Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1872-01-19
LEG.gL rs. .NOR.IL ST.SSIO.y.

In view of the increasing interest now
being manifested upon the subject of tenn
perance, we publish the following extract
from an address recently read before the
Good Samaritan Society of Brattleboro by
a member Of the organization
Much has been said here of late regard
ing the duty of temperance people to en-
force the prohibitory law. We have law
upon our statute books we are told, where
by we have the power to put stop, at once
and forever to the traffic in Intoxicating
drinks. What is the use, then, it is ask ed,
of our coming here every Sunday evening
and talking temperance repeating from
week to week the stale intelligence that
rum intoXicates, and that it is best for us
to let it alone We all know this, it is said.
Then why this everlasting talk ? Why not
go to work and do sOmething-entorce the
law-prosecute
My good friend, you shall be answered.
In the fist place, want to know what we
have been doing for the past fifteen years.
We have had this same law upon your stat
ute books, and we have endeavored to en-
force it. We have prosecuted and repro
secuted we have called upon the proper
officers to deal with the rumsellers as The
law provides. and they have done so in
InultitudeS of instances but what has il
amounted to? In spite of the law, in spite
of the apparent will of a majority of the
people OF Vermont, in spite of all the efforts
put forth by the friends of temperance,
where are we as State, to-day? With
open bars and free rum everywhere.
Brethren, let us learn by experience.
Were il possible that the prohibitory law
could be successfully enforced, surely the
experience of all these years, in all the
different States where similar laws have
been enacted, would have sufliced to dem
onstrate the fact. Look at Massachusetts,
with her special police, appointed for the
express purpose of selling and destroying
all contraband liquors. What permanent
good has resulted from this last determined
attempt to carry out the theory of prohibit
ton? None. The effort has resulted only
in more fully demonstrating the utter
lutility and absufdity of any attempt to
force people into morality.
Let us, then, brethren of the Good Sa-
martan order. let us lay to heart this les
son, so thoroughly taught by oft tried ex-
perience, that so long as people desire 10
make beasts of themselves, so long they
will find the means to do it. In other
words, so long as any considerable portion
of the people believe that liquor is good for
them, and so long as they prefer to be their
own judges as to when, how much and
what sort Cf fluid they shall imbibe, so long
will they continue to drink rum, and gin,
and whiskey, and you and | can't help it.
Nay, we nave no business to help it, except
as we can Influence them through moral
means, by appeals to their manhood and by
demonstrating 10 then the danger and folly
of their course. say. the sooner we ac-
knowledge this fact the sooner we shall
come to stand upon solid ground; the
sooner we shall be able TO distinguish be-
tween what Is practicable aud what is i'm
practicable in this matter of temperance re-
form.
Granted that a majority of the people
have the absolute right, to certain extent,
TO enact laws and to enforce them against
the will of the minority. All ask you to
consider is the practicabiity of the thing.
TO my mind this Is settled. We cannot by
legal means, in the present condition oil
public sentiment, prevent the use and sale
of Intoxicating liquors to any great extent.
If to reform men requires first of all that
they desire to reform-a fact which many
good temperance people seem amazingly
slow TO comprehend-then is the work to
be done mainly q moral one. Suppose that
the probibi.ory law be enforced to-mor-
row; how many practical converts to
the doctrine of total abstinence would be
mace thereby? How many young men
who have but just begun to dabble with the
accursed stuff would have their eyes thus
opened TO a true sense of their danger ?
Uoy many of the besotted victims of in
femperance, whom neither a sense of shame
NOR the entTeaties of wife and children have
linus far ayailed to restore to honor and So
briefly. would yield "A cordial acquiescence
10 tbe dictate OF law2 Not one l-experience
tells MS that Then why seek to do by
force what only the power of love and
sympathy as embodied in this and similar
Organizations can hope to accomplish?
/ would not DO understood as willing tC
allow n total disregard of all law in regard tC
the rum tratllc,-tar from II. The com
nlunity have rights which the individual is
b und to respect but likewise, the indivi'
dual has rights which no law may infringe
This is a land of large personal liberty
ard among the unallenable rights of the n.
i, Vi iual Is the right to wrong ones self
Srbere Is, there can be no legal enactment
for the pregeBijon of suicide; and habitua
iiauor Thinking Is only form of :licidc
THAT law, il appears to me ovcfsieps the
sounds of justice and p0,sonal liberty
which assumes 10 decide what man may