The Latest Temperance Move.
By Editor
There has recently been inaugurated the National Anti-Nuisance League, the headquarters of which are in New York, and the object of which is the overthrow of the liquor traffic, not by moral suasion, not by the slow process of prohibitive legislation, but by judicial decision. Taking for their basis the Supreme Court decisions already rendered concerning the traffic that there is no inherent right or privilege of a citizen to sell liquors by retail; that no Legislature can bargain away the public health or public safety, as especially applying to the liquor traffic, together with the facts that the judiciary is a co-equal and co-ordinate branch of our government, and that, while it does not make new laws, it may interpret old ones in harmony with justice and natural law, correcting if need be the errors of legislatures, taking all these as the basis of the argument, it is contended that the liquor traffic may be abolished, even as slavery was in England by Lord Mansfield, by judicial decision. This is a brief statement of the argument of Mr. John Lloyd Thomas, to appear in the Demorest Magazine for February. The writer says:— If it be true that God's law as revealed in Holy Writ, and nature's law as taught through the discoveries of science, are supreme; if it be true that alcoholic liquors are poison, murdering slowly or rapidly, but always surely, those who purchase and drink; if it be true that "the public health, the public morals, and the public safety are endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks;" if it be true that "disorder, pauperism, and crime are largely traceable to the drink evil;" if it be true that "the statistics of every State show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits, obtained at retail liquor saloons, than to any other source," who can doubt that our United States Supreme Court will wisely and righteously respond to the occasion, and declare unconstitutional every law authorizing or permitting, under tax or license fee, the sale of alcoholic liquors as beverages. Will this be successful? We will wait and see.