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Unanswerable Argument

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 21, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 24.

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Unanswerable Argument.

By Editor

The opponents of prohibition are wont to say that the prohibitory laws of Maine do not prohibit the sale or lessen the use of liquors in that State. To the contrary, they affirm that more liquor is sold there, and saloons are in greater number in proportion to the number of inhabitants than in those States where the sale is licensed. We do not offer as any argument our assertion that we know better, as they are not accustomed to take the word of those who have been in that State enough to know that the stories about the frequency of saloons and the open sale of liquors is false. But "the logic of facts" is unanswerable. Look at the following item of news:—
"The American Express Company has given orders to their agents in Maine not to take orders or receive pay for packages supposed to contain liquors. By the courts an express agent has been declared liable as a violator of the Maine law for delivering and collecting for C. O. D. packages of liquors."
Why does not this order extend to the express agents in other States as well as to those in Maine? The courts of Maine decide as follows:—
"Any complicity in aiding liquor dealers to evade our laws will make an express company liable. Liquors believed to be intended for unlawful sale may be seized in transit or wherever found under circumstances indicating this intent, and the burden of proof is upon the owner to show that it is not so intended."
The thoughtful reader will be astonished at these things, if it be true that liquor is so openly sold in Maine as the anti-prohibitionists constantly affirm. We have not yet heard of any such action on the part of the express companies in States where the sale is licensed. Why not? Nor have we ever heard of the courts treating the matter in such a light in any other State but Maine, except in regard to the sale of liquor to Indians; but it is well known that such sale is prohibited by the United States.