ABSTRACT
Why, then, should there be a separate study of political theory? Why not absorb it into ethics and have done with it? The answer is that political and moral obligation seem to differ, and that the simple dependence of the one on the other that we have just suggested has been widely disputed. A legal or political obligation is one that is imposed by law; a moral obligation is commonly believed to hold independently of law. The two seem not only different, but at times even to conflict. Suppose a Fascist or Communist st.ate passed a law that would send into concentration camps whole classes of citizens that one believed to be innocent. It would then be one's legal obligation to aid and abet the government in its work of running these people down and rounding them up. But many persons believe that it would be their moral obligation to break the law deliberately and help such hounded persons to escape. Again, a legal or political right seems quite a different thing from a moral right. If British women have a moral right to the suffrage on the same terms as men, they no doubt had it in Victorian times; but they did not get it as a political right till 1928. Political and moral rights thus seem to fall sharply asunder.
