The Government has Duties to the Community.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 43, 31 July 1891, Page 7

The Government has Duties to the Community.

But although all citizens, without exception, can and ought to contribute to that common good in which individuals share so profitably to themselves, yet it is not to be supposed that all can contribute in the same way and to the same extent. No matter what changes may be made in forms of government, there will always be differences and inequalities of condition in the State ; Society cannot exist or be conceived without them. Some there must be who dedicate themselves to the work of the commonwealth, who make the laws, who administer justice, whose advice and authority govern the nation in times of peace, and defend it in war. Such men clearly occupy the foremost place in the State, and should be held in the foremost estimation, for their work touches most nearly and effectively the general interests of the community. Those >vho labour at a trade or calling- do not promote the general weliare in such a fashion as this ; but they do in the most important way benefit the nation, though less directly. We have insisted that, since it is the end of Society to make men better, the chief good that Society can be possessed of is Virtue. Nevertheless, in all well-consti-tuted States it is by no means an unimportant matter to provide those bodily and external commodities, the use of which is necessary to virtuous action.^ And in the provision of material wellbeing, the labour of the poor — the exercise ot their skill and the employment of their strength in the culture of the land and the workshops of trade — is most efficacious and altogether indispensable. Indeed, their co-operation in this respect is so important that it may be truly said that it is only by the labour of the working man 'bat States grow rich, justice, therefore, demands that the interests ot the poorer population be carefully watched over by the Administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits they create — that being housed, clothed, and enabled to support lite, they may find their existence less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to be conducive to the well-being of those who work, should receive favourable consideration. Let it not be feared that solicitude of this kind w ill injure any interest ; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage ot all ; for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to secure from misery those on whom it so irgely depends. We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family ; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action as far as is consistent with the common good and the interests of others. Nevertheless, rulers should anxiously safeguard the community and all its parts ; the community, because the conservation of the community is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety ot the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a Government's whole reason of existence; and the parts, because both philosophy and the Gospel agree in 'aying down that the object of the administration of the State should be, not the advantage of the ruler, but the benefit of thc-e over whom he rules. The gift of authority is from God, and is, as it were, a participation of the highest of all sovereignties ; and it should be exercised as the power of God is exercised — with a fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches to details as well.