Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-05-06
The "Righty to Spread Disease

The liquor interests are sending out
long editorials from the rum press OF
Texas where the war to throw off the
yoke of the liquor traffic is raging.
On Friday we received from Cincin-
matt a slip carrying lengthy editorial
utterance from the Fort Worth Rec
ord, from which we print excerpts of
the sophistries put out by a desperate
and unprincipled cause:
"a man may surrender his own rights,
but he cannot surrender the rights of
another man. majority may agree to
deprive a minority of its rights. but that
is tyranny.
"Three-fourths of the States may de-
prive the other fourth of their rights, but
that is federal usurpatfon.
Constitutions are designed to protect
minorities of citizens in their inaliena-
BILE rights" and minorities of States in
their reserved sovereignty. To change a
State constitution in violation Of inaien-
able personal rights, or to change the
Federal Constitution in violation of re-
served State rights is to violate the
fundamental principles of American gov
Nation wide prohibition or nation
wide woman suffrage will be Federal
states or AZ states: either will be de-
priVing sovereign states or sovereign
state of a right originally reserved Re
served rights of states. like inalenable
rights of persons, are not subject to law,
statutory or constitutional; they are in
violable, and any encroachment upon
them is tyranny.
"A right is superior to law, since 1t eX-
listed before the law. Government does
not create or grant rights, it safeguards
them Government grants privileges and
may modify or annul them at will.
1T is no longer a question as to what
government has right to do, but merely
what a majority of the people wish to do.
There is no longer an inalienable right;
we are all limited to such privileges as
our neighbors are willing for us to en-
joy"
The logic of our southern neighbor
(prepared for him by rum trust law
yers) is based upon personal liberty,
the 'inalienable right" of man to do
whatever his depraved tastes passions
or unbalanced mind may suggest, re-
CARELESS of cost to those about him.
on the same principle an insane per-
son might set himself up in the bust
ness of propagating typhoid fever,
diphtheria> and small pox, and spread
ing it among his neighbors and,
through them, to other communities.
Of course the community would have
no right to interfere for its own pro-
lection, because that would interfere
with his pleasure" and would thus
become tyranny
The liquor traffic is a scourge worse
been saved and it has prospered and
sucked the life blood of innocent mill
lions through fooling the masses by
playing upon their sense of fairness"
and Justice"
The people of America are awaken
ing to their "inalienable right" to pro-
tect themselves from pests, scourges
and cutthroats, and in their wisdom
they are wiping out of existence the
liquor interests ''usurpation."
Government certainly DOES safe
guard rights" and that is what will
eventually save the people from the
Unsuitable appetite of an immoral
monster Government HAS granted
privileges to the devil himself and it
must now annul them.
The last sarcasm unconsciously ut
tiers a great truth that means the
death of liquor slavery and white
slavery as it did black slavery.