28 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



Ave pray for kings and all that are in authority, '* that 

 we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness 

 and honesty."* The mission of the State consists, then, 

 in fixing the modality of rights, that is, in regulating 

 the best way in which the reciprocal duties of individ- 

 uals and fixmilies should be exercised in order to help 

 rather than hinder each other in their common develop- 

 ment. It consists, further, in protecting by force the 

 rights and interests which belong to it from every un- 

 just and violent attack, whether from within or from 

 without. Such are the natural frontiers of civil society 

 and domestic society, the family and the State — fron- 

 tiers far more important for the peace and liberty of 

 the world than those of the Pyrenees, the Alps, or the 

 Ehine ! 



On these frontiers I pause, and salute that sceptre 

 which requires nothing but righteousness, produces 

 nothing but peace; the oppressor of none, the liberator 

 of all. I salute the sword of which Saint Paul declares 

 that the king bears it not in vain.f Xext to right- 

 eousness, I know nothing more sacred tliaii force, when 

 force is not the assassin of right, but its champion. 



Part Second.— TAe Mutual Rights of Domestic Society 

 and of Civil Society in Relation to the Marriage Con- 

 tract, to Education, and to the Sanctity of Wills. 



[In this second part, Father Il^'acintlie proposes to consider 

 tlie three principal functions of domestic life, in their relation to 

 civil society. Birth, love, death, are the three crises of individual 

 life; and transposin<5 these terms according to the social order 

 of the family, of wliicli love is the basis, we have the contract of 

 liusband and wife, the education of children, the testament of tho 

 aged. 



* 1 Timothy, ii. 2. 1- Romane, xiii. 4. 



