Personal Liberty and Prohibition

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 20, 1916

Personal Liberty and Prohibition

Is the personal liberty of the liquor seller invaded when the state steps in and closes the saloon? The Continent of March 30, 1916, discusses this question, and concludes with the following sensible remarks:—

“So the way is clear for the final question which touches the traffic in liquors from the strictly social and public view:—

“Has a man any personal right to sell a commodity sure to injure, if not all, at least a vast number of those to whom it is sold?

“That plainly is not a question of right to live and be happy, but of right to choose in what way one will make money—a right which no publicist has ever admitted to be personal or inherent.

“The limitations that law may set on a man’s manner of making money are already vindicated by precedents that no argument can ever set aside or overcome.

“For closely parallel examples, the laws controlling dealers in poisons, explosives, and adulterated foods prove beyond question that it is entirely compatible with the liberties of a free people for the government to restrict to any necessary degree the sale of commodities liable to do harm to their purchasers.

“And here comes the final word on which rests the right of the government in State or nation to prohibit the sale of liquor:—

“A free people cannot ultimately permit any citizen to make his livelihood by dealing in a commodity which does no good to any buyer and causes untold harm to the vast majority.

“That is an absolutely infrangible proposition. And it is all that is necessary to stick to in order to maintain the logic of prohibition in any form in which it has ever been proposed.”