This is proper, because society
contributes to the life of the child, and has a right as well as
an interest in him. Society, again, must suffer if the child is
allowed to grow up a worthless vagabond or a criminal; and has a
right to intervene, both in behalf of itself and of the child, in
case his parents neglect to train him up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, or are training him up to be a liar, a
thief, a drunkard, a murderer, a pest to the community. How,
then, base the right of society on the right of the father,
since, in point of fact, the right of society is paramount to the
right of the parent?
But even waiving this, and granting what is not the fact that the
authority of the father is absolute, unlimited, it cannot be the
ground of the right of society to govern. Assume the parental
right to be perfect and inseparable from the parental relation,
it is no right to govern where no such relation exists. Nothing
true, real, solid in government can be founded on what Carlyle
calls a "sham." The statesman, if worthy of the name, ascertains
and conforms to the realities, the verities of things; and all
jurisprudence that accepts legal fictions is imperfect, and even
censurable. The presumptions or assumptions of law or politics
must have a real and solid basis, or they are inadmissible. How,
from the right of the father to govern his own child, born from
his loins, conclude his right to govern one not his child? Or
how, from my right to govern my child, conclude the right of
society to found the state, institute government, and exercise
political authority over its members?
CHAPTER IV.
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