The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-23

a sermon. Ninc-tenths of the men who
violate the Sunday laws would probably
refuse to vote for repeal, for the sell
fish reason that they suffered no personal
discomfort by their presence on the
statute book. since they were sure not 10
be enforced, and to vote for repeal would
give clump of cranks an opportunity 10
howl and call man "Sabbath-breaker
and "Antichrlst," because he voted to
wipe of the books law that public opin-
ion had long ago repealed.
1t is just so with the passage OF laws
where it is possible to confuse the broad.
general moral end in view with a narrow,
specific, legal means to that end. A man
will vote, say in Iowa, for prohibition, not
because he thinks it crime to sell liquor
or drink liquor; not because he beileves
that prohibition will abate intemperanee,
but simply because if the law passes its
certainty of non-enforcement subjects him
as a drinker to no personal vexation. and
by voting for il he avoids the possible
odum of being stigmatized by clamorous
cranks as "rummy." In other words,
even as the average man will sign petit
ton to rob anybody but himself, to tax
anybody when he does not have to pay
share of the tax, to pardon anybody who
has not assaulted or robbed him or any of
his family, so the average man will vote
for any law that does not promise TO pump
his pocket, or to cause him any personal
vexation, if the law happens to be one that
affords an opportunity to raise cloud of
moral dust over the question of practic-
able legal means to moral end.
This indifference to broad considera-
tons of principle, to questions of near or
remote public veal, this moral cowardice
that breads to be called a sabbath
breaker" when it votes for dead Sunday
law; that shrinks from being recklessly
denounced as "rummy" because it de-
clines in the interest of public welfare to
vote for an evil and impracticable means
to a worthy end, explains the ease with
which laws with moral bugaboo in their
bowels get in the statute book, and ex-
plains why they are difficult to repeal
A law that involves nothing but
pure question of commercial methods
can be easily altered and amended
when the shoe pinches the public foot.
but bad law that does not happen to
clearly puncture the individual pocket or
pinch the toe of the majority, is always
difficult to get rid of if it is possible to
confuse the question of moral purpose
with a question of remedy for admitted
evil. When laws that are immoral or in
effective to moral end are dead SO long
that they are a stencil in the ostrils of
tive moral courage to carry out the corpse
and bury it.
The stupid philosophy of prohibition
lies not in the end, but in the means Pow
erty is a great evil, but noisome poverty
exists where alcoholism is almost IN
known, as in Spain. We do not pass
law prohibiting poverty because it is
an evil and a dreadful charge on decent
society, and yet it is philosophically
and logically no more stupid to prohibit
poverty than it is to attempt to keep men
sober by statute rather than by sermon, by
the SOLDERING influence of self-interest and
the bitter experience of inebriety. Pro-
hibition is instinct with absurdity when it
argues that because public opinion can be
invoked successfully to prohibit what by
common consent of civilization is consid-
cred crime, it can therefore be success
fully invoked to prohibit traffic that by
the common consent of civilization is not
considered as a crime. The highest type
of European civilization refuses to con-
slider the liquor traffic crime:
the oldest. ablest, most intelligent
and upright states in America refuse to
thus stigmatize it. Old states that have
tried prohibition have dropped it, like
Massachusetts,, Connecticut and Michi-
gan, and other states are full of the rum
blings of discomfort and disgust with its
debility. and even the comparatively crude
experiments of Iowa begin to excite resist
ance, revolt and protest on the part of
temperance men who are social philoso-
piers and economists rather than fanatics.