persons counseling, advising or encouraging children under the age of fourteen years, lunatics, or idiots, to commit any crime, or who, by fraud, contrivance, or force, occasion the drunkenness of another for the purpose of causing him to commit any crime, or who, by threats, menaces, command, or coercion, compel another to commit any crime, are principals in any crimes so committed." This section of the Penal Code of California expresses, we believe, the prevailing American theory of criminal liability.1 1 Sec. 31 P. C. Cal. CHAPTER IV. THE COMMON LAW RIGHT TO PRACTICE PHAR MACY, AND THE REASON FOR STATUTORY RE- Under the common law, in the United States and Great Britain, anyone has the right to practice pharmacy. The right to own private property is fundamental, and the right to dispose of it is an incident of ownership; drugs are a species of property capable of private ownership, and are therefore subject to sale as an incident of such ownership. It is likewise incidental to the ownership of private property, that a man may employ his skill to change its form and increase its value, and thereafter exchange it for the price of the combined material and labor; and this represents the chief feature in the practice of pharmacy. There is nothing in the nature of the drug business to except it from the operation of these general broad principles of the common law, though there is that in the nature and accustomed use of drugs, some of them being dangerous to health and life, which brings them within the operation of other and well established principles of the common law, that seriously affect the liability of one who deals in them. The common law right of every person desiring to do so, to engage in the practice of pharmacy, being based upon the natural or absolute rights of personal liberty and private property, it becomes a matter of interest to consider what reasons may exist to justify the making of rules to restrict that right, and how far such rules may extend without amounting to an unjust infringement of the rights referred to. A glance at some of the simpler conditions that alone can insure to the individual the reasonable enjoyment of his rights, at least while human nature is in its present imperfect state, may be of some assistance to the reader. "The right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property," are held by Sir William Blackstone to embrace the natural or absolute rights to which every man is entitled. In a state of nature a man may be supposed to enjoy these rights in an unlimited sense; but this is true in theory only, as his actual enjoyment of any rights whatever in that state is rendered extremely precarious by the fact that another, by superior strength or treachery, may slay, enslave or rob him. The knowledge that he possessed the right of personal security could have yielded little comfort to the primitive man, while at the same time he was conscious of living in the most terrifying insecurity. Any enthusiasm engendered by the knowledge of possessing the right of personal liberty, might have been chilled by the limitations thrown around him by a more powerful neighbor, who also possessed the right of personal liberty, together with the power to enforce an unrestricted enjoyment thereof, and was restrained by no regard for the rights of others. His right of private property could have afforded him little consolation, after some enterprising and unscrupulous person had stripped him of its possession and enjoyment. Thus the absolute rights of primitive man proved in many, perhaps most, instances but a bloody heritage of battle with man and beast, in the incessant turmoil of which he passed his life, vainly endeavoring to reduce those abstract rights to a state of present possession and enjoyment. Liberty, deprived of her proper vestments of law and courtesy, is but a naked savage and often better shunned than courted. The very existence of these absolute rights of man, together with the disposition of most men to enjoy them to the full extent of their opportunities, gives rise to the necessity for rules of equitable justice and restraint. Without such rules, the liberty of the strong would mean the enslavement of the weak, personal security would not abide on earth and the law of private property would be: "The simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can." Even in a state of savagery, men quickly learn that the best conditions of life possible to them are to be attained only in combination and mutual support; and as the result of this knowledge, out of chaos comes association, organization and government. The individual consents to some restrictions upon his natural rights and liberties that he may be secure in the enjoyment of those that remain to him; and so long as tyranny is excluded from government, and the restraints that are imposed upon individual liberty are necessary, and are framed and enforced in a spirit of equal justice, the individual is greatly profited by what is sometimes termed the "social contract." Let us suppose that in the wilds of Africa three savages occupy adjoining lands and live apart from all tribal relations. One is a burly fellow and superior, physically, to either of his neighbors, whom, singly, he unscrupulously robs and abuses. Driven to the extremity of endurance by their merciless tormentor, the two make common cause against him and find that, jointly, they are his match. Upon this discovery, they decide to build their huts together and to live. upon and cultivate the same patch of ground; and agree that in case of an attack upon either, the other shall go to his aid. This arrangement proves satisfactory so far, and they begin at once to enjoy some liberty of action with a feel |