WHY SOME HONEST PEOPLE ARE NOT

PROHIBITIONISTS

(February 8, 1898)

We print in another column a letter from a most highly esteemed correspondent, in criticism of a recent editorial in The News entitled "Prohibition and the Press." That article was a comment upon the very extravagant-though doubtless perfectly sincere-attack made by a clergyman, in a letter to The News, upon the conduct of the press in general in not advocating prohibition. The reverend gentleman having assumed that the press is "suborned" by the liquor interest to maintain this attitude, we took occasion to point out that the state of mind of many Prohibitionists, even those less extreme than the gentleman in question, was based upon an error, in that "they are apt to take it for granted that everybody agrees with them in thinking that liquor-selling is the root of all evil, that it ought to be suppressed by law, and that its suppression would usher in a reign of universal happiness and goodness." That this is an error is a simple matter of fact. There are scores of millions of human beings-namely, nearly all the population of the chief countries of the Continent of Europe-who, so far from agreeing with them in their view, look upon the idea of suppressing the drinking of wine and beer in public places as a monstrosity, and a thing which would go very far to make life dreary for millions of most excellent

people. This view is held not only by light-minded or selfish persons, but by the best and most earnest and most high-minded men, including certainly a very large proportion of the clergy, without distinction of sect. How many or whether any of these excellent and conscientious persons have ever in any explicit way laid down the doctrine that "the evils springing from excessive drinking do not overbalance the benefits arising from moderate drinking," or the doctrine that "even if these evils are greater than the benefits, the restraint upon individual freedom involved in prohibition is wrong in principle, and would work a greater injury upon mankind, though in a very different way, than does the evil which it attacks," we confess that we have no means of determining; but evidently it is a plain inference from their conduct and conversation that they must hold one or the other or both of these two views.

And of course these views are not confined to Europe. So far, at least, as the second of them is concerned, not only is it held by some millions of American citizens of German birth or descent, for instance, but it is also certainly held by many millions of citizens who are American by long descent. But our correspondent challenges us to justify our statement that we find that there is very great force in these positions. The subject is too great to be covered in a brief editorial article, and we shall not attempt more than to indicate in outline what may be said in support of them. It is impossible, to be sure, to make a parallel column" exhibit of the benefits that the upholders of drinking may claim.

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as arising from it, which should match the undoubtedly frightful record of harm done by drunkenness. The evils are very startling and impressive in each individual instance; the good is of a far less tangible kind, and cannot be reckoned up in anything like statistical fashion. Most prohibitionists

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would doubtless deny its existence, in toto. what we have reference to is by no means a mere physical gratification. In all ages of mankind, drinking has been a promoter of sociability and through this a means of relaxing the strain of hard every-day life, which nothing else has yet been found to replace. Many people feel no need of this relief; many others feel no need of any other sociability than that which can be got from the gravest kind of conversation in a library or a drawingroom. But not everybody is cast in the same mold, and it is fortunate they are not. To vast multitudes of persons, the easy, friendly sociableness that accompanies drinking is one of the few things which brighten life and make it something else than a dull monotonous grind; and for many persons the flashing out of warm and generous sentiment at a convivial gathering now and then is not a mere pleasure of the moment, but is a great element in preserving the picturesqueness and the poetry of life.

Before going further on this first branch of the question, it will be best to take up the second. The question of the restraint upon individual freedom is not a question of constitutional right, and cannot be answered in the way which our correspondent adopts. To hold that any one has an ' inherent

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right to sell intoxicating liquor by retail"-or, for that matter, by wholesale-we freely grant is quite absurd. The State has a right to regulate the liquor traffic, and, if it pleases, to abolish it. The question at issue is quite a different one; not in the least a question of the rights of the government, but of the ends sought to be accomplished. The object and intent of prohibition is not the prevention of selling, but the prevention of drinking. The individual freedom which is trenched upon is the freedom to enjoy one's self in one's own way so long as one doesn't interfere with the safety or peace or welfare of other persons. The right to employ the means prohibition of sale-is not questioned; the serious opponents of prohibition do not raise a factitious issue as to the means used, but a real issue as to the end sought. That end is substantially an infringement of individual freedom, of the kind above defined. We do not say that under no circumstances can such an infringement be justified. But we do say that it is a most serious thing to do, and further that all cases like those cited by our correspondent are of a totally different nature. You are prohibited from building a frame house because you would thereby introduce a danger to other people's property which they have no means of averting; not because it tempts your neighbor to burn down his own house, but because the burning of yours may, without any contributory act on his part, cause the destruction of his. Shooting and fast driving are obviously in the same category. In all these cases, the object is to prevent one man from injuring another, not to prevent a man from injuring himself by his own voluntary act.

In regard to both aspects of the matter-the preservation of individual freedom and the benefits actually supposed to arise from drinking-the great argument on the anti-prohibition side, from the point of view of society as a whole, is that it is of the first importance to the world to permit diversities of taste and temper and desire to develop freely, so far as that can be done with safety to society. Just where to draw this line of safety, it may sometimes be difficult to decide; but, roughly speaking, it has been thought, in the most enlightened ages and countries, that it is not wise to interfere with the actions of one man except on the ground of his injuring another either without that other's consent, or under a consent obtained by fraud or constraint. Prohibition would be a violation of this principle, on a great scale. And if the contention is true that it would be felt by vast numbers of people as a great restriction of individual freedom, and if the further contention is true that these people would lose something very important in the brightening and sweetening of life to them, the loss to the world would be extremely difficult to calculate. For it would be a loss affecting not them only, but all mankind. A chief ground of objection to Socialism is its tendency to reduce all the world to something like a single type, to crush out peculiar and individual ambitions, to close the thousand avenues which the present constitution of society opens to the restless cravings and aspirations of mankind. By the presence of these multitudinous varieties of character we all profit, even the most normal and humdrum of us; and so do we all profit by what