MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 745
Every person is entitled without molestation to perform all lawful acts and to enjoy all the privileges which attach to him as a person. The most specific right of this kind is to be the unmolested pursuit of the occupation by which a man chooses to gain his livelihood. Under the same head falls the right of every person to the free use of the public highways, of navigable rivers and all public utilities. It also includes the right of every person that the machinery of the law, which is established for the protection of all persons shall not be maliciously set in motion to his detriment. Thirdly, there is the right of immunity from damage by fraud or coercion-it is a right not to be induced by fraud to assent to a transaction which causes damage, and not to be coerced into acting contrary to one’s desire by force. Fourthly, the rights of a person are those which are collectively called Family Rights. These family rights may be distinguished as ‘marital’, ‘parental’, ‘tutelary’, and ‘dominical’. The marital right, the right of a husband as against the world, is that no other man shall, by force or persuasion, deprive him of his wife’s society, still less be criminally intimate with her. An analogous right might conceivably be recognized as being vested in the wife and is recognized in parts of America. The parental right extends to the custody and control of children, to the produce of their labour till they arrive at the age of discretion without interference. The tutelary right is the right of the parent to act as the guardian not for the benefit of the guardian but for that of the ward. . . . . . . . . whose want of understanding he supplements and whose affairs he manages. The dominical right is the right to use labour of the ward. The right is infringed by killing, by injuring so as to make him less valuable or by enticing him away.
Not being a person, a slave had, so far as law is concerned, none of these rights. The untouchable is a person in the eye of the law. It cannot therefore be said that he has none of the rights which the law gives to a ‘person’. He has the right to property, to life, liberty, reputation, family and to the free exercise of his liberties and his powers. Define the slave as one may, either as a piece of property or as one who is not a person, it appears that the slave was worse off than the untouchable.