PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 1019 
all is, not so much public opinion, but the intelligence of the 
average representative of the people. He has been a study to me 
for many years. He is a compound of many influences, and the 
subject of the most diverse motives. Nevertheless he makes 
our laws, and determines the legislative limits of our aspirations 
for the public good. He must be approached with consideration. 
The clearest demonstrations of science will not compel his assent. 
We must exercise discretion, and clothe our advances in accordance 
with his habits of thought as a politician, and not as a savant or a 
philanthropist, although none knows better than I do, that there 
is much in his labours that exhibits both practical wisdom and 
philanthropy. 
Possibly his attitude of semi-indifference towards public 
hygiene may be from several points of view excusable. In its 
scientific aspect it is itself largely only of yesterday, while the - 
organisation of its principles under legislation involves con- 
siderable public expenditure, and at the same time impinges 
upon individual liberty, of which he is very suspicious. Yet 
Australian legislation generally suggests the reflection that we 
in the Southern Hemisphere are again bent upon proving how 
far compulsory or mandatory hee can be instituted among a 
free people. We can see this in various directions. While,, 
however, admitting that public health legislation must to a 
large extent be compulsory, it is needful that I should point out 
that compulsory legislation for this purpose has features which 
distinguish it from compulsory legislation for purely economic 
objects, and unless the difference between them is recognised, 
the objection to compulsion must lie against the one as well as 
the other. How far law may trench upon the liberties of a free 
people, it is not possible to put in a general proposition. Every 
encroachment must rest upon its own basis ; but so long as that 
basis is broad enough, no apprehension of its effect need be 
seriously entertained. At the present moment throughout some 
of the Australian Colonies, legislation is being passed interfering 
considerably with industrial freedom. It is not my purpose to 
inquire what may be the issue of this; I desire merely to take 
note of the tendency ; and while drawing attention to this spirit 
of the time, I wish to make it apparent that compulsory legisla- 
tion for public health purposes is not outside but rather very 
much within the range of this prevalent idea. 
After all it is only in so far as any system of compulsion 
among a free people can be rationally defended that it has any 
right to exist. Public Health laws have the broadest possible 
basis ; they touch every member of the community. Public 
health is equivalent to national well-being, and national well- 
being is certainly the welfare of the whole and not of a few. 
Its legislation prejudices no one in the end; and with whatever 
