ABSTRACT
Earned like other property by labour, care, and perseverance— similarly surrounding its owner with facilities for securing his ends, and affording him as it does a constant supply of food for divers of his desires; the esteem of others is a possession, having many analogies with possessions of a more palpable nature. Those who hesitate to admit that a good name is property, should remember that it has really a money value. The position that character is property may be considered open to dispute; and it must be confessed that the propriety of so classifying it is not proveable with logical precision. If the destruction of a fellow-man’s deserved reputation does not amount to a trespass against the law of equal freedom, then the flagitiousness of such an act remains to be treated of in that supplementary department of morals elsewhere generalized under the term negative beneficence.
