“How is it possible to think that religious organizations should be excluded from the right of administering the alms which they receive? Under such a system, they might as well assert that they are not allowed to receive alms, that is to say, they would have to destroy the natural liberty of those men who lay aside a portion of their income to devote to charity, from charging the agents of their own alms and their liberality.”[97]
As for the poor themselves, Portalis thought, with reason, that many among them refused to receive assistance from any administration whatever, and this is why he wished that a portion of the accumulated alms might be left to the disposition of the curates of the parishes:
“Because these alms could be profitably disposed of to those poor who from circumstances and misfortunes have met with reverses and change of position, and who, not wishing to acknowledge their misery to the administrators of benevolent institutions, their equals and sometimes their enemies or rivals, go to seek from their pastors the consolations that sustain their courage, and obtain assistance that does not humiliate them. It is to this interesting use that the alms are generally consecrated by the religious organizations and the priests.”[98] 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 brings us back every day to the principles that we have too easily abandoned.”[99]
“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, he must allow great latitude to a liberal arbitration.”[100]
A remarkable avowal, above all, from a lawyer of the temper of Portalis, who willingly elevated into a dogma the omnipotence of the 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.