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in general have to blush, are mainly due to the carrying on of colonization under State-management, and with the help of State-funds and State-force. It is quite needless to point to the recent affair at Wairau in New Zealand, or to the Kaffir war, or to our perpetual aggressions in the East, or to colonial history at large, in proof of this, for the fact is self-evident. A schoolboy, made overbearing by the consciousness that there is always a big brother to take his part, typifies the colonist, who sees in his mother-country a bully ever ready to back and defend him. Unprotected emigrants, landing among a strange race, and feeling themselves the weaker party, are tolerably certain to behave well; and a community of them is likely to grow up in amicable relationship with the natives. But let these emigrants be followed by regiments of soldiers-let them have a fort built and cannons mounted-let them feel that they have the upper hand; and they will no longer be the same men. A brutality will come out which the discipline of civilized life had kept under; and not unfrequently they will prove more vicious than they even knew themselves to be. Various evil influences conspire with their own bad propensities. The military force guarding them has a strong motive to foment quarrels; for war promises prize-money. To the civil officials, conquest holds out a prospect of more berths and quicker promotion—a fact which must bias them in favour of it. Thus an aggressive tendency is encouraged in all, and betrays colonists into those atrocities that disgrace civilization.

As though to round off the argument, history gives proof that while Government-colonization is accompanied by endless miseries and abominations, colonization naturally carried on is free from these. To William Penn belongs the honour of having shown men that the kindness, justice, and truth of its inhabitants, are better safeguards to a colony than troops and fortifications and the bravery of governors. In all points Pennsylvania illustrates the equitable, as contrasted with the

inequitable, mode of colonizing. It was founded not by the State but by private individuals. It needed no mothercountry protection, for it committed no breaches of the moral law. Its treaty with the Indians, described as "the only one ever concluded which was not ratified by an oath, and the only one that was never broken," served it in better stead than any garrison. For the seventy years during which the Quakers retained the chief power, it enjoyed an immunity from that border warfare, with its concomitant losses, and fears, and bloodshed, to which other settlements were subject. Contrariwise, its people maintained a friendly and mutuallybeneficial intercourse with the natives; and, as a natural consequence of complete security, made unusually rapid progress in material prosperity.

That a like policy would have been similarly advantageous in other cases, may reasonably be inferred. No one can doubt, for instance, that had the East India Company been denied military aid and State-conferred privileges, both its own affairs, and the affairs of Hindostan, would have been in a far better condition than they now are. Insane longing for empire would never have burdened the Company with the enormous debt which paralyzes it. The energy perpetually expended in aggressive wars would have been employed in developing the resources of the country. And had the settlers thus turned their attention wholly to commerce, and conducted themselves peaceably, as their defenceless state would have compelled them to do, England would have been better supplied with raw materials and the markets for her goods would have enlarged.

SANITARY SUPERVISION.

THE current ideas respecting legislative interference in sanitary matters, do not seem to have taken the form of a definite theory. The Eastern Medical Association of Scotland does indeed hold "that it is the duty of the State to adopt measures for protecting the health as well as the property of its subjects;" and The Times lately asserted that "the Privy Council is chargeable with the health of the Empire;" but no considerable political party has adopted either of these dogmas by way of a distinct confession of faith.

That it comes within the proper sphere of government to repress nuisances is evident. He who contaminates the atmosphere breathed by his neighbour, is infringing his neighbour's rights. Men having equal claims to the free use of the elements, and having that exercise more or less limited. by whatever makes the elements more or less unusable, are obviously trespassed against by any one who unnecessarily vitiates the elements, and renders them detrimental to health, or disagreeable to the senses; and in the discharge of its function as protector, a government is called upon to afford redress to those so trespassed against.

Beyond this, however, it cannot lawfully go. As already shown in several kindred cases, for a government to take from a citizen more property than is needful for the efficient

*See The Times, Oct. 17, 1848.

defence of that citizen's rights, is to infringe his rights. And hence all taxation for sanitary superintendence coming, as it does, within this category, must be condemned.

The theory which Boards of Health and the like imply, is not only inconsistent with our definition of State-duty, but is open to strictures similar to those made in analogous cases. If, by saying "that it is the duty of the State to adopt measures for protecting the health of its subjects," it is meant (as it is meant by the majority of the medical profession) that the State should interpose between quacks and those who patronize them, or between the druggist and the artizan who wants a remedy for his cold-if it is meant that to guard people against empirical treatment, the State should forbid all unlicensed persons from prescribing; then the reply is, that to do so is directly to violate the moral law. Men's rights are infringed by these, as much as by all other, tradeinterferences. The invalid is at liberty to buy medicine and advice from whomsoever he pleases; the unlicensed practitioner is at liberty to sell these to whosoever will buy. On no pretext can a barrier be set up between the two, without the law of equal freedom being broken; and least of all may the Government, whose office it is to uphold that law, become a transgressor of it.

Moreover this doctrine, that it is the duty of the State to protect the health of its subjects, cannot be established, for the same reason that its kindred doctrines cannot, namely, the impossibility of saying how far the alleged duty shall be carried. Health depends on the fulfilment of numerous conditions-can be "protected" only by insuring that fulfilment. If, therefore, it is the duty of the State to protect the health of its subjects, it is its duty to see that all the conditions to health are fulfilled by them. The legislature must prescribe so many meals a day for each individual; fix the quantities and qualities of food for men, women and children; state the proportion of fluids, when to be taken, and of what kind;

specify the amount of exercise, and define its character; describe the clothing to be employed; determine the hours of sleep; and to enforce these regulations it must employ officials to oversee every one's domestic arrangements. If, on the other hand, a universal supervision of private conduct is not meant, then there comes the question-Where, between this and no supervision at all, lies the boundary up to which supervision is a duty?

There is a manifest analogy between committing to Government-guardianship the physical health of the people, and committing to it their moral health. If the welfare of men's souls can be fitly dealt with by acts of parliament, why then the welfare of their bodies can be fitly dealt with likewise. The disinfecting society from vice may naturally be cited as a precedent for disinfecting it from pestilence. Purifying the haunts of men from noxious vapours may be held quite as legitimate as purifying their moral atmosphere. The fear that false doctrines may be instilled by unauthorized preachers, has its analogue in the fear that unauthorized practitioners may give deleterious medicines or advice. And the prosecutions once committed to prevent the one evil, countenance the penalties used to put down the other. Contrariwise, the arguments employed by the dissenter to show that the moral sanity of the people is not a matter for State-superintendence, are applicable, with a slight change of terms, to their physical sanity also.

Let no one think this analogy imaginary. The two notions are not only theoretically related; we have facts proving that they tend to embody themselves in similar institutions. There is an inclination on the part of the medical profession to get itself organized after the fashion of the clergy. Little do the public at large know how actively professional publications are agitating for State-appointed overseers of the public health. Take up the Lancet, and you will find articles written to show the necessity of making poor-law medical

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