The Rights of Man by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells [Wells, H.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

P.S. – Certain practical considerations which necessitate a modification of this dossier clause are discussed at the end of Chapter XI.

VI

The Right to Subsistence

So far in this discussion of human rights we have dealt mainly with the assertion of persona freedom, because that is the aspect that come first to mind as a primary war issue now. When we oppose the ‘democracies’ to the ‘dictatorships’, that is what we have in mind. The clauses we have considered have been political and legal, and so far our Declaration has followed in the footsteps of its mighty predecessors from Magna Carta to the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

To make a sweeping generalization, the outline of the history of the Parliamentary peoples from the chaos of the early dark ages onward may be presented as a struggle for adjustment between a growing central power, typically represented in the past by the sovereign, and the free spirit of man. As human society recovered from that age of confusion, and as production, trade and population expanded, the need for larger unities of management became apparent. The King’s law appeared, there was a consolidation of management, more and more regulation.

This Government law, this administrative law, I have already discussed, and distinguished sharply from the primary law of personal rights. It is law of a different nature.

With every step towards consolidation, we find the individual threatened in his independence and struggling to set up legal barriers to defend it. It is almost like the beating of a heart. There is a systole in which power is drawn together at the centre and then a diastole in which liberty asserts itself. But it is not exactly like a heart beating. It would be, if each time that heart grew, so that each time the rhythm recurred on a larger scale. It is not simply increase of government, rebellion, increase of government, rebellion, increase of government, rebellion. It is increase of government, rebellion, adjustment, increase of government, rebellion, adjustment, and so on. After each phase of the politico-social struggle, the two forces of consolidation and freedom arrive at a compromise. Neither defeats the other. The individual surrenders his independence and co-operates socially, for the price of a more and more explicit protection of his personal freedom. From Magna Carta to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, that see-saw between administrative consolidation and individual initiative has gone on. The administration has become progressively more extensive, penetrating and compulsive, the legal defence of liberty more explicit.

That has been the pattern of English history for nearly a thousand years. You could head every page in a text-book of English history, ‘The central power grows’ or ‘The central power is restrained’. The story is complicated by a parallel rhythm between the developing national governments and the Church. Throughout the story, the Church, inheriting the claims of the Empire, is struggling to consolidate a supra-national power in Rome, and the Princes and Kings are making their declarations and defiances, which culminated in the Reformation.

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