Personal Liberty by C. P. BOLLMAN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 8, 1908

Personal Liberty

By C. P. BOLLMAN

It is insisted by many that prohibitory liquor laws interfere with personal liberty; but the contention is false. No man has a right to do anything that needlessly places the life or property of others in jeopardy. No man has a right to domicile even his own family in an unsafe building. If he lives in a city, he has no right to maintain defective flues or use defective stovepipes. The law takes cognizance of these things, for the reason that by occupying unsafe buildings and using defective flues one jeopardizes life and property. For a like reason, civil law may properly prohibit the sale, and even the use, of intoxicating beverages, since every intoxicated man is a menace to the peace and safety of his neighbors, and a source of danger to their property.

It is not true that whisky does not hurt those who let it alone. It lays a heavy tribute of loss of property, of happiness, and even of life, upon thousands of innocent victims every year.

Have those who are taxed to support courts, jails, hospitals, and asylums, no rights the saloon-keeper and the tippler are bound to respect? Has the sober workman no right of protection against the unsteady hand or the dizzy head of his intoxicated fellow workman? Have the men, women, and children who throng our streets or traverse our country roads no right of protection against the numerous accidents due not to their own personal indulgence but to the indulgence of others in intoxicating liquors? Have the wives and children of drinking men no right of protection against the drink demon?

Truly it is not only the right, but the bounden duty, of the state to extend protection to all these. As well claim personal liberty in justification of the reckless automobilist, the sneak thief, the thug, the murderer, as for the drunkard and the saloon-keeper.

C. P. BOLLMAN.