e fully
protected by political rights. These political liberties moreover
claim not only the negative protection or non-interference of
authority, but also its positive financial help. For political liberty
exists for the protection of civil liberty, and not _vice versa_. The
collective forces of a society are for the benefit of the individual
and not the individual for them. A State is an institution for the
protection of rights inherent to a free people.

The negation of this principle leads to the State paternalism which
stands for the interference of State in matters which by right belong
to the individual and the family. Never has State interference and
State protection been more exaggerated than they are nowadays. The
passing and pressing emergencies of the great war have accentuated
these tendencies. The nations have kept the habit of being governed by
orders-in-council, by arbitrary censorship and dictatorial methods.
"The Executive has usurped the functions that rightly belong to the
legislative assembly, with a virtual dictatorship as the inevitable
result." The consequence of State Paternalism is the death of
individual liberty either through socialism or autocracy. Man becomes
the chattel of a bureaucratic government.

Of all civil liberties there is none more sacred, more fundamental than
that of education. The freedom of education means the right of a
parent to give to his offspring an education in harmony with his
concept of life, with the dictates of his conscience. As education is
nothing but a preparation for life, its theory goes hand in hand with
the theory of life. To this liberty of the parent should correspond in
society a political right. To deprive a free citizen of this right is
to penalize him and oblige him--as is the case in Manitoba--to buy
twice over a right of conscience. This condition wherever it exists is
a flagrant abuse of political authority and consequently a social
disorder.

Some may object to our argumentation and answer that in a modern
democracy the majority rules, and the majority in the West are against
"separate schools." The political right of the majority cannot cancel
a moral right of the minority. It is a case here of repeating the
statement of Burke: "The tyranny of a democracy is the most dangerous
of all tyrannies because it allows no appeal against itself." This
autocracy of numbers is often more dangerous and more brutal than that
of a caste, o