Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1892-01-21
CRAFTSMANSHIP.
a GREAT PAPER LAID BEFORE THE
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
Prohibition Supported by the
Immortal Doctrines Declared
by Thomas jefferson.
Facts and Arguments Legislators and
People May Consider to Advantage.

mOHSlN III convention aSSelnDltu III
behalf of the Christian women Of,Mis-
sissippi, whose plea for their homes
and loved ones ought TO be needed
in behalf of the. eighty thousand
white Baptists of Mississippi, whose
memorial will be laid before yOul
body, and in behalf of the other
great religious denominations, which,
from time to time, have spoken in
condemnation of the saloon and kin
dred evils, we petition your honora-
BILE body to insert in the new COnsti-
tuition an article prohibiting the IL
censing of lotteries, gambling houses,
saloons and houses of prostitution.
In laying before you this, our Peti
ton, we beg your indulgence, while
We submit some reasons for the re-
quest we make, and some facts which
give cogency to those reasons.
In common with all the patriotic
citizens Of the State, We feel pro-
found concern that your honorable
body shall frame Constitution ac-
cording to the principles of right. We
believe any wrong embedded i'll the
organic law Of the State will inevita-
bly, work itself out in de;riment to the
people. By an immutable principle
planted i'll the constitution of nature,
no person, nor State, or nation, can
escape the evil consequences of wrong
doing. 1t therefore behoOves yonr
body, assembled by the sovereign
voice of the people, to see to it, that
the Constitution which shall Issue
from your labors bears in it no seed of
future trouble; but rather shall have
in it the potency and the wisdom and
the righteousness necessary to the de-
velopment of Il great and happy and
prosperous commonwealth. In speak
ing of righteousness, we do not mean
religious sentiment only, but the
right doing necessary in the citizeh-
ship of State, in order that peace
may reign and prosperity obtain.
In the preamble to the Federal Con-
stitution, that wonderful device for
government, which has been termed
"the consumate fruitage of human
WISDOM" we have the purposes for
which the general government was
formed, laid down in six particulars ::
"TO form more perfect union; to
establish Justice to insure, domestic
tranquility provide for the common
defense promote the public welfare,
and to secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and to our pOsterty."
This single sentence contains the
germs of that matchless document
which has been called "the admira-
ton and wonder of this enlightened
age" In these six particulars is
drawn the true outline of all good
Constitutions. Whatever contravenes
either of those purposes is at war with
the principles of good government and
should have no place in the Constitu-
ton of civilized State. To argne
this point before your enlightened
body is needless, so we proceed to ap-
ply the principles laid down to the
matters in this petition.
What is the effect of lottery upon
a State? Does it help to form a more
perfect union among the people !
Does it tend to establish justice r.
Does it insure domestic tranquility y
or "provide for the common defense, &"
or "secure the blessings of liberty y
No answers are needed. Look at
Louisiana to-day, dominated by IA
combination of gamblers, her, courts
corrupted, her Legislature debauched.
her public men bought up, her press
muzzled, her heroic Governor and his
Spartan band of followers cast into a
minority, and the State II seething
caldron of internal dissensiOn.
Years ago the State chartered the
Louisiana Lottery Company in de-
fiance of the first principles of gov
ernment, and today she is reapiDg
what she sowed, while the country
looks on with horror and disgust. In
this calm hour, let Mississippi be wise
and see to it, that no such calamity
befalls us or our pOsterity in time to
come.
We will not take your time to say
much of gambling houses or houses
of prostitution. They are already
under the ban of statutory law; but
it is well to remember that this is a
rushing age, and in nothing does the
drift show itself more unmistakably
than in the rapid multiplication aud
growth, of cities. Mississippi is for
tunate in the fact that it is an agricul-
tural State; but great changes must
soon come, and the cities of the fu-
tnre will be greedy of license money.
The Constitution that you shall frame
should embody the principles OF
sound government should be so con
servative of the good aud so prohibi
tory of the evil as to stand the test OF
time. 1t will be well to provide
against condition of things which il
requires no prophet to foretell as be-
longing to the near future.
Now let us turn our attention to the
saloon question.
Gentleman of the Convention, we
are painfully conscious, at this point,
of a special difficulty iIf getting Oui
cause before You free from prejudice
that kind of prejudice which is al
ways in the, public mind against an
effort to, change an existing order o.
things. : For instance, who. believes
that the proposition to charter lot
terry in Louisiana would meet Will
public favor, If it we're not that the
Lottery Company had sbeen brought
into the State during the dark days
of reconstruction, and had become
domesticatel bv Years of habitatiOD