The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1885-10-27
Prohibition.


EDITOR GAZETTE IF the friends of prohibition
| and temperance were easily daunted they might
we'll lose heart at the often repeated and sincerely
expressed assertion that prohibition could never
prohibit nor be anything but dead letter until
there public sentiment to support it, and
also at the idea expressed in the Daily Press, that
temperance could never be a universal rule while
human nature remains what 1t is with its appetites
and passions.
No one can realize the value of public sentiment
more than the friends of prohibition. They know,
the practical ones, that many measure of reform
must be advocated which will not at first SUCCESS
full either politically socially because of the
lack of proper public sentiment TO support it, but
what are they going TO do about the matter then?
Sit down and wait till a proper sentiment in some
mysterious way grows to such dimensions that the
measure may safely be advocated sure of being
carriedS When would that time come? No! the
duty of all reformers Is TO make public sentiment
as fast as they can.
As to prohibition not prohibiting let us see what
1t does do and how far it goes toward prohibiting.
In any place where prohibitorY law is in force
that law suppose, is sure to be broken sometimes.
Now, in the State of Maine in village after village
you would find no place where liquor could be
bought. not even for medicine But in the larger
places, IN towns of fifteen and twenty thousand
inhabitants, liquor could probably be obtained
though not without some trouble. ] he prohibition
law there, II 1t does not entirely prohibit, banishes
the selling of liquor to the very lowest class of
society and makes it disgraceful business. 10
break the prohibitory law is not winked at by the
common people OF MAINE, anu tue man DOiu
enough to try it in small town or village is under
social ban, and the disgrace is even visited upon
his children. This public sentiment is in great
measure the result of the prohibitory law. Of
course there was at the first enough TO carry the
law, but the law itself has fostered and strength
ened the sentiment in the generation born since its
passage thirty years ago. prohibitory law is
both refOrmatOry and preventive III its action III
by the prevalence of prohlbtOry law children are
prevented from becoming drunkards they will not
have TO be "dragooned" back into the virtue of
Temperance from which they have never fallen.
Surely something is gained if prohibitionists can
secure such laws as will, if they can do nothing
better, dragon" drunkards into being sober men.
In the of drunkards compulsory virtue is bet
than compulsory temperance better than
scottish drunkenness.
1t is TO the comfort of temperance workers to
remember that the vice of internperance does not
rest on any natural appetite in man many vices
do. lntemperance is not simply peryersion of
some natural and innocent appetite common to all
men. 1t is not natural appetite at all, but alto
gether acquired like the taste for tobacco, and
remembering this, it does not seem TO even the
ordinary temperance worker a task altogether
hopeless to rid the frOy1 of the of intemper
auce. TEMPERANCE