The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-27
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persons who are victims to the drink
habit. If this be true we are very sorry.
for prohibitory laws do not interfere with
the use of alcohol by drunkards, who will
get it at all hazards. The extirp alton of
alcohol is impossible; there is no more
salvation for the drunkard in legislation
than there is for the kleptomaniac. The
drunkard, If he cannot restrain himself,
should be placed under restraint. DR..
Crothers, in the North American Review,
argues that the inebriate, like the insane,
should be controlled by the state. DIR.
Crothers would tax the spirit traffic for the
construction and support of inebriate hos
pitfalls; would ''arrest and commit all drunk
ards to industrial hospitals for an in
definite time, depending on the restora-
ton of the patients; also commit all per-
sons who use spirits to excess and imperil
their own lives and the lives of others;
put them under exact military, medical
and hygienic care, where all the condi-
tions and circumstances of life and living
can be regulated and controlled: make
them selt-supporting as far as it is possible;
and let this treatment be continued for
years if necessary. The recent cases will
become cured, and the incurable will be
protected from themselves and others, and
made both useful and self-supporting."
This is ali law can do for persons who
either cannot or will not save themselves
by self-restraint. Law cannot save any
man from himself by eliminating tempta-
ton from the world; law can no more pre-
vent man from drinking himself into
poverty and lunacy by forbidding the
sale of alcohol than it can prevent him
from becoming thief by forbidding the
exposure of anything to view that would
excite his cupidity. The Idle rich some
times drink to excess; so do the hopeless
poor; men of culture and brains of high
sensibility, prone to moods of morbid feel
ing, sometimes drink to excess; men of
feeble blood on both sides with a tempera-
mental tendency to excess in thought and
action are often victims of an insanity
whose expression is intemperance.
The effort to extirpate alcohol from the
earth by prohibition because it is abused
is an honest and humane, but ignorant,
aspiration. 1t has been tried by absolute
despotisms. like Russia, in vain. China
could not put down the opium habit even
by the terrible deterrent example of de-
capitation of the offender. But America
is not despotism at all, and under our
form of government you might as well
attempt under law to isolate the sexes be-
cause of the fearful consequences of the
abuse of the sexual passion in the
economy of human nature as to extirpate
the use OF alcohol because of the evil con-
sequences of intemperance. The social
evil has done the race as much mischief,
directly and indirectly, as the abuse of
alcohol; probably more, as the alcohol
consuming nations of Northern Europe
have not deteriorated in race virility and
moral energy as rapidly as have the tenn
perate but more licentious races of South
ern Europe. But let US clearly understand
that no legislation ever did, ever will, or
in the nature of things ever can do any,
thing for ELAINE ducks" A man who is
responsible is just as free to refrain from
the use of alcohol as he is to keep
watch. If he persists in stealing we send
him to jail, and punish him, and We do
not forbid the keeping of horses or the
carrying of watches because there Is a
thief in town. If man is deaf to the ap-
peal of family affection, reason, religion,
self-interest and science he cannot be
saved by statute, for such creature must
either go into hospital, the insane asylum,
or the churchyard. A man so weak that
he cannot pass rum shop with
out falling into it is a man hope
less of reform if there were no
rum shops. He is like man who cannot
be honest except when there is nothing to
steal in sight; an incurable, an incorrigible
thief. What do We do with an incurable,
incorrigible thief? We punish him, and
protect society by placing him under re-
straint, since he will not or cannot refrain
from theft; we do not forbid property
holders to expose their wares for sale be-
cause there is natural born thief in town
who may be tempted TO steal.
If the retribution of physical and mental
suffering that rum drinking brings upon a
| man will not reform him; if all the force
OF moral appeal to his affection, his pride.
Lis interest, will not rule him down to
self-restraint, no statute will secure his
sobriety and his salvation. Society cannot
stamp out moral suicide by statute; it can
teach the best way, and it can punish in
order to protect its peace, but it cannot in
wisdom subject the wise and decent to
disabilities for the acts of the I'M
wise and indecent; it cannot punish
the sane for insane, the we'll for
the sick; the strong for the weak: the rich
for the poor. We can erhort the world 10
nobler mood of sacrifice and self-denial
for the sake of others, but you cannot er-
tort unselfshness and sacrifice by statute.
Society points the inebriate 10 the asylum;
the sick to the hospital; the criminal to the
prison; the pauper TO the poorhouse; the
ignorant TO the schoolhouse; the irrelig-
ious and erring slave of depraved appe-
tites and animal passions 10 the pulpit and
the preacher. Society provides all these
shelters, reformatories, hospitals, ETC.,
and If they fail, the world
is not silly enough to vicariously atone for
your sin or weakness by consenting by
statute TO abjure the decent use of eyery-
thing that you have shamefully abused.
The business of society is To legislate for
the living rather than for the diving and
the dead; the world is not ready to put