Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1882-07-20
gron Gonntg gegla1err.
Prohibition in Missouri.
IFrom the Post-Dispatch.l

teiNSu q SFtdt impetus Iioiu INV AS>A .
popular majorities by which amend
ments absolutely prohibiting the man.
ufacture or sale of ali intoxicating
beverages have been incorporated IN
the Constitutions of Kansas and Iowa.
The support which this movement has
received from Democrats prevented
the Democratic party from making
fight against it as party in either
Iowa or Kansas Here in Missouri, as
i'm Iowa, some of the leading Demo-
Gratis and Democratic newspapers are
earnestly advocating the submission
and adoption of a Prohibition amend
ment, and here as elsewhere the Re-
publicaDs will be sure to make this
issue the means of dividing and de-
feating their opponents. 1t is an issue
affecting such large interests, moral
and material, and involving such i'm
portant principles of American legis-
lative policy, that 1t must be squarely
met, and all parties must soon take
sides for it or against it. We see that
Democratic candidates for the Legis-
lature are being forced to pledge them
people, and therefore the time for it's
discussion is come. The issue is pre-
scented in the following constitutional
amendment, adopted the other day by
a popular majority of $4,000 in the
State of Iowa:
No person shall manufacture for sale, or
sell or keep for sale rs a beverage, any intox-
icating liquors whatever, including ale, wine
and beer. The General Assembly shall by
law prescribe regulations for the enforce
ment of the prohibition herein contained,
and shall thereby provide suitable penalties
for the violation of the provisions thereof.
Here is fundamental law adopted
by the votes of the agricultural people
of Iowa against the votes of her cities,
yet it declares that the fruits of her
orchards and vineyards and the sur
plus grain of her farms must go be-
You'd her own boundary to find a mar
ket, and must be manufactured else
where into wine, beer and whisky be-
fore her people can buy and drink
thereof. In view of the fact that the
cities which opposed this law are the
spots most afflicted by the evils of tie
liquor traffic, this is remarkable ex
hibition of self-denial on the part of
farmers who but q few years since
burned their corn as their cheapest
fuel. It is also a remarkable exhibit
ton of the rage for using the power of
the ballot-box to regulate the purely
personal concerns and the sumptuary
indulgences of our feIlow-citizens. No
monarchic government, backed by a
vast standing army, would dare attempt
to enforce such q decree for the de-
.struction of established Industries and
the vast property interests built there
on. A less tyrannical Interference
with the tea-drinking of our ancestors
cost George III. his American colonies,
and less exasperating restriction of
personal liberty has cost many king
his crown.
The greatest danger which the rule
of the majority has to contend with in
this Independent country is the lust of
power and the temptation to use it |
tyrannically. The despotism of a ma
jority may become as odious and intol- !
cradle as the despotism of a military |
monarch, provoking the same disre-
spect for authority and the same de-
moralizing efforts to enjoy personal
freedom by circumventing and resist
ing the law. In this country, where
the enforcement OF laws depends so
much on the general assent OF public |
opinion, nothing has produced so much
and for the authority behind it az these
foolish and futile attempts to deprive
the multitude of the right to choose
their own drinks because some weak
lings make sots and hogs of them
selves. The object of the law is inn
practicable, and cannot be realized in
q land of men accustomed to be their
own masters and quick to resent and
resist the efforts of that paternalism in
which insists on treating
them as little children in matters of
diet and pastime as well as in matters
of business.
The whole thing Is wrong and at
war with the principles of American
because it is daring and
odious extinction Of the rights and re-
sponsibilities of the individual citizen.
If the Democrats have bartered away
the traditional ideas of their party till
they can palter with or court senti-
ment hostile to all the recognized land
marks of Anglo-Saxon liberty-if they
havs not the will and the nerve to
meet this Prohibition movement at the
very threshold with an outspoken and
opposition-they will wo-
fully miscalculate the temper of the