Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1879-02-19
PROHLBITORY LEGISLATION.

special order for the afternoon bill for
constitutional amendment prohibiting the
manufacture or sale of Intoxicating liquors
in the State of Minnesota. How far the
question will be examined we cannot, of
course, say. 1t is not improbable that the
occasion will be seized for the airing of a few
buncombe speeches, and that The bill will
then be permitted to die.
While the GLOBE is in hearty accord with
every movement tending to promote the
cause OF temperance, it is decidedly opposed
to the enactment of any sumptuary laws,
knowing full we'll that through them tenn
perance will receive its death-blow. The ex-
perience of every community where pro-
hibitory liquor laws are nominally in force
proves that instead of lessening the degree
of drunkenness these laws only tend to in
crease it. In Iowa, where there is in exist
ence provision similar to the one it is pro-
posed to engraft upon our constitution,
there is far more drunkenness than in any
other Western State. In several towns and
cities of Illinois the plan of refusing to
license the liquor traffic has been tried, but
i'll nearly all has been abandoned, for the
experiment has proved that if men want to
drink they will find the means of gratifying
their appetites, while the fact that they can
only procure it by stealth seems to whet
their anxiety and develop their ingenuity
in devising ways and means to procure it.
There was never truer adage than that
'stolen pleasures are SWEET and it applies
with peculiar force in all attempts to sup
press the liquor traffic.
We will ndf discuss the right of the legis-
lature to pass law infringing the personal
liberty of the citizen, although that phase of
the question will no doubt be considered.
We simply wish to point out how abortive
all such attempts at repression have been in
the past and will undoubtedly be in the
future. We presume there is not MEM
Der of the legislature who, if he thought he
| could Danish liquor forever from the State
by his vote, who would hesitate to record it,
But experience has proved that it cannot be
done, and if it could it is not certain that the
blessing would be unmixed with evil. The
Maine temperance people find themselves
face to face with an evil far greater than that
which they supposed they had conquered
years ago. In places where liquor selling
has been nearly suppressed it has been found
that opium eating has largely increased, not
only among the men but among the women,
and thousands of persons are becoming
habituated to it's use. Here is vice beside
which drunkenness almost assumes the dig
nifty of a virtue. Some people appear to
have natural craving for stimulants, and if
they are denied one they will find another.
We esteem it an impossibility to correct
the evils of intemperance by legislation. A
far more etfectual means can be employed,
and has been employed, by the distinguished
bishop of the Roman Catholic church of
Minnesota. Through his efforts more than
twenty thousand persons, formerly either in
temperate or verging upon such state, have
been banded together in total abstinence So
cieties, and transformed into honorable, in
dustrlous citizens of the State. The churches
and the various social organizations can do
much good by proper effort, but the work on
behalf of the temperance cause performed
by men and women who keep wines and
liquors at home and serve them to their
guests will prove of no avail. Any we'll d.
rected effort on behalf of the cause will re-
ceive our hearty appreciation, but we cannot
see the wisdom or expediency of this at
tempt to 1epjsIata drunkannass ont of ov;,+
ence. It is simply an impossibility.