Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1923-03-03
Cockran's Vielus On The
Eighteenth Amendment

tlnued. The army OF spies organized
to make it effective will be disbanded;
those of them who may be capable of
earning an honest living will be re-
turned to useful fields, of employment
and the others compelled to honest
toll in the penitentiaries. =
When this result shall have been
re ached it will be through success of a
Democratic presidential candidate,
standing on a platform opposing ev-
cry attempt by government to regu-
late by law the morals of individuals
or to invade in any way the domain of
personal liberty.
That domain is not difficult to de-
fine. It is the right Of every one to
enjoy the fullest measure of liberty,
the most complete control over his
cwn acts which can be enjoyed in the
same degree by every other person.
The gravest objection to prohibition
is not, however, the invasion of per-
sonal liberty by government which it
obviously effects, but the very serious
menace it embodies to the spirit of
mutual liberation and goodwill a.
mong individuals on which the safe
~ of society, especially in a democ-
racy, must always depend. AS point
ed out on the floor Of the House it's
avowed purpose, according to all it's
advocates, is to improve the morals Of
men. But this, as I also pointed out.
is precisely what government cannot
do. Government cannot improve NOR
ais; that is task which each man
must perform himself. The law OF
the land has one domain, the law of
that is to say the law Of God.
has another. In the domain properly
belonging to government every man
of sound morals will give obedience
implicit and loyal to the laws of the
land. In the domain belonging to
he acknowledges obedience
only to his God.
From the dawn Of history attempts
have been constant and continuous by
some men to use coercive powers of
government for the purpose Of i'm
proving the morals of human beings,
not according to their own free will
but in obedience to rules established
by statute law, and these attempts by
the State and individuals to usurp the
authority of Almighty God in fixing
OF prescribing the standard of morals
have resulted in making fiends of
men who undertook them. It was
these attempts to make men good ac-
crding to standards fixed by law that
kindled the fires at Smithfelds,
where many thousands Of human be-
ings were burned to death because of
beliefs they held that made the rack
and the thumbscrew active during
many generations; that cast the early
Christians into the wild beasts in the
amphitheatre, scalded them in cal
drons of boiling oil, subjected them to
every species Of torture that perverted
could devise. It is a feature
IF human nature attested by all his
tory that while man in all ages has
been capable Of injuring or killing
his fellowman, he has never prolong-
ed the agony Of death merely to
gloat upon the sufferings wrought
by torture except under a single in
fluence. That was fanaticism, the at
tempt to regulate mems morals by
statute and the policeman's club.
At the National Convention in 1920,
while urging declaration in favor of
modifying the Volstead act, I ventur-
et! to warn my hearers that once the
idea of making men good by law was
tolerated in our political system the
results would be the same here in
this country as they have been else
where, and in all generations of hui
man existence. That prophecy, de-
rided as rhetorical extravaganza when
it was uttered, is now fulfilled.
The hideous butchery at Mer Rouge
was not perpetrated by men who were
consciously dissolute or vicious, but
by some who were considered the
best members of the community.
That nameless torture, that hideous
outrage to every instinct Of humanity,
was made possible only by the mis-
taken notion among the perpetrators
that they were advancing the cause
of morality and law. All of which
shows that man cannot attempt to
usurp the authority of Almighty God
or to Invade jurisdiction which He
has expressly reserved to Himself
without bringing upon his head the
dreadful penalties which have always
followed such treason. There is one
way and only one by which re-
currence Of such enormities can be
prevented and that is by stamping out
the force which produces them. That
u Ia