The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1882-07-07
The Liquor Traffic.

II is a curious thing that intelligent
men should difer In opinion as TO the
wiser and truer policy to be adopted by
society toward the liquor traffic-prohi-
billion or license. First of all to deter
mine what the relation Is Of the liquor
traffic to the general welfare. Is IL
partly good and partly bad? and If 30 is
1t more good than bad, or more bad
than good? Having settled that, 1t
seems to me there can be no difficulty
In determin ing what policy tho state
should adopt in relation to It. We say
tho liquor traffic is all bad; there is no
good about 1t; It is 30 bad in its inilu-
ences upon the common veal that
nothing car be worse. Tho evils COM
ing from it to every pnblic and social
interest are more and greater than
those which ar Use from all other sour
ces of evil combined. No one has ever
denied or doubted this-so far as Il
know. Mr.. Gladstone recently said of
It: "More evils como from it, to the
people than from the war, pestilence
and famine, those three great scourges
of the human family" Chief Justice
Davis said: ''If all the evils of whatev-
err kind we're divided into five parts,
| the liquor traffic would be responsible
| for four of them" No one denies that
all this Il true of the relation
welfare. This being So, what should
be the policy of the state in relation to
IL. The law has forbidden lotteries
and lottery Offices; the manufacture
| and sale of obscene books and pictures;
l gambling houses; houses OF III fame.
l Why? Because their influence is bad
| they are inconsistent with the general
welfare. This policy towards these In
dustries Is universally accepted as right
and wise. The liquor traffic inf1icts
upon the community a thousand fold
more evil than all combined. We say,
therefore, 1t should not be licensed, cs-
tablished and protected by law, but
should be forbidden and suppressed.
It wages deadly war upon every inter-
est of nation, state and people. Every.
body knows this to be trne. Then
why can any intelligent man object to
! the policy of prohibitionp' The reason
] they give and the only one is, that pro-
l hibitiOn, wherever it has been tried,
has failed to diminish the evils of the
| traffic to any apprecisble extent. Pol
/ iticians say this: toleration of tho
| liquor traffic will promote the interests
I of their party, they think. Some doc
tors of divinity say this: prohibition is
& reproof of their drinking habits.
But this is all false, whoever says it.
In all the history of prohibition in
Whatever countries-and ii has q history
of LaOre than thirty years-there has
never transpired one incident which
could even give color TO the assertion
| that 1t had been q failure. On the COLI
trary, n has been and 10 an instrument
tally Of great coed everywhere. In
| England there are more than fourteen
| hundred parishes where the liquor
traffic is prohibited-and in every one
| Of them, the result has been wonderful
for good. In Scotland and In Ireland,
/ there are many localities in which the
traffic has been forbidden by law with
the same result. In all Scotland, and
In all Ireland, except five large cities,
ihe grogshops are suppressed on the
| Sunday with most beneficient result
and ct the last session Of parliament, a
Sunday pr ohibition bill for Wales was
passed almost unanimously. The ben
efits of this policy for Ireland and
Scotland led to that, and now Sunday
4 pushed. At the last session of parlia-
\ ment, also, a resolution in favor of To-
cal option was passed by a majority of
! fOrty-two, and Mr.. Gladstone has
promised to bring in a bill embodying
that principle. In all English speak
ing countries, there is O strong move
ment for this adoption of the policy of
prohibition to replace that of license.
The liquor traffic is war against the
church, the library and the school-it
is n phase of the warfare between
heaven and hell" Chares Baxton,
member of parliament, said that. 1t is
the "wholesale poisoning of the peo-
| pie; 1t drives them to hell like sheep"
John Wesley said that. "The liquor
traffic Is the gigantic crime of crimes"
Senator Morrill, of Maine said that.
Everybody knows that all this is true.
II this great sin, shame and crime be
continued, let 1t be against the law and
In spite of 1t, and not established and
projected by law-as in those states
WSere it Is licensed.-fNeal Dow.