DOES PROHIBITION INFRINGE PERSONAL LIBERTY?
By C. P. B.
A LATE picture published in the interests of the liquor traffic is thus described by the publishers:— "Prohibition is represented in a clerical garb, showing its cloven foot resting upon the emblems of liberty in the attempt to crush our beloved bird of freedom and trample it to the ground, the open wings of the struggling bird representing the different States and Territories of the Union. The other foot of the usurper rests upon the Declaration of Independence, attempting to trample our vested rights into the dirt. The diadem of the usurper contains the feathers plucked from the bird of freedom and captured by Prohibition. In the right hand of Prohibition is flounted in a threatening manner 'CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT,' arrogantly referring to embodiment in the Constitution of the United States of Puritanical Sunday laws, sumptuary laws, and national prohibition." Such is the liquor dealer's idea of prohibition, but that there is scarcely an element of truth in it will appear from an examination of the subject. In the first place there is nothing in common between Sunday laws and laws prohibiting or restricting the liquor traffic. Many pious people who revere Sunday through a mistaken zeal desire laws compelling all to observe it by resting from ordinary labor upon that day, and they also demand the prohibition of the liquor traffic, but generally from widely different reasons; and the fact that religious people are in favor of two measures does not by any means prove that they are equally good, or equally evil, or that they are of the same nature. Prohibition is in no sense religious. Very many infidels and liberals are in favor of prohibition as a matter of public policy, and as necessary for the protection of life and property. The evil effects of liquor drinking are not confined to those who drink. Every drunkard, yea, every intoxicated man, is a menace to life and property, not his own life and property only, but the lives and property of others; and can it be that society has no right to protect itself against the danger? We place violently insane persons in asylums even when there is no hope of their recovery, in order to restrain them; and shall we not restrain those who would make themselves temporarily insane by the use of intoxicating liquors? Crime and poverty are the legitimate fruits of the liquor traffic. No informed man doubts that liquor drinking is responsible for most of the crime committed in our land; and has the State no just right to prohibit a traffic which enriches a few by degrading the many? As a rule the man who drinks neglects his family and leaves them to be supported by charity, while he spends for liquor the money which should go to their maintenance; and not only so, but in his drunken frenzy he beats and abuses his helpless family. And has the State no right to restrain him? Certainly, right and justice demand the prohibition of a business whose very prosperity depends upon the misery of thousands, and whose coffers are filled at the expense of the most helpless in the land. But suppose for a moment that the State has no right to prevent a man from drinking what and when he pleases, does it follow that it has no just right to say that other men shall not for the sake of enriching themselves entice men to drink, and thus not only lure them to destruction but beggar their families and turn them out paupers, to be supported by those who, by honest industry, have accumulated property which bears its just proportion of taxation? The cry of personal liberty does not come, as a rule, from the men who drink, but from those who grow rich by ministering to the most depraved appetites of their fellow-men. The liberty which they demand is liberty to put the bottle to their neighbor's lips, to make him drunken also that they may see his shame and despoil him of his goods. To talk about vested rights, and the foot of the usurper resting upon the Declaration of Independence, simply because prohibition is demanded, is the merest twaddle. Men who talk and write that way do not themselves believe what they say. Did they for a moment believe that their business was as legitimate as any other, they would demand, not license as they now do, but the absolute freedom that is accorded to other branches of business. But while prohibitory laws are purely civil, and the enacting of them not only the right but the duty of the State, Sunday laws are of an entirely different character. Sunday is a religious institution; its friends call it the Christian Sabbath, and most of them insist that it ought to be kept in obedience to the fourth commandment. It is therefore no more the right of the State to enforce its observance than it would be to enforce baptism, or the Lord's Supper. Laws forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors to be used as beverages, violate no man's conscience. Nobody sells whisky as a religious duty. The liquor dealer's only motive is the hope of gain, and the whole traffic is demoralizing and fraught with danger to life and property. But a failure to religiously keep Sunday does not endanger life and property; it does not cause a man to abuse his family. Many good citizens and earnest Christians do not regard Sunday because they know that there is no divine law requiring its observance, and they exercise their God-given right to labor upon that day, but in so doing they do not prey upon others, they do not fill their own pockets by ministering to the depraved appetites and passions of those who are too weak to resist temptation; in short, there is no similarity whatever between Sunday work and business and the liquor traffic.