EVERY man has the natural, inherent right to live in peace and quietude the longest period of time natural law will allot to him under normal conditions.
He does not have inherent personal liberty to pursue a course of conduct that would shorten the days of his natural life, or the life of any other person; therefore we have municipal, state, national, and divine laws against suicide, fratricide, and all other commonly known forms of murder, each of which, simply stated, is only shortening the days of one's life or the life of another.
The fact that a means was used different from the usual, such as arsenic, ether, chloroform, the gun, or the dagger, to cause death, would in no way alter the decision of an unbiased court with the facts before it. Hence each state should have laws prohibiting also this form of murder.
The individual who is engaged in a traffic, or the state authorities who commercialize a business, that in the very nature of the pursuit dethrones reason, and shortens his own life and the lives of his customers, must stand criminalized, when tried before a national court of equity, for murder brought about by administering a cumulative poison.
Alcohol is a cumulative poison to every consumer. It dethrones the reason of the excessive consumer, hurling him headlong into untimely physical death and to eternal loss of soul. No man has a natural right to traffic in the bodies, minds, and souls of men — not even in his own.
Life and the normal use of the mind are natural rights that belong to every man. They are God-given; and no man should be deprived of them so long as he does not trespass upon the equal rights of other men. The man or woman who engages in the nefarious business of dealing out alcohol to his fellow men, is continuously trenching upon the rights of others.
The dealer in alcohol sets forth the claim that, being a free citizen, he has a right to traffic in alcohol for monetary gain so long as he pays his bills. Not so. He has no inherent right so to do. Is he entitled by nature to greater liberty and more personal right than are his customers? — No, he would not so claim.
To illustrate: A and B have equal rights to life, to liberty, and to their reason. A claims that he has the right to sell alcohol to B. B holds that he has the right to buy and drink it. A has the liberty to collect pay from B for the product. B, from personal choice, gives him money for and drinks the alcohol, but is deprived of his liberty to remain sober. Conclusion: A has taken from B his money, his liberty, his reason, his good name, his honor, his family's support and comfort, and in the final analysis, his life for time and for eternity. A has taken all this from B, under the pretext of personal liberty. He has no such liberty. God never gave such liberty to any man. Traffic in alcohol is simply robbing the man who purchases it, of his right to support his family, and to remain sober, retain his manhood, and live out his allotted number of days. From the standpoint of the rights and liberties of every man, which are equal by nature, no man has a natural right to be engaged in such traffic.
Dealer, would you have some one drop a weight on your head that would dethrone your reason, as you were on your way home from your daily vocation to greet a loving and expectant family?
Each lover of liberty should concede liberty to others. The love of money getting at the other man's cost, is the root of the alcohol traffic. Let us each live and contend for the liberty of the other man, possibly an unfortunate brother; and thus we shall come into living possession of a purer sort of liberty, more nearly that of the divine pattern.
"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."
"It is a fundamental principle of law that no man has a right to do that which injures another. But the men who drink liquor, invariably become an injury to others."
