The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1839-06-29
Sound Doctrine.

The annexed extract is from an address recent
y delivered by EMORY WAsHBuRN, Esq. of Wor.
cester, Mass, before the Mass. Temperance So
ciety. On the subject of legislative Introduction
of the rum traffic, Mr.. Washburn Justly and for
chilly remarks - ...
| know that the power of legislating to this en-
tent is openly denied by not few in this age of
boosted freedom. And while almost every sub
ject of police regulation is conceded to be within
the scope Of Legislative CONTROL the sale of rum is
too high and sacred privilege TO be infrnged or
scarcely to be modified. While the law NAV re.
strain the minor sources of corruption, or punish
as crime the sale of unwholesome meats from
the butchers stall, or adulterated drugs from the
apothecary's shop-while the law declares the
drinking of ardent spirits a crime if it produces
lie natural and often almost necessary effect: it
may not lay its hand upon a traffic which does
more to corrupt society," to destroy the public peace
and multiply crime than all other causes combin-
ed lest forsooth it invade the 'homebred rights
of him who makes his gains out of the follies, the
vices or the madness of his feow-men.
| The law may regulate the traffic by restricting
the ninety and nine, but if it touch with sacrile
gious hand, the single favored monopolist of this
licensed branch of trade, the passions of whole
people are to be aroused against it. The stream
may be regulated but you may neither check its
flow nor diminish one drop of its waters, though
they scatter pestilence and death through every
village in the land.
There is in all this refinement in distinction,
that is beyond the comprehension of ordinary
minds. There are not few who cannot perceive,
under government designed for the protection of
all, the sacredness of that claim, which many set
up in behalf of the traffic in rum. They regard
it as a separation of cause and effect, which Meth
er COMFORTS with the principles of common sense
nor of sound philosophy. If it is not right to
set fire to your neighbours house, by what scale Of
morals could it be justified that the torch which
is to light the flame should oe placed in the hands
may not enter my poor neighbours dwelling, to
snatch the food from his chdrens mouths, or strip
them of the scanty raiment, that protects them
from the winters cold, what right have |, in the
sight OF just God, to send into that dwelling
that which know will bring nakedness and hun
ger upon every inmate within its walls?
know it is said that the act of purchasing and
using ardent spirit is voluntary one, over which
the seller does not exercise CONTROL and that it is
among those acts of personal free agency, with
which the law has no right to interfere. And sup
pose we yield to this position, so far as the use of
what is thus sold is confined in its effects to the
individual himself, it does not affect the principle
that the law may restrain the traffic. Not only
do the consequences of this traffic reach beyond
the individuals Immediately engaged in it, but
they affect the most important relations in life,
which the law has created, and by the preserva-
ton of which, society can alone exist
The law has chained the destiny of the wife to
that of her husband, by bonds that death alone
can sever. 1t has placed the child under its pa
rents control during that plastic age when the
character assumes its form for time and often for
eternity, from the impress it receives from mo-
theirs precepts or fathers example. And is it
nothing to that wife, or to those little ones that
husband is changed to brute, and father trans
formed into demon7 Is it nothing. to society
that the hopes and energies Of that vile should be
crushed or that those children should grow up in
Ignorance and vice Surely, if society may not
protect itself from that which weakens and de-
stroys the fundamental principles of its very or
ganization, the bond by which it is held together
must be frail as the spiders web.