THE ''PUBLIC good:' 11 



PATERNALISM, vs. LIBERTY 



But liow utitiiral it is for one to desire to see the affairs of the 

 community administered as a father woukl govern his family. 

 When tlie wise are able to see a course of action that would plainly 

 be for the benefit of the ignorant, how well it would be for the 

 community to insist upon tlieir following it. And how natural it is 

 for us to impress our ego before the truth. If we were to start a 

 colony, it may be asked, would it not be desirable to pick the best 

 people, and would not sober people be the best, and after having 

 gained these would it not be of first importance to keep all others 

 out? 



There is no doubt but that sober people are preferable, and that 

 a community without saloons would be desirable. But it would be 

 far more desirable to have an immoral community well governed 

 than to have persecution and a whited-sepulchre-kind of morality. 

 A far richer and more complex life would be engendered from a 

 vai'iety of people of diflerent morals, but recognizing equal liberty, 

 than could be derived from any class, sect, school or clique. 

 Without this indispensable requisite, even heaven itself and the 

 society of angels, would be intolerable. However, any set of indi- 

 viduals have the right to unanimously make their own contract not 

 to have any saloons, and to parcel oft' their own ward or tract, 

 where such conditions shall exist. But they have no right to ex- 

 clude adjoining disenters from establishing saloons, as a part of 

 their right of contract.* 



Then it may be further objected that, " If the principle of pater- 

 nalism is not applicable in the State neither is it a tenable one to 

 hold in the family. '' Certainly not. Who has not heard the i-emark 

 when a particularly wayward youth was noticed, '• He must be a 

 minister's son?" The doctrine of equal liberty obtains between 

 parent and child as much as between children themselves. "But is 

 not the parent' s counsel the child' s safeguard ?" Only when the 

 child is free to disobey it at its own cost can either its experience or 



most criminal, the govurninent, or the people naturally towards each other. And 

 whether ornot, when the weak and vicious offspring of paternalism have been dis- 

 posed of, there will be any need of even a special police force. Indeed, we are in- 

 clined to thi)ik that such a standing force exercises a predatory function. 



* Liberal, Mo., has evinced the same lack of discrimination in prohibiting not 

 only saloons, but churches. Pullman, near Chicago, is a complete illustration of 

 paternalism, which has resulted in a huge plantation specnlation. Our boarding 

 schools and colleges are all conducted on the paternal principle, which is the cause 

 of much of their immorality. 



