p. 141 | Liquor is No Excuse

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 23, 1882

Liquor is No Excuse.

THE following is part of an argument said to have been made in a mining camp, in a trial in a court before "Judge Lynch," against a man who shot another, and plead in defence that he was in liquor when the crime was committed. The argument is good—much better than most of those made in real "courts of justice," so-called:—

"Now, I'll allow that Billy, the deceased, hadn't no cause to speak as he did, an' I'll allow that what he said was calculated to make Jim mad, 'specially as Jim was drunk at the time. Still, it seems to me that nobody but Jim made Jim drunk. Suppose he had gone out while drunk, an' fell into a shaft and broke his leg? Do you s'pose the company would have paid him anything for his leg? Not a cent. Why? Because he would not have fallen into the shaft if sober, for Jim has got too much sense to do anything of the sort. Similarly, if he shoots a man when he's drunk, he aint going to get off. His drunk don't excuse him in one case any more'n in another. An' you've got to take the drink Jim put into himself, as being in its effects a part of Jim. If Billy, the deceased, had made Jim drunk, then Billy would have had to stand the racket an' get shot. But being as it's different, it's different. I ain't got anything to say against Jim personally, but I think men ought to see that they can't get drunk in this camp, and plead licker as an excuse for what they do. 'Cause it aint no excuse."