WEAK AND STRONG.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 89

WEAK AND STRONG.

SOME ASPECTS OF LEGAL LIBERTY. THE DUTIES OF THE STATE. LECTURE BY DR FINDLAY. An interesting address was delivered by the Hon. Dr Findlay "before the Philosophical Society at Palmerston North on the 21st insfc. The subject of the address — “Legal Liberty”—gave the Attorneygeneral a wide and interesting field, which he treated in an interesting way and at considerable length. Mainly (says the Wellington Post) he had to do with the functions., powers, and privileges of the State in relation to the individual, and his conclusions were summarised thus:— 1. There is in Anglo-Saxon nations an excessive impatience of State interference due partly to racial qualities and partly to the .struggle by which freedom has in the past been wrested from Government. 2. That in their attitude towards the powers of the State the people of our nation are apt to ignore the fact that it is only from these powers and under their protection alone that they derive their rights and liberties. 3. For many centuries man has been trying' to find some scientific boundary between the rights of the individual and tnose of the State; and the theories of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Adam Smith resulted in the doctrines of natural liberty which limit the States functions to those of keeping order and protecting rights, while they extend the area of individual freedom to the widest extent possible without injury to the rights of others. 4. This led to a fanatical mdividualwm under which the condition of the English labourer was worse than at any previous period of English history. 5. The school of natural liberty still largely dominates orthodox economic thought. 6. It is based upon the cosmic process, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and is opposed to the moral or ethical process of human betterment. 7. Thought and experience have shown that, in modern nations the system of natural liberty is not a policy of true social progress. That, on the contrary, such progress can be attained only by limiting greatly individual liberty and by eliminating the struggle for a bare existence by checking and removing the competition and other conditions which give rise to it. This involves provision both for the ascent of capacity and the de*seent of incapacity. 8. That the true policy of progress in model'n nations is not the mere protection by the State" of legal rights, but provision by the State of the conditions which are essential to the welfare of the people. This means the securing for all who need it some measure of freedom of opportunity as well as protection. 9. That for the improvement of those coerced, and for the provision of the conditions of general welfare, the State may, in defiance of the tenets of individualism, properly curtail individual liberty. 10. That as the solidarity of a nation increases and society becomes increasingly organised, the closer relation and interde-. pendence of the units of population necessitate a restricted area of individual freedom. 11. That the conceptions of the area ot personal freedom have changed with changes in our national aims, and a policy of “Want and vice and their reduction ” is slowly supplanting the cardinal national policy, “Wealth and its production.” 12. That the trend of the freest democracies is towards a State paternalism which will aim at some degree of freedom of opportunity and make individual rights subsidiary to the essential needs of such a policy. . 13. The most advanced democracies evince the tendency to make their ideals the test of their rights to infringe and limit individual freedom. 14. That obedience to Government is more easily obtained under universal suffrage than where the people have little or no voice in their own control, and this is one of the chief perils of democracy. 15. That the national character and temper of our nation may be trusted to prevent any serious limitation of the area of liberty really essential to a self-respecting, vigorous manhood. POWER OYER THE PEOPLE. In arriving at these conclusions. Dr Findlay reviewed the lessons of history from the earliest times. Having defined “ legal liberties ” as things which one might do without being prevented by law —that sphere of activity within which the law was content to leave one alone —he went on to examine what right the State had to interfere. In a Government properly so called, whether it be in form monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy, there must be supreme and unlimited power over its people. The changes which had taken place in our modern views of political liberty were mainly due to changes during the last one hundred years in national economic conditions. The future development of British liberty would depend more upon Britain’s economic evolution than upon any other changes. Political and religious liberty , had during the last 80 years been steadily widening to completeness, but throughout that period there had also been an unmistakable disposition to limit economic freedom. For many years to come, he said, the most important aspect of the relation between the State and the individual -would be the sphere of liberty the law would allow a man

in pursuing his trade or calling, and in the acquisition and use of his wealth. PATERNALISM OF THE STATE. After examining some of th© theories of the greatest writers, Dr Findlay said that from all the “ misconception as to' th© promotion of general welfare, from natural liberty and the apotheosis of individual rights, we are steadily going back to Aristotle. Ho taught that the- State had educative and reformative functions, that it was its duty to make good citizen®.” In this view the character of the State was changed from policeman to parent. The end and aim of Government was changing, and had changed from police and other legal protection to providing the conditions which would promote general welfare. The old method was the survival of the fittest. The nevy method was to limit that freedom and devise and provide by law or science such conditions as would improve the moral and material welfare of the people as a whole. This involved, as required, both a kinder and a firmer collective hand. “If the State is to provide the path,” he continued, “it must see that it is taken and, if necessary, compel its use. Some modern nations furnish their people with free schools, but they also punish parents who neglect to send their children there. Under prudent domestic Government, discipline is as necessary as opportunity for the welfare of the family. The excess or absence of either will do harm, and the same is true of the paternalism of th© State. In this changing conception of the State’s functions, private rights and I'berties must be substantially affected. Such prudent social control as I am indicating should produce neither the evils of unrestrained self-seeking found under natural liberty or the regimentation of revolutionary Socialism" . . But while the functions of the State must increase in area and number of our social ideals are to be promoted, every increase should be jealously watched. Excess of social control upon the individual life is as pernicious as excessive liberty. It matters little from what source that control emanates.”