Official Charity [pp. 407-413]

Official ChIarity.
the religious organizations and the
priests." * Thus Portalis reasoned
that, even for the interests of the poor,
official charity should be energetically
repulsed.
IV.
Meanwhile, if the objection should
arise that, after all, these are but
opinions, and that simple opinions
are not sufficient always to impede
the action of the state in what it believes to be its rights, Portalis meets
this objection, and( in a decided tone
he asserts clearly that the state enjoys no right over the exercise of
charity. Here are his own words,
which we recommend to the minds
of modern statesmen:
"The principal office of authority
is to dispose of to advantage the
gifts that are offered to it, to cause
them to prosper in protecting them.
It rarely originates them. We
have not yet replaced among a multitude of reforms the institutions that
have been overturned. Experience
l)rings us back every day to the principles that we have too easily abandoned." t
"This would be but imperfectly to
understand the human heart, and
hinder its free respiration in the
things that law can protect indeed,
but which sentiment alone commands. The office of a magistrate
is to watch over the essential duties
of a citizen, but, in works of supererogation, hle must allow great latitude
to a liberal arbitration." t
A remarkable avowal, above all,
from a lawyer of the temper of Portalis, xwho willingly elevated into a
dogma the omnipotence of thle state.
He has, however, said: "No, the omnipotence of the state does not go
so far as that; and that for the very
simple reason that the state could
exact from its citizens only the observance of precepts imposed by the
natural and divine laws. It can never
compel them to submit to obligations
that nature has never created."
Is it to say that we refuse to the
state the right of showing itself benevolent and charitable? God forbid! If the state would practise
boundless liberality, we would bless it.
If it would be the protector of all
the works destined for the relief of
unfortunate humanity, we would exalt
it with transport. But never to make
this protection a monopoly, otherwise the benefaction would change
to tyranny.
Listen to M. Charles P6rin, who
has treated with as much depth as
sincerity the difficult problems of political economy:
"The action of the state in giving
assistance will not be free from danger, inasmuch as it would have a
purely preventive character.... That
the state intervenes to assure by its
civil existence the duration of those
institutions founded by the free
inspirations of private charity; that
it assures itself that the conditions of
the foundations for which it calls its
meetings contain nothing which repudiates the rules of public order;
that it exercises over the administrations of those foundations a watchlfulness that prevents abuses and which
secures the observation of the essential rules of the institution, without
annulling the free action of those
who have received the mission of
donators to represent them among
the poor, and continue the work of
charity which has inspired themunder these conditions, the intervention of the state will become a benefit, because then sile does no more
than aid liberty." *
* Raaorl dig I6 A4 vril, 18o6.
t Ibid. Riaz ort du 24, Fructidor an XIII., I * De Zla Richesse dans les Socie'ts cArelienne, t.
SeFrt., I8o05. - i. p. 498.
412