Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1892-07-14

PERSONAL LIBERTY NOT ASSAILED BY THE
PROHIBITION Of THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
Ex-CHIEF JUSTICE AGNEw.
The right of society to prohibit the
manufacture and sale ofliquors is often
assailed as an attack upon personal lib
efty, This is a mistake. No one claims
the right to compel temperance by law.
What a man may drink is for his con-
science to decide. The question is be-
tween him and his God. But drunken
ness is a different matter, and effects
society.
Put drunkenness before your eyes.
See the victim reeling from the bar,
perhaps pushed into the street, fallen
into the gutter, staggering away to &C
cident, falling into pits, lay on the
railway track, and in a moment a mass
of torn flesh and crushed bones-dead!
Look at him in his family-wife and
children fleeing before his brutal rage,
the knife or pistol in his hand, then the
wife Of his bosom bleeding, dying at
his feet. Again, see him on a bed of
sickness fighting the devils of the brain
mania, delirium, death.
Look at its public aspect, not con
fined by town or county lines, but
spreading over an entire State. What
scene of devastation and ruin, which
despoils labor, gluts prisons and hospit-
ais, engulfs taxes, impoverishes fami-
lies, breaks up homes, sends the occu-
pants to almshouses, and carries thous-
ands to untimely graves.
1t violates the very Constitution of the
State, destroying the God-given rights
of men.
Does 1t not destroy liberty! Answer,
courts of justice, prisons and asylums,
Does it not destroy property? The
destruction has no measure, but the
wages oflabor, the earnings of industry,
the savings of economy, and the inheri-
lance of wealth, and, all are engulfed
in the drunkard's ruin.
Does it not destroy happiness? Who
a tell the woe, the sorrow, the pain,
the broken hearts despoiled by drink?
Reputation? Who can return it to
the victim of folly, vice and crime, lost
in the whirlpool of drink?
Drunkenness is therefore q great pub
lie wrong, involving life, health, pros
perity, peace, property, morals and
the general welfare. What is its cor
receive? The police power, recognized
by the Supreme Court of the United
States. Said Justice Mclean: 1.-THE
acknowledged police power of a State
extends often to the destruction of pow
erty. A nuisance may be adapted,
everything predudicial to the health
and morals of a city may be removed"
Said Chief Justice fancy: ''If State
deems the retail traffic in ardent spirits
injurious to its citizens, and calculated
to produce idleness, vice or debauch-
cry, l see nothing in the Constitution
of the United States to prevent it from
or restraining the traffic, or
prohibiting it altogether"
Yet the saloon, the slave of drink, the
landlord of the liquor den, the demo-
gogue and the ignorant, cry out, Lib
erty! l am robbed of my liberty"
Liberty! What law of liberty gives
a man a right to sell that which i'm
brutes man, dethrones reason, engen-
ders passion, destroys life and fills the
State with disease, accident, insanity,
crime, want, taxation and death-a
right to jostle reason from her throne,
turn aside justice and outrage sense?
What Liberty to place a cylinder of
dynamite under the temple of Liberty
and blow it to atomsy
Who make your constitution and es-
your bills of right? The people.
They who are the State and are most
interested in the question. Why shall
they not tear down the idol. o~verturn
this car of Juggernaut in its progress of
crushing the innocent in
its path, and pouring libations of blood
upon the scene of its triumphant ruinp