The Liquor Traffic and Personal Liberty
By G. D. Ballou
A Menace to Life, Property, and Character—Society
Has a Right to Protection Against It IN his article this week, Mr. Ballou shows how the liquor business invades our personal rights. Next week he will have an article in which he will show that Sunday laws are also a violation of the principles of personal rights that are herein enumerated. THERE are many people not among the intemperate class who look with disfavor on every legal effort to suppress the liquor traffic, because they say that such suppression would be an interference with the personal rights of others. PERSONAL AUTHORITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
All just civil law is an authoritative expression, by civil government, of personal human rights. Every true law exists first of all in the personal authority of the individual. No political, social, or religious organization can create or generate or secure any new rights or authority which did not first exist in the individual persons constituting the organization. So all human rights and rights of human organizations are the personal, God-given rights that come as a birthright to every soul. No individual or association of individuals, because of organization, has any excess of rights or privileges, before the law, over any other individual or class, no matter what their social, financial, or religious standing may be. What, then, are these inalienable human rights? First of all, every person has a right to preserve, make secure, and defend his own life or the life of any other person. Failing in this, he becomes guilty before his Creator and his fellows. Especially is this seen in the matter of defense. If one fails to defend the helpless when life is endangered, he is scorned and detested by his fellows. In some cases, if he fails to defend his fellows, he is accounted a partaker of the crime. Every one has a full and perfect right to defend his property from any and all attacks. "If a thief be found breaking up, and be smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him," says the law of Moses. If the neighbors' property, or community property, be endangered, the obligation is none the less imperative. Again, under some circumstances, failure to defend would make a man partaker in the crime. A man shot down in the act of putting the torch to his neighbor's house or barn would not be mourned by the community, and the slayer would be commended for his deed. It is the prerogative and duty of every man to defend his own family or the family of another from all impure attacks. The man who fails to defend in either case would be counted either a villain or a weakling, for whom no good word would be spoken. In all these cases, the individual right of defense is paramount to all action of the civil powers, and the unwritten law justifies the avenger. DEFENSE OF REPUTATION AND CHARACTER
Here is a field of defense over which there is no chance for argument. It is not permissible to do bodily injury in return for slander or reproach, but every man's best defense is a correct life and the setting forth of the facts of his good behavior. Then the civil law permits the levying of damages where it is shown that the slander has proved a financial loss to the assailed. This line of defense lies very close to defense of property, for the best business asset any man can have is a good reputation and character. THE BASIS FOR ALL CIVIL LAW
These rights to defend life, property, chastity, and reputation form the basis for all civil law. There are no personal rights that may not be legitimately classified under these four heads, and hence there can be no proper civil laws that do not find their authority resting on this basis. Anything that in any way endangers any of these relationships becomes a subject for just legislation. In representative government, we elect men to go to the halls of legislation, and we delegate to them the personal authority that we possess by reason of the inherent, natural rights already specified. These legislators, thus clothed with the personal authority of all the citizens, are empowered to make authoritative laws for the civil state or community. EXTENT OF THE RIGHT OF DEFENSE
The sale of dangerous toys and weapons and poisons is prohibited, or ought to be, because these things are a menace to life and property. How about the sale of intoxicating drinks? Do they endanger the life and comfort and happiness of the people in the community where sold and used? Be fair with yourself in answering this question. Has that woman down there in the hovel, with her helpless babes, any right to the necessities of life which could be purchased with the money her drunken husband squanders on liquor? Where is her defense when her husband loses control of himself through having the drink constantly placed within his reach? Must I as an individual be made responsible to use my time and means to supply the starving, chilling, wretched ones made so through failure to keep the bottle out of reach of the poor weaklings who are permitted to drink or let it alone, as they please? It may be noticed they seldom let it alone. DOES IT MAKE THEM DANGEROUS?
Does the drink in any way endanger the lives of the poor uncontrolled creatures who never know when to let it alone? Does it make them dangerous in their families and in the community? How many murders have been committed by men who took the intoxicant to nerve them for the bloody deed! Is the sale and use of intoxicants dangerous to life and property? Are drunken men fit to run railroad trains and automobiles and to drive horses? Are they fit to act as night watchmen? Are they fit to act as policemen to guard the lives and property of waking and sleeping citizens? If you can answer these questions affirmatively, why, then let the liquor flow. Employ the drunken night watchman for your property, or a drunken chauffeur for your automobile, or a tipsy dude to chaperon your family to the seashore, or employ a drunken doctor when you are sick. But the writer would prefer a leave of absence from the vicinity of such surroundings. Is the sale and use of intoxicants dangerous to life and property and chastity? Would you send your family to a resort where half the guests were drunk all the time? Would you consider your sister or your daughter safe in the company of a man who led her to places where drink is sold, and especially if he drank himself and urged her to drink? Where does the downfall of many a young man and woman begin? Is it not in the wine cup or the beer bottle? Will you tell me truly, is the sale and use of liquors that will make men and women drunk a menace to chastity and virtue? And last of all, what do you think of the reputation and character of a town where nine tenths of the people drink strong liquors,326and where half of them get drunk? Compare this town with another where not one in ten touches the drink, and a drunk man is only seen in the town when he and his chums come over from Treeville to do a little advertising and show the dull, slow "drys" what kind of citizens they ought to have to make life interesting and keep the courts busy and the jails full. If you had a case in court involving your life or your property or your reputation, would you want a judge who drank freely, or a jury of tipplers, or would it even please you if your witnesses were just noticeably under the influence of liquor? What, then, is the matter with this whole liquor business? The strongest impeachment against it is that it is a perpetual menace to life, property, chastity, and reputation. Every principle of law involved in human rights may be justly invoked against it. To prohibit its manufacture and sale is no infringement of any man's rights; for no man has a moral right to damage himself with the drink habit, and no man has a civil right to force the community to repair the damage and sustain the losses he inflicts on it when he brutalizes himself and debases others with strong drink. Who is the brave, wise man,—the one who bars out the enemy, or the one who lets him in and then battles with him and endures the damage he inflicts? Brother, what will you do when the opportunity is offered you to help cast out this giant evil that is doing more to debauch human society than are all other forms of sin? Many a weakling will bless you for having helped to put the temptation out of his reach, by voting to exclude the liquor business from your state and from the nation. "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall not He render to every man according to his works?" Prov. 24:11, 12.