property, its duties and rights
TRANSCRIPT
Irish Church Quarterly
Property, Its Duties and RightsReview by: J. F. S.The Irish Church Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 29 (Jan., 1915), pp. 85-86Published by: Irish Church QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30067975 .
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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 85
out as living men. His style is dull and undistinguished, and suggests the compressed and uninspiring notes of a grinder. His analysis of great works like the Commonitorium of Vincent, though full of interest, seems to us to be somewhat overladen. The author, too, has a way of introducing matter which, though interesting in itself and demonstrating a wide reading, has little bearing on his subject. The chapter on S. Patrick, for example, seems to us to be entirely irrelevant. There is absolutely no proof that St. Patrick was ever at Lerins. That he paid a visit to the island is pure surmise. That he was influenced by the Gallic Church is a very slender thread by which to attach the Apostle of Ireland to the monastery of S. Honorat. But this criticism is on the manner, rather than on the matter, which is both full and accurate.
Dr. Cooper-Marsdin is an authority on Caesarius of Arles, and we are interested to see that he continues to uphold "at least tentatively," the claim of Caesarius to the authorship of the Athanasian Creed. The author is right when, speaking of the Vincentian criterion of Catholicity, he says that "Vincent repre- sents a principle which is not that of the modern Roman or Greek Church, and far more nearly represents the attitude of the Anglican Communion." The careful research displayed in this book will make it a valuable work of reference.
G. A. C.
PROPERTY, ITS DUTIES AND RIGHTS. Essays by Various Writers with an Introduction by the Bishop of Uxtord. (Macmillan.) 5s. net.
It can hardly be said that this book introduces a subject not calling for thought and discussion. Whatever may be his views, scarcely anyone will be found to admit that our present distri- bution and use of property are incapable of improvement and do not lead to injustice and hardship in many directions. But when we consider practical proposals for bettering existing conditions, we find ourselves faced with innumerable difficulties. The prevalent theories of property do not help us much. Legis- lation only appears to touch the merest fringe of the matter. What we want, what we are groping after, is some principle or ultimate idea, lying at the back of the whole notion of property, with which, as a guide, a better state of things may gradually be evolved. The book before us is an attempt to find this principle. The Bishop of Oxford, in the Introduction, tells the story of its origin. Dr. Bartlet, of Mansfield College, Oxford, wrote to the Press, urging upon Christians the duty of recon- sidering their ideas of property in the light of the Biblical
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86 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Doctrine of Stewardship-that all things come from God, and that we only hold them as stewards for His purposes, with only a relative and dependent ownership, limited at every point by the purpose for which they were entrusted to us. He suggested to Dr. Gore that they should, in combination, write some litera- ture of a popular kind about the rights and duties of property based on this doctrine. Dr. Gore felt that the first and most urgent need was a philosophical treatment of property, in idea and history, which should lead to some underlying principle, able to guide, not merely the Christian with an awakened con- science but the community at large. This volume is the result. It consists of seven essays by such well known authorities as Professor Hobhouse, Dr. Hastings Rashdall, Dr. Bartlet and Canon Scott Holland. As must be expected in such cases, there exist differences of emphasis between the various writers, but the whole forms a most useful and suggestive book. Especially valuable is Dr. Rashdall's consideration of Property in relation to Personality, and the Bishop of Oxford's Introduction is full of interest, though, in his views, he advances farther than many will be prepared to follow him. Another interesting article is that by Dr. Carlyle on the Mediaeval Conception of Property, in which one is surprised to find how modern are the ideas of the writers of those times. It is St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, who holds that temporal possessions are indeed private as regards ownership, but as regards use, so far as they are super- fluities, they belong to others who have need of them. Thus charity is not so much an act of mercy as of mere justice. And, in extreme cases of urgent want, a man may legitimately take, openly or by stealth, the goods of his more affluent neighbour.
Of course no attempt is made to suggest definite reforms. But a helpful analogy is given by Mr. Lindsay in his essay on the Principles of Private Property. Recognizing that property exists mainly as power, we see that the problem of the regulation of property is only the old political problem of the recognition and control of power, in more complicated form. And just as, in the course of centuries, there has been evolved a system of Government such as makes the irresponsible use of political power difficult, so we may hope that in time, in the case of property also, a system will be produced which will combine the free use of power and individual initiative with their control in the interests of society.
J. F. S.
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