A RIGHTEOUS SENTENCE

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 19, 1881

A RIGHTEOUS SENTENCE.

A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following extract from a sentence pronounced by Judge Reading, of Chicago, upon the liquor dealers who had violated the law by selling rum to minors. The terrible sarcasm it contains is a powerful sermon on the whole business of rum-selling :—

"By the law you may sell it to men and women if they will buy. You have given your bond and paid your license to sell to them, and no one has a right to molest you in your legal business. No matter what the consequences may be, no matter what poverty and destitution are produced by your selling according to law, you have paid your money for this privilege, and you are licensed to pursue your calling. No matter what families are distracted and rendered miserable; no matter what wives are treated with violence; what children starve or mourn over the degradation of a parent—your business is legalized, and no one may interfere with you for it. No matter what mother may agonize over the loss of a son, or sister blush at the shame of a brother, you have a right to disregard them all, and pursue your legal calling—you are licensed. You may fit up your lawful place of business in the most enticing and captivating form; you may furnish it with the most costly and elegant equipment for your own lawful trade; you may fill it with the allurements of amusement; you may skillfully arrange and expose to view your choicest wines and captivating beverages; you may induce thirst by all contrivances to produce a raging appetite for drink, and then you may supply that appetite to the full; because it is lawful; you have paid for it—you have a license. You may allow boys and children to frequent your saloon; they may witness the apparent satisfaction with which their seniors quaff the sparkling glass; you may be schooling and training them for the period of twenty-one, when they, too, can participate—for all this is lawful. You may hold the cup to their lips; but you must not let them drink—that is unlawful. For, while you have all these privileges for the money you pay, this privilege of selling to children is denied you. Here parents have the right to say, 'leave my son to me until the law gives you a right to destroy him. Do not anticipate that terrible moment when I can assert for him no further rights of protection. That will be soon enough for me, for his sister, for his mother, for his friends, for the community, to see him take the road to death. Give him to us in his childhood at least. Let us have a few hours of his youth, in which we can enjoy his innocence, to repay us in some degree for the care and love we have lavished upon him.'

"This is something which you, who now stand prisoners at the bar, have not paid for; this is not embraced in your license. For this offense, the Court sentences you to ten days' imprisonment in the county jail, and that you pay a fine of seventy-five dollars and costs, and that you stand committed until the fine and costs of this prosecution are paid."