This perfect equilibrium of authority and liberty is perfectly expressed in Lincoln's famous definition: "A sane democracy is one of the people, by the people and for the people." The reason of this law of the political order is that liberty is previous to authority, for authority only exists to protect liberty against tyranny and to safeguard it against its own excesses. He is best governed who is least governed. LePlay, the celebrated French economist, made this just and pertinent remark: "The truly free nations are those who, without compromising this prosperity, extend the benefices of private life at the expense of public life." (Reforme Sociale II, page 92.) Therefore the ideal State exists when all civil or social rights--which stand for the _public enjoyment_ of all natural rights--are 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.