Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-18
QUE MAIL POUCH.
The Personal Liberty Question as Involved
In ProhibItory Laws.

| 1ho Hcrsonai Liberty 4uesuOn as luVOf'oA
In Prohibitory Laws.
To the Editor of The Dispatch;
In reading the circulars and speeches for and
against prohibition, it seems strange that those
in favor of it so feebiy and illogically meet the
arguments OF their opponents on the score Oh
personal liberty
If prohibition were merely proposed as a safe
guard for the sheath, morality and economic
expedieney" of the drinker, should fully agree
with the most pronounced anti-prohibitionist
that the proposed amendment is an unjustifia-
Bile interference with the private affairs of the
individual.
The State would have as much right to regu-
late the furnishing of ones house, his ward
robe and diet He may be impairing
health and fortune. but that is his own
the right nor the power to protect
man against himself: and if no better plea
could be made in favor of prohibition, the
liquor league might safely have kept the money
It Is spending SO freely in its several pockets.
But this Is not all Against mans negbbor
the law has right to protect him.. That is its
first duty-its rdison d'etre. If it is not to en-
able the citizens of the State to live in security
and peace, protected from the rapacity and
violence even of one another, for what does it
exist2 All men who live in communities must
1t is not enough to say that they yield to those
others all the rights they claim for themselves.
Except in matters of religion and conscience,
that is by no means enough. Suppose party
form the peaceable citizens that they also have
to ride over everything that comes in
their way and fire into windows as
nssf the nas Woh the lives
are senselessly placed? The self-described,
universal man who can drink or let it alone"
does not want. and should not have, law to
protect him from himself, even though it hap
pens, as it does, that he drinks himself to death
in large numbers every year. But the man, or,
more frequently, the woman, who suffers at the
hands of the drunkard does ask and should re-
ceive protection from him. On this ground,
and on no other, 1t seems to me- is prohibition
constitutional. ITO establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare" is part
OF the language of the preamble to the Consti-
tuition
drunkenness is no excuse for crime" But
1t is made an excuse, often enough, in the
mitted by drunken man were made double
what it should be had he been sober.
there is no reason to suppose that
crimes. What does a drunken man know
or care for the law and its penalties? And
what avail to the victims of the daily murders
and lesser crimes is it that the perpetrator
is punished? The prime cause of infinite law
breaking Is known and sustained by the law.
Legislators and people know that so long as
liquor Is within the reach of eyeryone,innoce
can drink or let it alone" for the sake Of hav-
ing it themselves, insist that it shall be placed
within the reach of those who cannot and will
not '1et it alone" but drink it to the deIriment
of the peace and order of the community and
the peril OF their neighbors' lives Probably no
drunkard ever took his first glass without the
firm belief that he could take it or let It
alone" Many one has taken his last drink
with the same conviction.
Is it justice that the moderate drinker"
should compel unwilling men and women
to submit to danger and violence,
poverty and grief that he may have at will the
liquor which he says he can do withoutf Is
this not the acme of selfshness and injustice?
He knows that while free liquor continues
certain amount of crime attributable to that
and to nothing else will occur every year
every day. If we could single out beforehand
the man who, under the influence of liquor,
will kill, burn, MAIN, beat, rob and starve
helpless children, the thing might be provided
against, and the drinker who shall do no harm
to any but himself might drink on undisturbed.
But we cannot do this. There is no way to
reach the mischief but to establish, for the
safety of all, law to be obeyed by all. s. G. K.
PIrTsBURG, June II.