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176 ON THE SOLICITUDE OF THE STATE FOR THE WELFARE OF MINORS, LUNATICS, AND IDIOTS.

the principles I have hitherto endeavoured to establish in this essay, presuppose men to be in the full exercise of their ripened powers of understanding. For they are all grounded on the conviction, that the man who thinks and acts for himself should never be robbed of the power of voluntarily deciding on all that concerns himself, according to the results of his deliberations. Hence, then, they cannot be applied to persons such as lunatics and idiots, who are almost wholly deprived of reason, or to those in whom it has not reached that maturity which depends on the very growth and maturity of the body. For, however indefinite and, strictly speaking, incorrect, the latter standard may be, still there can be no other valid test to enable us to judge in general of others. Now, all these persons require, in the strictest sense, a positive solicitude for their physical and moral well-being, and the mere negative regard for their security is not enough to meet the wants of their peculiar position. But, to begin with children, who constitute the largest and most important class of such persons, it is evident that the care for their welfare, in virtue of the principles of right, peculiarly belongs to certain persons, that is, their parents. It is their duty to train up their offspring to perfect maturity; and from this duty, and as the necessary conditions of its exercise, flow all their rights with regard to them. The children, therefore, retain all their original rights as regards