DEPENDENCE ON STATE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22465, 28 July 1938, Page 12

DEPENDENCE ON STATE

♦ “APPARENT TREND” DISCUSSED PREDICTION OF ULTIMATE RESULT rTBB PRESS Special Service.! WELLINGTON, July 27. Some form of dictatorship of oligarchy would be the ultimate result of the increasing exaltation of the power of the central government predicted Mr H. D. Acland, of Christchurch, in his presidential address to the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Federation to-day. The people would have to be prepared, under that eventuality of regimentation, to give up the old idea of individual liberty, he said. They were all deeply concerned, he knew, over the apparent trend towards increased dependence on the State with its accompanying bureaucratic control, and which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would result in loss of individual liberty of action, which had for hundreds of years been one of the dearest rights of British people. It meant that individual liberty to choose one’s own profession, to hold opinions, and to speak without fear, to earn and keep a home safe from intrusion, to develop and extend one’s energies and natural gifts, to rear families in security and free from interference, to earn, spend, or save, with a view to meeting possible hardships in later life unforeseen in youth; but to-day it would appear that aa increasing proportion of the community was prepared to exalt the power of the central government, and to limit the rights and liberties of the individual. A “Precious” Principle “I cannot believe that the people cf this country would willingly surrender a principle so precious as this. and S* which our forefathers were prepared and did in many cases, lay down their lives.” said Mr Acland. “The sugg«tion is made that if the community will give up its individual rights to the central government, g l *" profit to certain sections will result, either by the exploitation of some other section, or by liberating and »- plotting the national resources to their limit. This suggestion carries vatb ifc however, the inference that the economic advantage of one section of tne community can be promoted by m« destruction tin whole or part) of some other section or sections.” Once the State was allowed to Become the masters of the people, instead of their servant, trom then onwards there would be nothing curtailment of individual liberty, gradual encroachment of en .‘;„ bureaucratic control, and a subversi_ of the rights of the people to expres themselves either in word or in action, through their lives, along hues wmen they consider best suited to their * dividual circumstances. Reformer* through history appeared always have had as their objective the cquair ising of conditions of life to the where of the community. Ine facts '' that in the effort to attain liberty must necessarily be rcs ; riciea and fraternity as between bo.h m-m duals and groups was destroyed.