Temperance by W. N. Glenn

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 17, 1881

Temperance.

By W. N. Glenn

PERSONAL LIBERTY.

BY W. N. GLENN.

THIS is the one grand boast of American citizenship, and is by some classes construed to mean license to do as they please. This definition is especially the pet idea of those engaged in the liquor traffic. They have always resisted restriction or regulation of their business by law; in this respect they have ever been law-abiding only by compulsion. No matter what the measure for the benefit of the public—the maintenance of peace, the safety of property, or the protection of the innocent or unfortunate—the liquor business is always ready for combat, with money and influence, for personal rights. If a city ordinance provides that business must close by a specified time, the liquor traffic resists; it must have all night. If the law says business must close one day in seven, the liquor interest demurs; it must have seven days in a week. If any institution is protected by metes and bounds, the liquor seller is the first, and generally the only one, to try to push over the prescribed line. As to obeying any law restricting unbridled license, the liquor trade and its co-ordinate enterprises always stubbornly resist, and doggedly obey when compelled to. “A free country,” is always the plea.

Dr. R. D. Merrick, of San Francisco, delivered a lecture on the subject of “Personal Liberty,” before the Oakland Health and Temperance club, Sunday evening, November 6, and presented the subject in a most reasonable light. He said that at one time temperance reformers only advocated, and temperance societies only required, a limitation in the quantity of liquor a man should use; but now they had come up on higher ground, demanding total abstinence from anything likely to contain alcohol. They had formerly depended upon moral suasion as an offensive weapon, but this does not answer the purpose; all the saloon-keepers in Oakland might be persuaded to-day to pour out their liquors and tear down their signs, and to-morrow their places would be filled by others.

The temperance movement has been fought all along by the argument of personal liberty. The lecturer now used this plea in behalf of temperance, and on this ground demanded a prohibitory law for the protection of the personal liberty of all classes. He illustrated the workings of this liberty in some other respects. A man goes out to exercise his horse; it is his own horse and he can drive as fast as he pleases, of course. But suddenly a policeman hails him; the law forbids fast driving in certain limits, it provides against the possibility of accidents in this respect. A company owns a block of ground in the city, and essays to erect powder works thereon; but the law forbids it, as against the safety of the community. An individual owns a lot in a certain part of the city, and commences to erect a frame house for a home; he claims the personal liberty to build as he pleases upon his own property. But an officer of the law comes along and peremptorily stops him; the law forbids the erection of frame houses in that locality; it contemplates the safety of the community. Now the temperance reform only asks that the same principle may be carried out in reference to the liquor traffic—that the law in regard to this evil also may provide against injury to others.

But we meet the argument, Let every one carry out his own convictions. If liquor is bad, any one can keep away from it, let it alone if he chooses. This was also illustrated: A man is walking along the sidewalk, attending to his own business; two drunken rowdies come reeling out of a saloon, and in the frenzy of excitement begin firing pistols, and the innocent man is hit by a random shot. He was letting liquor alone, but it didn’t let him alone. The lecturer was acquainted with a man in San Francisco who let liquor alone, but his wife was drawn into its meshes, and the family disgraced. A drunken expressman lay down in his stable in the center of a block that contained several valuable residences; the fire from his pipe ignited the straw, and great damage was the result. The residents of this block were letting liquor alone, but it did not let them alone, and the temperance reform asks that the State will protect them against such accidents, as well as against damage in other respects.

But it is Constitutional enactment that is demanded, not merely Legislative law. One Legislature may pass a law, and a clique of politicians may, with money influence, get it repealed at the next session. But incorporate prohibition in the Constitution, and it cannot be repealed without the consent of the people.

The lecturer then appealed directly to the audience, and said that the people were partners in the evil results of the liquor traffic. They contract with the saloon keepers to do the work, by selling them licenses for the purpose, thus reaping part of the pecuniary benefit. He had nothing to say to the liquor sellers. The people were the principal parties in the transaction, were the rulers of the country, and had the power to quell the evil and protect the public.

In harmony with the arguments advanced in the lecturer’s remarks, we may add that now is the time to move for prohibition. The whole country is on the qui vive in regard to the temperance question, and all temperance workers should be active while the tide is favorable. If the opportunity moment is not seized, the fair wind may soon lull again, and the good temperance bark be caught in a calm of inactivity and unconcern, on the part of the people, or be beaten back by adverse storms. Let personal liberty be freely used in the contest—liberty to contend for protection against injury, crime, and death.