CHAPTER VI. 



Of the Rights, or Just Powers op the State. 

 § 51. Of the State as a Body Politic or Corporation. 



The rights of the State have already been incidentally but extensively 

 discussed, in the progress of our work, so that but little remains except to 

 summarize what has already been said. 



The notion of a right or of an obligation implies some person or per- 

 sons, in whom it exists. Hence, public rights, or rights of the State, 

 are in fact rights of the individuals who compose it, differing from indi- 

 vidual rights only in being common to all ; and the same is true in 

 Private Right of all rights vested in classes of individuals, regarded as 

 aggregates {universitates), as, for instance, in the case of an ordinary 

 business corporation ; which exists merely for the benefit of the stock- 

 holders, and is merely an instrument or organ for exercising more 

 efficiently their individual activities ; and whose rights, obviously, are 

 merely their rights. But for purposes of expression, this view of rights 

 and obligations as vested in actual persons, though true, is, with reference 

 to rights vested in classes of individuals, an extremely inconvenient one, 

 and on this and on other accounts, it has become necessary to invent what 

 are called collective names, such for instance, as a flock of sheep, a 

 library, a regiment, etc., by which all the individuals included under the 

 name are, figuratively speaking, unified, or regarded as one. This one, 

 or unit, is generally conceived to be a thing, as in the instances above 

 given, and this, for ordinary purposes, is sufficient ; but when we have to 

 express the' moral relations of men — their rights and obligations, their 

 duties, their virtues, or other moral qualities — it becomes necessary to 

 conceive of it as a person — for it is in persons only that moral qualities 

 can reside. 



Hence, in the Law, it has become necessary, for the purpose of dealing 

 more conveniently with rights and obligations, to invent the notion of a 

 juridical («) person, or, as it is more commonly called with us, a body 

 politic or corporation ; which is a fictitious or imaginary person, said to be 

 created by fiction of law. 



Of corporations the most perfect type is a State, For that exists 

 naturally, as an inevitable consequence of human nature, and therefore 

 presents an instance of a permanent organization analogous in many 

 particulars to the actual human being. But nevertheless it is of the 

 utmost importance that it always be borne in mind that its personality is 

 merely fictitious, or imaginary, and that when we speak of its rights and 

 obligations, it is a mere convenient expression for those of its citizens. 



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