The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1914-07-16
Prohibition and the People.
from the Maine Farmer

an article by P. 0. D. that touches upon
several topics in an interesting manner.
He is undoubtedly right in regard to
booming Maine. We need no boom, but
a STEADY. healthy growth. To get this,
what il needed is for each of US, who il
doing something worth while, to do a
little more of it or to do it a little better.
We can only help others by encouraging
! them to help themselves. Prove, by re-
suits. that Maine offers superior oppor-
tunities and men will seek the field.
| While P. O. D. has the right idea in
regard to the .'boom" now being SO much
talked Of. he seems to be somewhat illogi-
cal in his attitude toward prohibition.
| I do NOT need to tell Maine Farmer
readers that / am firm friend of pro-
hibition or a believer in total abstinence.
| That fact has been we'll established for a
long TIM. It is not my object now to
record nv own opinion or express indi-
vidual ideas. but to get at few funda-
mental facts often overlook ed or ignored,
by the opponents of our prohibitory law.
These men. or the most of them, really
desire the best for society and the State.
Possibly a few are trying to make politl-
cal capital out of the law, but the ma
iority are sincere in their opposition.
The first great truth to which | call
attention ia this: 1.-The right to sell in
toxicating liquors does not inhere in a
citizen of the State nor in citizen OF
the United States.
All LIQUOR laws are based upon that
solid foundation. Did the right to sell
liquors exist as natural, or inherent
right. the right to prohibit or license
their sale would not exist.
Therefore. when we tell man he shall
not sell liquor, we simply. say to him that
he shall not do by law what he has no
right as a man and citizen to do In the
absence of all law.
License is prohibition to all men except
the favored few who pay the license-a
special privilege granted to few men In
return for money paid into the public
treasury. That fact alone makes all
forms of license law inimical to good
Democratic government. The funda..
mental idea in good government is equal
rights to all and special privileges to
none. 1t may, therefore, be stated as
truism that government cannot be at Its
best under any form of licensed liquor
selling. A fact so apparent that we
need not take the time or space to prove
it. 1t is seif-evident that liquor and
good government are forever separate in
fact-why, then, should they not be
separate by law?
But P. o. D., like most other oppo-
nents of prohibition, seems to think that
we have told men that they shall not
drink, and, therefore, they are all the
more determined to GO out and fill up on
the forbidden ardent. This is getting
the cart before the horse, but the argu-
ment reads so smoothly and sounds so
plausible from the lips of rum politi-
Clans that men are deceived thereby
and are led to believe that their rights
have been taken away from them. When
the cart and horse in this argument are
put in their. proper places, most men
readily see that prohibition is an attempt
to protect them in their inherent rights
as men and citizens.
THAT stuff is not made to drink, only
to SELL Recognizing the basic truth In
this statement, prohibition says Thou
shalt not SELL. 1t does not say, has no
need 10 say, '''Thou shalt not drink"
1t may be that a man might have the
inherent right to drink if he were not In
some measure his brothers keeper, but
the right to sell is not his, except 1t be
granted him by special class legislation.
Moral suasion may be the best means
of dealing with a mans appetite, per
haps it is the only effective way, but 1t
is negligible factor in the case OF the
man whose lust of gain induces HIM to
sell. In his case, there can be but the
two courses open: Allow him to sell by
special law, or say by law "Ihou shalt
not"
The first is license; the second prohibit
ton. Which is the most logical, most
moral, most progressive, most IN line
with good government
| have as much faith in education and
moral suasion as any man. but L reallze
that these forces, powerful though they
are. need the strong support OF law,
which is itself based on morality.
Gods great command to the human
race is, "Thou shalt not The Mosaic
law is, "Thou shalt not. The founda-
tior of all modern law is. Thou shalt
not" At every turn of life's highway,
we are confronted with this mrand.
In infancy, in youth, in mature years, IN
old age, all through life, this divine com
mand, 'Thou shalt not, shapes our
course. No life goes wrong that needs
this command; no life is worth While that
disregards the warning.
some men say IHdt pIonlUiIou 10 q
failure. 1t is if you mean because liquor
is sold under our law; it is not if you
refer to the practical application of the
principle that no man has a right to sell,
and moral suasion should be supported
by law.
But tell me what law is not failure.
Do men steal, do they cheat, do they kill,
do they bear false witness, do they do
the many other things that are prohibit
ted by law Are these laws failures, or
are they wholesome protection to socle-
Who knows how we'll prohibition would
prohibit if men did as much to make it
effective as they have done to make it "a
stencil in the nostrils of the people"
Who knows how much of good might be
accomplished if prohibition should be ac-
copied as the settled policy of the State
and taken out of politics p?
Politicians fight the issue over and over
not for principle, but for votes.
The United States does not need the
money it gets from its rum revenue; the
people do not need the rum that pays the
revenue. The man who makes it and
the man who sells it get all the profit;
the people get all the misery it causes.
| Self-protection demands its elimina-
ton, and self-protection is the first great
law of nature.
Leave this to the pulpit and the
church," so many things we might leave
to them, but we somehow like to settle
economical questions outside the pulpit.