"LE DEVOIR DE BONHEUR." Ire rya EDITOR 07 rex srrcr■rox.-
I SIR,—Your reviewer (May SOW of the French thinker's volume, La Volonte d'Harmonie, covers a large field, and is indeed worth reading, more particularly while the subject of non- Unionism amongst wage-earners occupies so much attention. 1 venture to quote Bastiat
When law and force," says Bastiat, "keep a man within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing on him but a mere negation. They only oblige him to abstain from doing harm. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others."
Shortly, the aim of the law, which is the instrument of Government, is to prevent injustice from reigning. Injustice is exemplified by a notice I see on the church door demanding "Se. 6d. in the pound for Poor Rate." This is a form of injustice little felt by the rich ratepayer, bitterly and heavily felt by the poor ratepayer, and admitted by every thinking man in the community. And more than an injustice to the thrifty; a moral ruin is being wrought by our Poor Law system on all the wasteful and unthrifty whom it lures into pauperism, and on all the paupers whom it keeps alive with- out making happy, or, rather, only keeps alive when all ppegbildr of happiness /a one,—I am, Sir, M.,
*. K. D.
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