Spirit of the age. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1849-1865, 1851-10-10
u
THE LAW.

What is its design? If intended for govern
ment revenue, the history Of the past demon
strates that the results of the license system
show that the expenses entailed upon the City
and State far exceed the amount paid into the
Treasury. If designed to promote the public
good,afd it treaty inficts a direful public injury,
it defeats its own purpose, and must be regar-
ded as unaoise and inefficient. A largeJpart of
our penal code is intended to punish offences
against public morality, he4ltb/ police and de-
cency. All these are SAID to be promoted by
the License Laws! HoaU, is what we have
never been able to perceive. On the contrary,
we feel justified by every days experience and
observation in asserting, that the License Laws
encourage Immortality, nourish disease, thwart
the best directed efforts of our Magistracy to
maintain the public peace, and cherish every
species of indecency; and if there be one place
in all the land where morality, health. police
and decency are more flagrantly outraged than
any other, that place is a licensed grog shop !!
The very existence of such laws, works posi-
tive injury to public morality. They have
done much to generate q vitiated public opin-
ion. The morality of the mass of our citizens
seldom rises higher than the morality of the
law, and what the mass of the people think, is
public opinion.
We know it is very difficult to make the peo-
pie believe that to be wrong, which comes to
them recommended by the sanction of law
10 define the extent of the injury thus inflic-
ted upon the public mind, is impossible but
we know, that the influence has been wide
spread, pestiferous, and destructive; and shat
the dispositions engendered by the authorized
traffic, in the mind Of the retailer, are sunsanc-
tined by time, unappeased by signs and tears,
and u~nappropriated by thousands O Thurman vic
TINS annually offered in sacrifice Our object
in adverting to the License Laws, is not to
bring the sacred cause of Temperance into
the arena OF political turmoil, or to appeal for
Legislative enactments in behalf of our cause
but, as we have before stated, so to awaken
public sentiment to the enormity of the system.
that it may be frowned down by, and banished
from the community. We therefore propose
to keep their enormities constantly in view.
However intended, no rejecting man will
say that the License system of North Carolina
tends to promote the general happiness, by in
ereasing the general virtue of our people
And when it is considered that the original and
proper objects of all governments is to secure
the general happiness of the governed, it is
strange that so little has been done for its at-
tainment in the Old North State. The won
der ceases, however, when we remember that
those whom we have chosen to make ard ex-
ecute our laws, have never been fully indoctri-
mated with the truth that virtue is the best nro-
moter of the public veal. Norhave thew con-
sidered sufficiently, that the promotion of yir-
tue is the first object of good government, and
that the punishment Of vice is only secondary
IN point of Importance. The latter nav ba
DONE without securing the former; but if pub
lie virtue be secured, the whole work is done.
and well done.