Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-07-17
HIGH LICENSE.
PRESIDENT SEELYE GIVES HIS REA-
SONS AGAINST 1T.

A Subject Upon which There Is Great
Deal of Honest Difference of Opinion,
Even Among the Advocates of Temper
ance and Prohibition.
IBY DIR. JULIUS II. SEELYE, PRESIDENT OF
AMHERST COLLEGE.
High license puts no restriction upon
the buyer He can get his liquor, if he
wishes it, just as copiously as before.
One saloon will supply the craving of
500-or 5, 900, for that matter-as well
as many. The evils of intemperance are
not therefore necessarily reduced by re-
stricting the number of saloons. Their
abolition rather than their reduction is
what we need and ought to seek.
License, high or low, takes away
what ought to be and what in a healthy
community would be an important NOR
al restriction from the seller. 1t re-
moves from him the condemnation of
the community and justifies him. 1t
makes his acts legal His moral sense,
easily blinded by the enormous profits
of his trade, is thus paralyzed. He be-
comes thus what we find him to be-
obdurate, rapacious, an evil man and
seducer, who wakes worse and worse
do not wish to condemn him or any
man, but do not believe there is any
trade so demoralizing to the trader, any
class of sales which does the seller so
much moral mischief, as that i'll intoxi-
eating drinks. And to this damage the
community contributes by licensing his
trade.
The moral tone of the community is
lowered by licensing the liquor traffic.
Whether it is right or wrong per Sc to
buy or sell or drink Intoxicating liquors
is question do not now care 10 argue.
This question loses its interest to me in
the face of the appalling facts with
which the liquor traffic confronts us.
There is no single channel through
which such depths of misery flow over
the human race as through this. No
ravages of disease, no devastations of
nature, no kinds of vice or crime, work
such woe as this. Such q statement no
intelligent person will be likely to
doubt, and no honest one would deny.
Now, to license the liquor traffic ON the
view that the enormity of this evil can
be egulated-impossible as experience
has thus far shown this to be-to sane
tion the opening of these f1oodgates on
the pretense that to keep them shut is
to infringe upon the liberty which a
wise government should ever guard, is
not only, as it seems to me, the enslave
ment of the multitude for the freedom
of the few, an attempt whose result
is likely to be the bondage of all, but it
makes the community itself party to
wrongdoing. This cannot be done with
out lowering its own moral tone.
The revenue from license falls heav
lest where the burden ought to be the
least. The cost of the license, while it
may add to the price of the liquor sold,
does not, so far as can learn, diminish
the amount of the liquor bought and
consumed Practically the cost of liquor
within the limits which any license is
likely to put seems to have little to do
with the consumption. An Incorporate
man is not likely to drink more because
it is cheap or less because it is dear.
The difference beween 3 cents a glass
and makes no appreciable difference
with him. But the family of the drunk
ard Alas! alas! the great revenues for
high license, the enormous taxes ON in
toxicating drinks, are wrung from the
wretchedness of worse than widowed
wives and worse than orphaned children