San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-07-14
THE REAL CORRECTIVE.


The amount of cheap morality that
has been voiced through the press
over the Louisiana lottery bill is one
of the curiosities of American press
literature. 1t is all of a piece with
other attempts to parade virtue that
does not exist, to stimulate moral
sense that has taken impractical hold
on community. Gambling is said to
be an American vice. However, that
may be, it is only too true that the
public sentiment of this country does
not condemn 1T. The guesses adver-
tised as the basis of premiums in
leading journals, the craze for grab
bags and rattle tickets at fairs, the
mania for betting on the result of any
popular contest among men or ami
mails, on sea or land, are all evidences
of the very general taste for specula-
tive operations and the interest taken
in their outcome. Why the lottery
should be singled out as the target
for so general an onslaught is
difficult to understand. What is
of more Importance is that no
amount of legislation can change
or correct popular taste, because
legislation follows the lines of popu-
lar demand and does not precede 1t.
for arguments sake, the
correctness of the structures against
lottery operations as we'll founded mo
amount of legislation is likely to cor
rectthat habit. The two classes affect
ed are those who are already confirmed
in the lottery habit and those who
are not. For the first, measures of
regulation are demanded, for the
second instruction. The license law
for the first, moral suasion for
the last. This is the only effect
ual way of correcting society. The
drinking habit, the lottery habit, the
gambling habit in all it phases, and
all other social evils are only reached
through regulation and education.
Prescription has failed from the days
of Adam until now. At best it only
leads to discrimination, and a flimsy
fig leaf covering. The real corrective
is in the home and school instruction,
and In regulation. All minors being
wards of the state are properly
TO state control and can be
legally regulated out of saloons and
gambling dens. The adult is a part
of the state, and has a lien
upon himself that the state cannot
interfere with. He has O right 10
his personal liberty under law, and
that law has no right in equity to
abridge his liberty over himself save
where that liberty is clearly an in
upon the equal rights of
his neighbor. There is no doubt that
the lifting, or the attempted lifting of
these questions of personal habit out
of the domain of morals and making
of them semi-political questions, has
defeated the work of reform and per-
petuated the evils it has sought so
unwisely to remove. There is but
one supreme law for the regula-
ton of human conduct, humanity
speaking; the law of a mans own
self government. Moral suasion en-
thrones this law and arraigns the
higher nature of the man against his
lower. Proscrlptive legislation de-
thrones all idea of self government
and makes no provision for that gov
eminent Of man over himself which
is an essential of his free condition.
The lottery habit and the whiskey
habit can be educated out of humani-
ty; they cannot be legislated out, and
the attempt to do so only perpetuates
them.
THE two Republics OF Mexico does
not take much stock in the cana rdthat
President Harrison and Nc Kinley
sit up nights trying to circumvent
Secretary Blaine's reciprocity
schemes, and says there is reason to
that the President is about
as thoroughly committed to recepro-