is necessary and useful for that purpose, if it has not been appropriated by someone else. He has a right to provide not only for his immediate wants, but for the future also; not only for himself, but for his offspring. In other words, nature herself gives man the right of private property. This right is not given by the State; it is anterior to the State, and its preservation and defence is one of the chief reasons for the existence of the State. It may indeed be regulated by the State, as far as is necessary for the common good, but it is beyond the power of the State to do away with it.¹ No Catholic is at liberty to deny the lawfulness of private property and its necessity in the general conditions of the modern world.

Socialists, indeed, advocate the nationalization of the land and of all the means of production and exchange as a sovereign cure for the economic evils of the world. The plan militates against the right of private property; it is unworkable, and even if it could be introduced it would be no cure for existing evils, and would introduce other new ones. The fuller treatment of this, a practical question in our days, scarcely belongs to moral theology; it is not in the confessional that such questions are treated. The student should consult books on ethics, or special works written on socialism or collectivism.

¹ Leo XIII, on the Condition of Labour, May 15, 1891.