Prohibition and Natural Rights
By Hampton W. Cottrell
THE argument adduced most persistently by the men engaged in or in sympathy with the liquor traffic, is that to prohibit such traffic by civil law is an invasion of their personal liberty. But not so. Such conclusion, though apparently logically drawn, is deduced only by reasoning from the assumed premise that they have a natural right, for monetary gain, to engage in such business, notwithstanding alcohol is a cumulative poison to the consumer, and dethrones his reason, and hurls him to an untimely physical death and to an eternal loss of soul. No Right to Poison Another
Among man's inalienable gifts from God are life and the normal use of mind. Surely no man has the inherent right to poison to the death his neighbor, his brother, or himself. Men have, for monetary gain, poisoned other men with strychnin, bringing them to sudden death; but all recognize that no one has a right so to do. Yet other men, for monetary gain, are administering cumulative poison through this nefarious liquor business, to men and women morally helpless, and to many of the morally unestablished young men and women of our country, who also are powerless to stem the flood-tide of alcoholic environments. Civil government should surely suppress this great menace to society. This is a part of its first duty to its citizens; for civil government was ordained of God to protect every man in the enjoyment of his inalienable rights, and to punish as a criminal the invader of any of these rights. Ordained for No Such Purpose
Civil government never was ordained to legalize traffic in the bodies and souls of the boys and girls of our land; and as the personnel of that civil government would not have their individual rights wrenched from them, they should not, by legalizing this great system of evil, trench upon the rights of other men to remain sober. Natural rights are God-given. They are neither created by man nor imparted by him to his fellow men. The primary object of civil government is to secure to every individual his inherent rights. Thus, and only thus, is protection assured to the household against a drunken, debauched husband and father; to the weak against the strong; to the minority against the majority. Invading Rights of Women and Children
To legalize the traffic in alcoholic liquors is to give national life to a great evil, and is an invasion of human rights, which God ordained civil powers to protect. Any person who engages in the nefarious liquor business, be it legalized or not, is surely trespassing upon the natural rights of the wife and children of the consumer. Has He a Right to Create Murderers?
The man who manufactures alcoholic liquors, or engages in any way in the business, should query with himself: "Has any man a right to deprive me of life, or of reasoning faculties? Has he a right to take these natural gifts from my wife or from any member of my family? Has he a right so to poison me, even by a cumulative method, that I will be crazed, and will bring degradation and perhaps death to some of my own dear ones, or blast the happy home of my neighbor?" Has any man this liberty? The state has no God-ordained right to license the liquor traffic; and no man has the right to deal out to his fellow men, even though the state grant him license so to do, the blasting, death-dealing poison. Let all who believe in inherent, equal rights for all men, join hands at the polls in November, in every state where temperance is the issue, and by the ballot strike the demon alcohol upon the head, and put it forever out of commission, and thus protect the weak inebriate, and his helpless wife and children, and save the many downward-tending boys and girls. We may say of alcohol personified, that he is an intruder. He thrusts himself upon many people and into the lives of many helpless ones, uninvited and unwelcomed. He is a demon. He visits only to destroy; and in the language of the prayer of another, "may it be banished beyond the bounds of time and space, into some unknown place, there to feed on the dry buds of nonentity, throughout the endless ages of eternity." Every true lover of liberty should vote for the banishment of this invader.