The star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1908-1909, 1908-03-12
AGAINST INVASION OF
INALIENABLE RIGHTS
NO. II

Mr.. j. Il. Burke, who led the ANTI
saloon" forces at the public hearing
on the local option bill on March 2,
and carries on the agitation for Pro-
hibition-at present under the cloak
of local option-as a business, at THAI
hearing questioned the authenticity
of Abraham Lincoln's utterance that
"a prohibition law is a blow against
the very principles upon which our
government is founded quoted by
Mr.. Chandler w. Riker while address,
ing the committee. AS evidence Of
non-authenticity of the utterance he
offered his own ignorance of it and
that hymnus to the millennium, men,
toned in No. I of these bulletins,
once sung by Mr.. Lincoln in a Wash
ington's Birthday grafton. But care
fully he concealed that that grafton
had been delivered in 1912, when Mr..
Lincoln was a young a TO make
this known to the audience did not
suit his and his employers purpose.
The authenticity of the former ut
terance is at least as well vouched for
as that of the grafton of 1912. The
source whence it was drawn, an essay
on Temperance in America, " by w.
G. Jenkins, published in the February
number Of the National Magazine. y
is fully as reliable as that given 10y
Mr.. Burke for the 1912 Grafton. "A
Biography of Lincoln" author un-
named.
Perhaps Mr.. Burke will also ques-
ton the authenticity of the following
%utterances on the plea of ignorance
of them:
John QmRep adams "Self-govern-
ment is the foundation OF all our po-
litieal and social institutions and it
is by self-government alone that the
law of Temperance can be enforced.
Seek not to enforce upon your brother
by legislative enactments that virtue
which he can possess only by the die
tates of his own conscience and the
energy of his own free will"
Thomas IBerson: NO man has a
natural right TO commit aggression
on the equal rights of another; and
this Is all from which the law ought
to restrain him; every man is under
the natural duty of contributing to
the necessities of society and this is
all the law ought TO enforce on him.
When the laws have declared and en-
forced all this they have fulfilled
their functions and the idea is quite
unfounded that on entering into So
ciety we give up any natural right. y
President Elof, of Harvard University:
There has been concurrent evil with
prohibitory legislation. The efforts
to enforce it during forty years have
had some unlooked-for effects. = = =
The public has seen law defied, a
whole generation of habitual law
breakers schooled in evasion and
snamelessness, courts Ineffective
through fluctuations of policy, delays,
perjuries, negligencies and other mis-
carriages of justice, officers of the law
double-faced and mercenary, legis-
lators timid and insincere, candidates
for Office hypocritical and truck
ling. and ofiice-holders unfaithful to
pledges and reasonable public ex-
pectation. Through an agitation
which has always had a moral end,
these immoralities have been deyel-
oped and made conspicuous.
Commended to the gentlemen on
the local option-prohibition side for
reflection nd ponderingi
Press Bureau derman-American
Central Alliance, Newark, NxJ.