The Portland daily press., 1894-03-28

| llquor-selling fraternity tight the bill.
/ But do wonder that our honest,
| straightforward temperance people cam
1 not see the power it gives them.
During the anti-slavery campaign we
| mathematical the hideous business of
| buying and selling human beings. We
| rlddled it with the arrows of our satire
and poured into it the hot shot Of our
| reno seless word logic, and yet we all
| rejoiced when his English friends bought
Frederick Douglas. so that he could re-
\ turn to America and bonn bard the CO.
lossal national sin of slavery with his
| fervid eloquence.
Again and again and again, we con-
| tri buted to buy slaves who had escaped
| from the South, when we could not run
them into Canada, notwithstand ding
some of our noblest apolitIonists re.
| monstrated against the practice, as our
good temperance people now remon-
strate against the Norwegian bill. Now
that the smoke and noise of the conflict
have subsidized, we see that we were
| right. hope that the bill may pass. It
is one means leading TO the end-prohi-
bition. 1t will kill our present horrible
saloon system and give us cleaner and
purer municipal politics, for better
set of men will be drawn into municipal
affairs.
These are very different sentiments from
those that have generally come from
believers in prohibition, especially
women believers. A. a rule they have
taken the ground that any law which
did not aim at the complete suppression
of the traffic was compromise with
sin, and hence that every form of regu-
lation or restriction of the traffic was
wrong. Mrs. Livermore thinks differ
emily, and more correctly. 1t is
not the part of wisdom to
take the ground, as many Prohibi-
ZIONIST seem to, that open and unrestrict-
ed sale Of Intoxicating liquors is to be
amount to prohibition. 1t is wiser,
and better for the community that
some measure of restriction should be
pur upon the liquor traffic whenever and
wherever possible. BY agreeing to such
conditions there in no implied admission
that the liquor traffic may under those
conditions or any other be morally de-
ensible. 1t is simply recog milton of
the fact. which is true in many COM
munities, that public sentiment, which is
the basis of all laws in a republican
form of government, is not sufficiently
advanced to render practicable OF FEAST
BILE legislation for the complete suppress
ion of the traffic, but is sufficiently ad-
vanced to permit or even welcome some
degree of restriction. If a
missionary should go among the
Indians who were accustomed to
drink whlskey, and failing to induce
them to abandon the use of liquor al
together, should use his persuasiveness
to change their drink from the fiery
whiskey to the comparatively innocuous
beer, he would not he guilty of compro-.
missing with iniquity; he would be
doing real service to the Indians
and to humanity in general. $50
a temperance man or woman, or
temperance society that finds a COM
munity not up to prohibition, but will
ing to adopt some restrictions on the
traffic. is not compromising with sin i'll
advocating the adoption of such re-
strictions, even though they be slight,
but is furthering the cause of temper
ance. All reforms are of gradual develop
ment, and this fact must be recognized
in legislation. Laws far in advance of
public sentiment do no good. On the
contrary they do harm by breeding con-
tempt for all laws. Mrs. Livermore's
idea that progress toward prohibition
must be made step by step is the correct