ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author analyses John Thelwall simultaneous appeal to three political traditions that are not merely different from, but seem also to stand in tension with, each another: natural rights, the historicized economic sociology of the Scottish Enlightenment and utilitarianism. In fact, for Thelwall 'the labourer has a right to a share of the produce, not merely equal to his support, but, proportionate to the profits of the employer. The effect of Thelwall's combination of natural rights claims with an account of the contingent nature of human economic development is the raising of what might be described as a justificatory difficulty about what exactly grounds an agent's right to private ownership. Thelwall's theory of property rights, at least as far as land is concerned, has a utilitarian basis. The most convincing way of ironing out Thelwall's ambiguous account of property rights is by giving normative priority to utility.