The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1875-02-22
LETTEwsl on CURRENT TOPICS.
The Critic Criticised.

EuttW HhHHn bEOot - our hyper
critical criticism upon the resolutions of the
Rutland county temperance convention, is
a marked exhibition of what Lord Coke
calls "Sticking in the bank" The whole
four of the objections Is derived from the
use or abuse rather You make OF the word
traffic which for the purpose of imam
of straw" you make to mean the agencies
for supplying liquors under the provisions
of the prohibitory law, for purposes which
all agree are as legitimate as the use of
other posons are for specific purposes, and
by such perversion You seem to make out
the Inconsistency. upon which, by way Of
variety, you rcgale yourself with an ex-
hibition of highest relish. Now you
might as well argue that the use of fire, TO
cook your food, is arson, or that pure con-
jugal association is adultery, or that
homicide in sefdefense is murder. as that
such supply under the prohiblory law cou-
stitutes traffic.
Popular understanding, which is the SOW
ereign arbiter of language, is all the other
way and more strictly, even Webster in his
Academy Edition, defines traffic to be
dealing for the purposes of trade. So
much for the violence and torture Of the
word traffic, and in order to appropriate
any sort of advantage from the peryersons,
you are compelled to confound all distinc-
tions and abrogdte all use of names, by
making prohibition mean license, and
license mean prohibition, and then tilt at
the form of enactments under the prohi l.
tory law because, like many other crimes,
the same overt act might be virtuous or
vicious, as homocide in self-defence would
be the one and murder the technical name
of the act would be the other. And these
are the sufficient reasons for the peculiar
forms of enactments, and do not tend 10
weaken the force of the truth that liquors
sold in traffic are NAHUM in 81 and
not crimes simply because prohibited. And
now that the laws of trade are not better
protection against the evils of intemperance
than any sort of license or local option
laws, as affirmed by the resolutions in ques-
ton, YOU can never prove by contrasting
such policy with our good and almost
perfect prohbitory law with the shoal pre-
text that it is, after all, only license law
The radical difference in principle as well
as IN detail between our prohlbtory law
and any sort of license law is so well under
stood that the whole array of opposition to
prohibition makes up the issue TO change
the same TO a license law. however str. IL
gent it must be, and for the very strong
reason that they want the monopoly of the
trade and the nominal respeclability that a
license furnishes.
of all of the astutc critics speculations as
to whether legal harmony requires crime to
be prohibited instead of regulated.
And in conclusion against an editor who
if concluded must still always have the
last word, poor and equivOcal as your com
pl!ment Is THAT our convention doubtless
meant well, but had moi the capacity to ex-
press themselves. 1t is better than to pos
sess that power Of language which our
critic illustrates, in the manner tina, Tally
rand says, THAT language is an invention
for concealng ideas" and the greater pity
is, that such prodigy of ability should
not have sympathy that leads to associa-
ton and assistance in our temperance or
CARNATIONS, so that his weaker but equally
well meaning friends could be projected
by him from the lampoon of carrcature
and sarcasm all the more offensive if war
ranted by the unfortunate facts in the case
According TO the old common law maxim
that in matters of Islander, ''the greater the
truth the greater the libel EASY.