592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



influence of which you were learning to forego the advantage of their 

 labor, that they might get the advantage of education. We will give 

 you henceforth free dispensation from all such painful efforts. You 

 shall at once be made virtuous and unselfish by a special clause in our 

 act. You shall be placed under legal obligations, under penalty and 

 fine, to have all the proper feelings of a parent. Why toil by the slow, 

 irksome process of voluntary efforts and your own growing sense of 

 right to do your duty, when we can do it so easily for you in five min- 

 utes ? We will provide all for you masters, standards, examinations, 

 subjects, and hours. You need have no strong convictions, and need 

 make no efforts of your own, as you did when you organized your 

 chapels, your benefit societies, your trade societies, or your cooperative 

 institutions. We are the brain that thinks ; you are but the bone and 

 muscles that are moved. Should you desire some occupation, we will 

 throw you an old bare bone or two of theological dispute. You may 

 settle for yourselves which dogmas of the religious bodies you prefer ; 

 and while you are fighting over these things our department shall see 

 to the rest for you. Lastly, we will make no distinctions between you 

 all. The good and the bad parent shall stand on the same footing, 

 and our statutes shall assume with perfect impartiality that every 

 parent intends to defraud his child, and can only be supplied with a 

 conscience at the police-court." This cynical assumption of the weak- 

 ness and selfishness of parents, this disbelief in the power of better 

 motives, this faith in the inspector and policeman, can have but one 

 result. Treat the people as unworthy of trust, and they will justify 

 your expectation. Tell them that you do not expect them to possess a 

 sense of responsibility to think or act for themselves, withhold from 

 them the most natural and the most important opportunities for such 

 things, and in due time they will passively accept the mental and 

 moral condition you have made for them. I repeat that the great 

 natural duties are the great natural opportunities of improvement for 

 all of us. We can see eveiy day how the wealthy man, who strips 

 himself entirely of the care of his children, and leaves them wholly in 

 the hands of tutors, governesses, and schoolmasters, how little his life 

 is influenced by them, how little he ends by learning from them. 

 Whereas, to the man whose thoughts are much occupied with what is 

 best for them, who is busied with the delicate problems which they 

 are ever suggesting to him, they are a constant means of both moral 

 and mental change. I repeat that no man's character, be he rich or 

 poor, can afford the intrusion of a great power like the state between 

 himself and his thoughts for his children. Observe the corresponding 

 effect in another of our great state institutions. The effect of the 

 poor law which undertakes the care in the last resort of the old and 

 helpless has been to break down to a great extent the family feelings 

 and affections of our people. It is simply and solely on account of 

 this great machine that our people, naturally so generous, recognize 





