Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-07-22
w. G. T. u. COLUMN.
SUPPRESS, NOT REGULATE THE
ALCOHOLIC DRINK TRAFFIC.


drink traffic is a danger from which
the public needs protection. No one
questions the right of the State to re-
strict or to wholly forbid such traffic
That power has been affirmed again
and again by the supreme court OF
the nation. It is not only the right
but the duty of the State to so legislate
as ''to make it easy to do right and
difficult to do wrong"
Every attempt to regulate evils by
license laws has resulted in injury to
society and failed to promote the ends
proposed by the advocates of license
policy. To license the alcoholic drink
traffic is to give the sanction of the
State to what is universally conceded
to be an evil. Men say: "You cannot
wholly prevent the sale Of alcoholic
beverages, therefore license and con-
troll the traffic" The "Therefore''
does not follow; for if it were true
that government cannot prevent the
evil, that is no reason why it should
protect and encourage it.
The State commits a crime against
both God and man when it sanctions
wrong doing. The oft repeated re-
mark, cit is not wise to have laws in
advance of public SENTIMENT" is an
unwise remark. "The law is not
the lawless and disobedient." Public
sentiment is not the true basis of any
law that involves morals. BE
Governments cannot regulate vice,
nor the causes of vice; nor can they
regulate crimes and their causes.
Those who disregard moral law will
not respect civil law. They will only
obey because they have to. The true
purpose of law is to suppress evils
and their causes, not to protect them.
Vice mocks at regulations and yields
only to force. It's causes should be
suppressed, not licensed. Traffic in
things that are hurtful-hurtful in
every degree, should be prohibited.
No one can give a good reason why
alcoholic liquors should be used as
beverage, or furnished for such use;
but the evils that result from their
sale and use are many and great.
The demand for license law comes
mainly from those who want to sell
liquor. They have no care for the
morals of society. Those who say,
sWe want a license law in the interests
of temperance and morality,". are
either ignorant or dishonest, for
never, in four centuries of liquor
legislation, has license law worked
that way. Rev. Albert Barnes was
right when he said: can evil always
becomes worse by being sustained by
the law of the land" Have we not
seen that truth verified in our expert
ence with slavery? When State Ii
censes an evil it says by its action,
"There are degrees of vice that are
lawful"
When an evil thing is made legal by
civil law, those most likely to be in
iured regard it as right because it is
lawful. After Massachusetts, enacted
her license law, man was trying to
get another man to go into a grog
shop and drink with him. "Come on"
he said. "This is now as respectable
place as any; the State of Massachu-
setts says So" A saloon keeper in
Connecticut said: 81 have paid for
my license and am in partnership
with the State of Connecticut" Both
of these men told the truth. The
State was their accomplice in crime.
It is an awful thing to teach our youth
that the liquor traffic is right by legal
izing it.
Any advantages to society from
license law are due to it's prohibitory
provisions-not to license provisions.
The license is not for society but for
the liquor seller. The law is prohibit
tory except to those who have a Ii
cense. A license is a privilege and
protection purchased from the State
by the liquor dealer and paid for out
of the money he collects from his pa
irons, most of whom are weak, igno-
rant or vicious. The liquor seller
lives by creating abnormal appetites
and pandering to them. A few regu
lar customers, drawn to his bar by
several times each day, will
give him a luxurious living. By
granting such "protection and privi-
lege" the State goes into partnership
with everyone to whom it gra hts a
license. and takes it's stipulated share
Of the 'blood money" collected from
the people.
There is not a case on record where
a license law has diminished the sale
Of liquor, or lessened the evil results