Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1902-11-28
Sacred Rights

Sacred NgntS
An extract from sermon delivered by Jen-
kin Lloyd Jones in All Souls church, Chicago,
October ~ as published in Unity OF October
20:
"The earth is the Lords and the fullness
thereof This has been, in the estimation of
the ages, high poetry; it is now coming to be
estimated as cold science. 1t has been line
from great hymn of praise; 1t is becoming an
affirmation of sociology, principle in econom-
les. The Almighty, or Nature, if you prefer,
never issued quit claim deed of the coal mines
or any other of the great fundamental necessi-
ties of life to the coal barons OF Pennsylvania
or to any other set of individuals or corporations.
Earth, air and water are the physical essen
tals of life, as they are the great universal
boupties of nature; and the ultimate foundation
of any claim to right to possess or control any
part of these by individuals must rest in the
assumption that they can thus be better admin
istered for the public good than they could be
by the body polite or collective control. And
when any presumptive owner fails to admins
ter these fundamental necessities of life to the
monwealth, the great original inheritor of
the earth and "the fullness thereof" his
title becomes clouded and when he refuses
or fails to administer this bounty, aud
claims the right to deny 1t to helpless women
and children, homes of honest workers, school
rooms and public institutions wherein are con-
fined the helpless wards of the public, his claim
becomes not only insolent but criminal. We
hear much said in these days about the ''sacred
rights of property" All rights are sacred.
Civilization has largely depended upon the rec
IGNITION of the rights of the individual to con.
serve his wisdom, in short, to hold property.
But there is a more fundamental right, the sa-
cred right to life, and whenever the rights of
property stand in the way of this prior right to
life, it must stand out of the way. Particularly
is this principal true in regard to the owner
ship of that which man has created and cannot
duplicate, aye, which God Himself, so far as
this world is conserved, is not creating any
more, for Nature has gone out of the coal-mak-
ing business; she is planting no more fern for.
ests, and the crust of this old earth has become
too stiff to give the subsistence and elevation
necessary to produce coal.
The title to real estate, either legal or moral,
as every great jurist and moralist is prompt to
recognize, is short and at best dubious one.
At the farther end of every deed on mine or
forest oil we'll or prairie, there is darkness,
cruelty, wrong; there is the selishness of grab,
the savagery of conquest, the treachery of in
vasion. The clouded tiles are made good only
by the intelligent cons mt of the most conserv-
alive government. on the score that the present
administration is justified by Its utility to the
state its service to the whole. But whenever
the individual possessor ct any wealth forgets
his trusteeship violates the confidence imposed
in him, perverts his privileges and uses his pow
er to the hurt of society, he forfeits his title.
1t isla high and delicate question for the state
to decide how far such preversion shall be al
lowed to 90 on before it asserts its primal right
of eminent Domain reclaims the stolen
goods and restores them to the original and fun
damental owners-the whole public, the great |
onward flowing stream of life, the elevation of
which is the goal of all the travail of nature
and of human nature.
Do, Mi ion under oOxeru m 0xuu.