The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1903-06-18
MR.. DAVENPORT REP LIES.
Communication on the License Cues
ton Criticizing the Journals Views.
70 the Editor Of the Journal /:

Mr.. Davenport advocates the policy
of police officers running in" every
drunk they see, and further that
every person ought to hand in the
name of every intoxicated person they
see or know to the license board
\ That is all right in theory
but IL the police run in' every in
toxicated man they see the jails
wouldn't be big enough to hold them,
and besides the police officer who did
that sort of thing would cease to be
guardian of the law and become, in
the eyes of the public, consummate
fool. This was true under prohibit
ton and it is just as true under Ii
cense, and furthermore the man who
reported every drunk he saw or heard
of would be frowned upon just as
much under the new regime as under
the old. Human nature was not
changed when license succeeded pro.
hlbition.
Even if this will answer for pro hi
bitory doctrine, beg respectfully to
submit that it will not for local option
or the theory on which our new law
is framed We believe the rum drink
er has been petted and pampered too
long and that it is time to hold him to
an accountability to society as well as
the rum seller. The drunken man is
in every case menace to life and
property, that society has right to
deal with on that principle of govern
ment that was never better stated
than by the high-hearted Lafayette,
in the Bill of Rights early in the
French Revolution, - leach man s
rights end only where other mems
rights begin" The liquor seller steps
over this line only when he makes such
sales or in such ways as are prohibited
in the new law whose restrictions and
regulations are believed to embody all
to be found anywhere in liquor legis-
lation, with several more that are en-
tirely new, suggested by the expert
ence of other States and countries, to
| the extent of making system that
may fairly be said to be original with
Vermont, so far as there is anything
"new under the sun. -
, 1t is because the new laws founda-
tions-in spite of few minor points
| it's enemies succeeded in sticking in
| for the purpose of killing it-square
exactly with fundamental right that
we believe it will succeed and prove
pra ticable of honest and efficient adj
ministration. 1t was precisely because
your prohibitory law was utterly OBJ
! livious of these foundations that it
I proved a soul.rotting farce Its pri-
mary viciousness was right in line with
your argu ment, III that it made it a
crime meriting severest punishment
to sell what it recognized the right to
/ buy. No law starting with such an
absurdity grounded, even though
conscientious people failed to see it.,
in double dealing and cowardice-
branding one-half of a transaction as
among the worst of sins and the other
half of the same transaction as within
every mans individual right-could
fail to result just as prohibition has
done-utterly ineffective for good or for
aught but to spawn sneaks and skulk-
ers and dodgers and lack of all sense
of civic virtue and of fair dealing be-
tween man and man. If prohibition
is right at all, it is right only on the
basis of Mohammed and Gautama.
"Thou shalt not buy or sell, give or
receive, any intoxicating drink" says
the Sixth Commandment of Buddhism.
The conditions which l depicted in
the article from which you quote
were only what l predicted in my ar
gument for the Democratic or Con-
land bill before the temperance CON-
mittee of the State Legislature, warn
ing that what it had to deal with was
the fruitage of the decentralization of a
totally wrong law.
The one point of my letter to the
Phoenix, which somehow you, and
most of the brethren of the prohibit
seem to have missed, was that the
new law provided certain, straight
and just way of dealing with these
conditions. ; that by Sec. "a it forbids
sale to any one "known to have beer
intoxicated within six months; that
all that is necessary to fix the
"known" is to arrest every mar
drunk and thus secure court record
of the fact-supplemented, if neces
sary, by information from citizens
who know to the license board
that then the dealer who makes 9
single sale to such person is not only
subject to a $500 fine but to forfeiture
of his license, not for the balance OF
the year merely, as in Massachusetts,
but for all time, and not in that towr
alone but anywhere in Vermont, ant
that no dealer will risk such penal
ty for the profit on ten-cent sale
which must be made in full view o.
the street. The dealer where he
dared not refuse under prohibition il
now placed where he dare not sell
The law at this point is much more