The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1889-03-08
The Rights Of the People.

| w Il Ill ~ II StobA&NSc W
homes where all is now dark, and where
want and sorrow are not transient guests,
but are ever present. Adopt this resolu-
ton, and the wan, pale faces of broken
hearted women will light up once more
with the hope of better days to come.
Adopt this, and children living in poverty
and want and rags and ignorance and
crime, and even generations yet unborn,
will bless you. Adopt this, and your own
conscience will approve, and You will have
a right to look up and invoke Gods bless
ing on your act and ON your own home.
And why not adopt it? Is it not in the
interest of sobriety and good government?
And if We are not here to secure these OBJ
jects, then we ought to adjourn at once
and go to our homes. All honorable men
ought to vote for every proposition that
will secure sobriety and good government.
Mr.. President, if this General Assembly
will pass this resolution, and the people
adopt it, making it the supreme law of the
State, it will in a few years empty our
iails. 1t will solve the great and perplex-
| ing DTODlpm VI CDlVlCb idDUi bldb iiCo Juoe
before us by emptying our penitentiaries.
Again, | point you in this line to the ex-
p~erience of other States. | need not go
out of the State of Illinois to illustrate
this fact. Canon Farrar, in his great Lon
don address, January 12, 1886, giving his
impressions of America, said: 81 had
the great happiness to visit the Illinois
Pullman city. There saw a population
of upward $500 people, self respecting,
happy, singularly enriched with all the
blessings of civilization, with a beautiful
church, with an admirable library, and
some of the very best schools in the whole
of Illinois; no city government, no police
and, on the authority of Judge Porter, with
not a single arrest during a period Of twen-
ty months"
Many years ago one of the grandest char
acters in American history, one greatly
loved and honored by the people OF the
State of Illinois, one whose name and fame
have filled the whole world, one who now
sleeps almost within the shadow of this
Capitol, the immortal Abraham Lincoln,
declared '"This is a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people,
Let us respect this sentiments and allow the
people of our State to say whether they
want the poverty and crime and pauperism
of the liquor traffic continued, or whether
it shall cease forever. believe in the
light Of the people to declare their will on
any question. Their will is sovereign and
must be obeyed. l believe that the man
who would refuse the people the right to
vote on any question relating to their well
fare is not only an enemy to the people,
but of the State. If | believed the traffic
in alcoholic liquors as a beverage a public
blessing | should still favor the right of
the people to express their wish. We may
be told that this is a free country, and that
the proposed enactment is a restraint on
freedom. Yes, we are free; | thank God
for if; but we cannot do everything we
please. Our freedom is curtailed, by var
ious restraints for the public good. We
are prohibited and restrained from all the
vices and crimes known to the law except
this one giant vice that is the promoter and
prompter of all the other. We are prohib-
tied from setting up nuisances to disturb
our neighbors, from coiinIerfeiting coin,
from opening houses of tiffany, from SELL
ing lottery tickts, and all the greater and
lesser evils in the catalogue of vice and
crime; except this one. What greater
nuisance than a public saloon? 1t is an
| invxeia,, nf tl,a riar1fc nf III Iaappt naoplQ
Why, only a week ago last Sunday, in the
city Of Chicago, | entered a strcet-car on
Milwaukee avenue to ride to Lake street.
When fairly seated, in came a dozen or
more young men. who, from their CONVEX
~sation, had been out witnessing a fight.
and one of the lumber was one of the COM
batants. l need not tell you that we had
all the fumes of a saloon in the
crowded car. We had all that obscenity
that comes from a saloon. Presently one
Of the number, fuller than the rest, dropped
. his drunken head over ON the shoulder of a
refined and innocent woman, who was on
| her way home from church. She found a
Z remedy for this invasion Of her rights. 1t
is a free country, SO she got out and walk
r ed. The traffic that made these young
men brutes and nuisances was carried on
? with your consent, and was made reputa-
BILE by law, perhaps Illegal on this day,
r but legal and right on every other day in
the week.
Experience proves beyond cavil or dis
pute that laws prohibiting this internal
| traffic are as well enforced as any other
T laws that come in contact with habit and
: self-interest. | am here to declare that
this is the case in every State where sucl
J. laws have been passed. There Is not a
single exception to this rule. | challenge
y any proof to the contrary. | have before
me the authority Of those charged with the
execution of the law in those States. and
: they uniformly agree that this is so. Here
is the authority of all the Judges of the
Superior and District Courts of Iowa. 1t il
absolutely in%disputable. If | had the time,
would be glad to read yon what they say
Governor Larrabec, in a recent message
. declares that there were thirty-two coun