Principles of Morals and

Principles of Morals and Legislation/211
expedient than that of searching the language through for them, and
taking them as they come. To exemplify this observation, it may be of
use to lay open the structure as it were of two or three of the principal
sorts or classes of conditions, comparing them with two or three articles
of property which appear to be nearly of the same complexion: by this
means the nature and generation, if one may so call it, of both these
classes of ideal objects may be the more clearly understood.
The several sorts of civil conditions that are not fiduciary may all,
or at least the greater part of them, be comprehended under the head of
rank, or that of profession; the latter word being taken in its most exten-
sive sense, so as to include not only what are called the liberal profes-
sions, but those also which are exercised by the several sorts of traders,
artists, manufacturers, and other persons of whatsoever station, who
are in the way of making a profit by their labour. Among ranks then, as
well as professions, let us, for the sake of perspicuity, take for examples
such articles as stand the clearest from any mixture of either fiduciary
or beneficial power. The rank of knighthood is constituted, how? by
prohibiting all other persons from performing certain acts, the perfor-
mance of which is the symbol of the order, at the same time that the
knight in question, and his companions, are permitted: for instance, to
wear a ribbon of a certain colour in a certain manner: to call himself by
a certain title: to use an armorial seal with a certain mark on it. By
laying all persons but the knight under this prohibition, the law subjects
them to a set of duties: and since from the discharge of these duties a
benefit results to the person in whose favour they are created, to wit, the
benefit of enjoying such a share of extraordinary reputation and respect
as men are wont to yield to a person thus distinguished, to discharge
them is to render him a service: and the duty being a duty of the negative
class, a duty consisting in the performance of certain acts of the nega-
tive kind, the service is what may be called a service of forbearance. It
appears then, that to generate this condition there must be two sorts of
services: that which is the immediate cause of it, a service of the nega-
tive kind, to be rendered by the community at large: that which is the
cause again of this service, a service of the positive kind, to be rendered
by the law.
The condition of a professional man stands upon a narrower foot-
ing. To constitute this condition there needs nothing more than a permis-
sion given him on the part of the legislator to perform those acts, in the
performance of which consists the exercise of his profession: to give or

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212/Jeremy Bentham
sell his advice or assistance in matters of law or physic: to give or sell
his services as employed in the executing or overseeing of a manufac-
ture or piece of work of such or such a kind: to sell a commodity of such
or such a sort. Here then we see there is but one sort of service requisite;
a service which may be merely of the negative kind, to be rendered by
the law: the service of permitting him to exercise his profession: a ser-
vice which, if there has been no prohibition laid on before, is rendered
by simply forbearing to prohibit him.
Now the ideal objects, which in the cases above specified are said to
be conferred upon a man by the services that are respectively in ques-
tion, are in both cases not articles of property but conditions. By such a
behaviour on the part of the law, as shall be the reverse of that whereby
they were respectively produced, a man may be made to forfeit them:
and what he is then said to forfeit is in neither case his property; but in
one case, his rank or dignity: in the other case, his trade or his profes-
sion: and in both cases, his condition.
 Other cases there are again in which the law, by a process of the
same sort with that by which it constituted the former of the two above-
mentioned conditions, confers on him an ideal object, which the laws of
language have placed under the head of property. The law permits a
man to sell books: that is, all sorts of books in general. Thus far all that
it has done is to invest him with a condition: and this condition he would
equally possess, although everybody else in the world were to sell books
likewise. Let the law now take an active part in his favour, and prohibit
all other persons from selling books of a certain description, he remain-
ing at liberty to sell them as before. It therefore confers on him a sort of
exclusive privilege or monopoly, which is called a copy-right. But by
investing him with this right, it is not said to invest him with any new
sort of condition: what it invests him with is spoken of as an article of
property; to wit, of that sort of property which is termed incorporeal:
and so on in the case of an engraving, a mechanical engine, a medicine;
or, in short, of a saleable article of any other sort. Yet when it gave him
an exclusive right of wearing a particular sort of ribbon, the object which
it was then considered as conferring on him was not an article of prop-
erty but a condition.
By forbearing to subject you to certain disadvantages, to which it
subjects an alien, the law confers on you the condition of a natural-born
subject: by subjecting him to them, it imposes on him the condition of an
alien: by conferring on you certain privileges or rights, which it denies

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