MORAL RIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 7

MORAL RIGHT.

CAUSE OF THE WEAK.

GOVERNMENT'S LEGISLATION. CONTRACT INTERFERENCE. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) DUNEDIN, this day. Some of the Acts which the Government had passed in recent years were of the greatest importance, said the Postmaster-General, Mr. Hamilton, in addressing the Chamber of Commerce yesterday. He justified the Government in its interference with contract on the grounds of righting injustice.

Some might still say that the weak should be allowed to go to the wall, he added, and that the law should take its course, but he did not believe that to be a wise policy. The Government had encountered conditions under which two "sections of the community had entered into an agreement. In the meantime conditions had changed to such an extent that one party might be ruined. Ordinarily the law would have taken its course, and there would have been no talk of moral right or of breaking an agreement.

When this problem had confronted the Government, solicitors had said that there was a sacred duty to carry out the terms of an Agreement. The law was the highest authority, which had to be obeyed, but the Government had taken the view that if an agreement were to inflict injustice, its duty was to put injustice right. (Hear, hear.) That was the foundation of the Government's interference with the sacred rights of contract.