The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorparated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JULY 23, 1928.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 July 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorparated the West Coast Times. MONDAY, JULY 23, 1928.

THE MENTAL DEFECTIVE. In introducing the Mental Defectives Amendment Bill to the House of Representatives last week the Minister ot Health assured members that the Government was moving forward f'vcry warily,” and that “no attempt''- was being made at experimentation.” The assurance was needed, considers the Auckland Star, in that the problem of legislation for defectives bristles with difficulties. Every civilised country is faced with it. The very vagueness of this borderland, the impossibility of delimiting it and saying positively when a person is defective and when not, makes the task of confining the*activities of defectives and improving •their position not only difficult, but dangerous, in that the temptation to use authority arbitrarily and even tyrannically may be strong. Any power to interfere with the freedom of any section of the community is open to abuse, and we live in an age in which bureaucracy is ; a real menace to popular liberties. It is to the Government’s credit that its present move has been preceded by a good deal of investigation. The present Bill embodies the recommendations of a committee that reported four years ago, and of one of the doctors in the Government employ who recently made inquiries abroad. Prior to the committee of 1924, the committee on venereal disease touched on the same question. The anti-social effects of the marriage of feeble-minded person's was illustrated in a case brought before that committee, in which, so it was stated, two parents had had ten degenerate children, all of whom were a life burden on the State. Such a burden is, of course, only part of the fruits of menial defectiveness. This committee, for example, thought that supervision of lefectives was an. important factor in essening venereal disease, and urged ,he Government to adopt a system of •egistration, classification, and segregation. The committee of 1924 reportxl on similar lines, and the Governnent’s Bill proposes to introduce a vide system of control. A register is o be kept, tne marriage of registered arsons is prohibited, and voluntary terilisation is provided for. Superdsion is to be exercised by a Board onsisting of several members of the Civil Service and two outsiders. One may think the motive behind this Bill admirable, and at the same time feel uneasy lest its provisions put a dangerous power into the hands of the authorities. The very term “socially defective” seems to be perilously wide. The Education Department, it should be observed, is required to furnish returns to help'the Board to compile its register, and these returns will include all children whose education has been retarded for two years and more. There is much danger in that “retarded.” Will “retardates” mean children who have not been able to pass the Department’s mental tests? That interference with the right of men and women to marry and have children is a grave matter is obvious. We really do not know a great deal about heredity ; and eugenics, besides being a

vague ideal and not a science, harbours numbers of dangerous “cranks.” That the Bill is not going to have a smooth passage is indicated by its reception by the Labour Opposition, which, ironically enough, championed the liberty of the subject. It should be given the most careful scrutiny.