Appendix 6. (958).
It may be objected that we sin by refraining from helping our neighbour when we are morally obliged to do so. But we have no right to sin. In this case, therefore, others will not be obliged by the moral law to respect our ownership. Here the consequence is false; the duty obliging me to beneficence comes from the eternal law and from the supreme Being before whom all my rights do indeed cease as a result of his full right to command me. The person in need does not, however, himself acquire any right. Relative to other human beings, my right does not decrease because of my duty to benefit others. In fact, although I have the moral duty to give others a part of my ownership, others nevertheless continue to have a moral duty not to touch but to respect my ownership, which remains as my relative right precisely because it is protected relative to other human beings by the moral law.
This obligation remains on others: 1. according to the nature of the moral law of benifecence whose effect is simply to oblige the owner to be beneficent without disobliging others from their duty not to harm the owner and without giving them any title of right over a substance owned by others; 2. because no one can establish the limits and determined modes of obligatory beneficence or the precise persons towards whom it must be exercised; 3. because the immorality of the person who could be beneficent, but is not, does not render ownership itself immoral. Its title remains lawful and just; there is nothing immoral about the title itself. This immorality, therefore, corrupts the spirit of the immoral person, not the nature of ownership; it is an accident which does not effect the substance of the right.
Take, for instance, the difference between this case and that in which a person neither draws nor wants nor is able to draw any advantage from his ownership. Here, others are not obliged to respect the so-called ownership because the moral-physical bond is lacking. Consequently, the pain of dispossession caused by others would not be natural for a reasonable being; it would originate from a capricious decision claiming to prevent others from profiting by what the owner has no desire to profit by. In the other case, on the contrary, the owner wants to profit from what he owns and is naturally upset at having to renounce the profit he could gain for himself. Any spontaneous renunciation of what he owns is therefore moved by the obligation of beneficence and becomes a willing sacrifice rewarded by merit. If, however, others rob him of what is his own, the pain and disturbance he feels is natural and unjust.
Finally, see what I have said in The Essence of Right, 256-262, on the lawfulness of actions necessary to constitute Right.