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CHAPTER XVII.: NINTH GENERAL TITLE OF THE CIVIL CODE. Of the Domestic and Civil States. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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CHAPTER XVII.

NINTH GENERAL TITLE OF THE CIVIL CODE.

Of the Domestic and Civil States.

This general title is established, that it may serve as a general depot for the laws which regard the different offences against these respective states. Here ought to be found the catalogue of the classes of persons who possess rights or duties due to them:—masters, servants, guardians, wards, parents, children, proxies, &c.; whilst with respect to political conditions—that is, those which are founded upon some political power, or some duty subordinate to it—reference should be made to the constitutional code.

The domestic or civil state is only an ideal base about which are ranged rights and duties, and sometimes incapacities. It is proper in all conditions to distinguish the work of nature, or of the free man, from the work of the law. The natural state is the foundation, the base; the legal state is formed by the rights, the obligations, which the law adds thereto. To know a state, is therefore to know separately the rights and the obligations which the law has added to it: but what is the principle of union which binds them together, to make the factitious thing which is called a state, a condition? It is the identity of the investive event with respect to the possession of that state.

Under this head, the most striking examples will be found of the variety and extent of adjective obligations. A boy and a girl marry—they do not see at first in their union anything more than the accomplishment of the wish which had been the motive of it. At the same moment the law interposes and imposes upon them a multitude of reciprocal obligations, of which the idea had never been presented to their minds.

It is true that this distinction of fundamental and adjective obligations depends only upon the negligence of the legislator. If he had taken pains to facilitate the knowledge of the laws, the citizen would have known all the obligations which attached to him upon assuming a certain condition, and all, whether principal or accessory, would have been equally voluntary.

In the notice of civil conditions, all trades should be comprehended. All professions which have particular rights, or duties, or which are subjected to certain incapacities.

In the article appropriated to each condition, the following should be the order of the matter:—1. Methods of acquisition; 2. Methods of losing; 3. Rights; 4. Duties; 5. Incapacities; if there be any. Rights ought to precede duties, because in many cases they are the source of duties. If there be a chronological order in the events from which rights and duties take their date, such order should be followed. The effects which result from each event ought to be distinct from those which result from any other.