What now is the extent, and what are the duties of that right to interfere?  This is a difficult question, and can receive but an imperfect answer.  In infancy the authority of the parent is exercised without any reference to the will of the child, because reason is not yet developed.  But when he reaches the age of personal accountability, the control of the parent is exercised on more liberal principles; and when, by age, he becomes a responsible citizen, the legal authority of the parent ceases.  Still he possesses moral authority, and has a right to exert a restraining influence over the child.  This does not, of course, involve a right to compel him to yield to the parent’s arbitrary will.  He can exert but a moral control over him; and it is the child’s duty to yield to this, so long as it is consistent with scripture and the maxims of sound reason and conscience.  He should consult his parents, receive them into his confidence, and give priority to their judgment and counsels.

Parents have the right to use coercive measures to prevent an imprudent marriage by their children before they have arrived at age; for until they are of age they are both legally and morally under the authority and government of their parents, who are responsible for them.  Hence the child should recognize and submit to their authority.  But this right to the use of coercive measures extends only to the prevention of unhappy marriages,—­not to the forming of what the parents may regard happy alliances, against the will of the child.  No parent has the right to compel a child under age to marry, because the marriage alliance implies the age and free choice of the child.

But when the child reaches legal maturity, the coercive authority of the parent ceases.  His interposition then should not involve coercive, but persuasive measures.  Then a mere mechanical prevention of an unhappy marriage would have no good moral effect, but would be productive of great evil, inasmuch as it not only involves parental despotism, but the restriction of a manifest and conceded right of the child.  It would destroy the sense of personal dignity and responsibility.

Persuasive measures will then accomplish more than all the efforts of the parent to prevent an unhappy union, by threats of disinheritance and expulsion from home.  In this way parents often extend their interference to most unreasonable extremes, and to the great detriment of the interests and happiness of their children; while at the same time they often bring disgrace and misery upon their own heads and home.  They set themselves up as the choosers of companions for their children, presuming that they should passively submit to their selection whatever it may be.  This is taking away the free moral agency of the child, making no account of his taste, judgment, or affections; and forming between him and the object thus chosen a mere outward union, with no inward affinity.