The Menace of Prohibition by Lulu Wightman

Author:Lulu Wightman [Wightman, Lulu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Law, Public
ISBN: 9781492858102
Google: 80rgngEACAAJ
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Published: 2013-09-30T03:57:43+00:00

This at least is consistent. And Mr. Trent is startlingly frank in thus boldly publishing his programme. In a lecture work extending to all parts of this country and for a quarter of a century of time, I have found a great many Herman Trents, and I fear they are increasing, and I know they are becoming emboldened. After all, are we so far removed from the blue-law regime of early New England? Be certain of one thing: today, we would see just such a regime except for a due regard for the Constitution and a minimum majority of votes.

As to compulsory Sabbath observance by civil law, we have the recommendation of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church, held in Chicago recently. The resolutions of this national church body were as follows:

“That the general assembly reiterates its strong and emphatic disapproval of all secular uses of the Sabbath day, all games and sports, in civic life, and also in the army and navy, all unnecessary traveling and all excursions.

“That we most respectfully call attention of all public officials to the potent influence of their position on all moral questions, and the necessity of greater care on their part, proportioned to the exalted nature of their offices which they occupy, that they may strengthen rather than weaken by their influence public and private observance of the Lord’s day.

“That the general assembly reiterates its emphatic condemnation of the Sunday newspaper, and urges the members of the Presbyterian church to refuse to subscribe for it or read it or advertise in it.”

Here is a demand for blue laws, pure and simple. If any American citizen will read the history of the blue laws of Connecticut, and how Cotton Mather whipped the people through the streets of early New England towns for failure to attend Sunday services in the meeting-houses, he will think seriously before lending a helping hand to the work of re-inaugurating a social and civil system like that.

Prohibition and Sunday laws are so closely allied, so thoroughly interwoven in the acts and lives of our modern reformers, that I may venture to say that should the Prohibitionists ever gain complete political power in this country we shall see rigid, intolerant Sunday laws in comparison to which those early blue laws of Connecticut would be a delicate shade.

To doubt this, would be to refute the absolute facts that appear. A Prohibition nation would be, beyond every reasonable doubt, a religio-politico system of government in which every spark of the liberties of the people would be extinguished; and this because, as Mill says, “so monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty;—there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify.”

Therefore, we conclude that the principle underlying and giving rise to Prohibition, should it obtain everywhere, would crush out every vestige of individual liberty, and its adherents would justify their course by the “monstrous principle”; namely, that “it is the absolute social right of every individual that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought to act.

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