GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

SOVEREIGNTY AND NATURAL RIGHTS 549
them, so it is nonsensical to ask where in a society
Sovereignty ought to reside; as nonsensical as to ask where
in a body the heart or the brain ought to reside. For if
society is a natural and inevitable growth, Sovereignty
in a society ought to reside precisely where it is found to
reside. This view of society as a natural growth will be
developed in the next chapter. Its practical corollary is
that society cannot be suddenly or violently changed
without disaster. The view that society cannot be suddenly
changed without disaster, a view ultimately based
upon theology, is reinforced by experience. In opposition
to the abstract theories 'which upon the Continent were
invoked to justify revolution, Burke exhibited the con-
crete fact of the English constitution. 'Here/ he said
in effect, 'is a constitution which embodies the collected
and collective wisdom and experience of the ages; wisdom
which has been acquired as the result of the handling of
day to day problems. It is clearly folly for a single generation
to try to destroy in a day this slow growth of the ages.
The British constitution is in fact a concrete distillation
of centuries of wisdom, wisdom garnered from experience;
no theory can justify us in destroying what it has taken
men so long to build.'
In the eighteenth century the doctrine of Natural
Rights was criticized by a number of writers. Bcntham,
for example, denied the existehce of pre-social rights.
He insisted that rights only came into existence when
there was a society armed with laws to guarantee them.
"Rights", he wrote, "properly so-called are the creators
of law properly so-called." Bentham, however, as we
have seen, postulated what is in effect a natural right to
happiness.
As a result of the criticism to which the original doctrine
was subjected, a revised theory of rights made its appear-
ance in the middle of the nineteenth century. Of this
revised theory, T. H. Green may be taken as the most
typical exponent. The new attitude to rights embodied
in this theory may be broadly described as teleological,