RIGHTS!!

This status was clearly an aid , and not a menace, to Capitalism and the free-market economy, because it was dominated by civil rights, which confer the legal capacity to strive for the things one would like to possess but do not guarantee the possession of any of them. A property right is not a right to possess property,but a right to acquire it, if you can, and to protect it, if you can get it. but if you use these arguments to explain to a pauper that his property rights are the same as those of a millionaire, he will probably accuse you of quibbling. Similarly, the right to freedom of speech has little real substance if, from lack of education, you have nothing to say that is worth saying, and no means of making yourself heard if you say it. But these blatant inequalities are not due to defects in civil rights, but to lack of social rights in the mid- nineteenth century were in the doldrums. The poor law was an aid, not a menace,to capitalism, because it revealed industry of all social responsibility outside the contract of employment, while sharpening the edge of competition in the labour market. Elementary schooling was also an aid, because it increased the value of the worker without educating him above his station.

I chose this passage because T.H Marshall is right, society is whom says what is right or wrong and who gets to do what. An education is worth many things today, without an education much can't be done like before. in the paragraph he says "But these blatant inequalities are not due to defects in civil rights, but to lack of social rights in the mid- nineteenth century were in the doldrums."(15) Many didn't have rights in the nineteenth century even though there wasn't any slavery. The poor nor the rich or middle class ever looked at one another with equality. Even today a millionaire can't compare to a lottery winner that they are in the same social circle, even if they had the same likes. An interesting quote from " History is a Weapon" by Frederick Douglass says "To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. "(7) We got our freedom of speech, civil rights, and liberty but society doesn't let you really be "free."