Unrestricted State Interference Condemned.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 43, 31 July 1891, Page 2

Unrestricted State Interference Condemned.

The idea, then, that the civil government should, at its own discretion, penetrate and pervade the family and the household, is a great and pernicious mistake. True, if a family finds itself in great difficulty, utterly friendless, and without prospect of help, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid ; for each family is a part of the commonwealth. In like manner, if within the walls ot the household there occur grave disturbance of mutual rights, the public power must interfere to force each party to give the other what is due ; for this is not to rob citizens of their rights, but justly and properly to safeguard and strengthen them. But the rulers of the State must go no further; nature bids them to stop here. Paternal authority can neither be abolished by the State, nor absorbed ; for it has the same source as human life itself. " The child belongs to the father," and is, as it were, the continuation ot the father's personality ; and, to speak with strictness, the child takes its place in civil society not in its own right, but in its quality as a member of the family in which it is begotten. And it is for the very reason th.it " the child belongs to the father " that, as St. Thomas of Aquin sa>s, " before it attains the use of freewill, it is in the power and care of its parents.''"" The Socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and introducing the providence of the State, act against natural justice, and threaten the very existence of family life. And such interference is not only unjust, but is quite certain to harass and disturb all classes of cituens and to subject them to odious and intolerable slavery. It would open the door to envy, to evil speaking, and to quarrelling ; the sources of wealth would themselves run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry ; and that ideal equality of which so much is said would in reality be the levelling down of all to the same condition ot misery and dishonour. Thus it is clear that the mam tenet of Socialism, the community of good?, must be utteily rejected; for it would injure those whom it is intended to benefit, it would be contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and it would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonwealth. Our first and most fundamental principle, therefote, when we undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This laid down, We go on to show where we must find the remedy that we seek.