Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1884 — DANIEL’S ACCEPTANCE. [ARTICLE]

DANIEL’S ACCEPTANCE.

The Second Man on the Prohibition Ticket Declares His Principles. William Daniel, the Prohibition candidate for Vice President, has issued his formal letter of acceptance ot the nomination. It discusses in detail the basis of prohibition, reviews the growth and extent of the prohibitory law, shows wherein the sentiment is not utilized, that drink demoralization is on the increase, that officials fall to enforce the law; it speaks of the policy of national and State Governments, gives a method for changing the policy, holds that the present parties are opposed to the reformat on, and pleads that the presence of the Prohibition party is a necessity. Mr. Daniel holds that the necessity for prohibition is based upon the facts that the liquor traffic is the producing cause of a large part of t£e crime, poverty, insanity, suicides, apd diseases that exist in the land; that it is the great disturber of the public peace, as well as the destroyer of domestic peace and happiness'; that it renders life, liberty, and property insecure, and imposes upon the community heavy burdens of taxation without equivalent or consent; that its legitimate tendency is to produce “idleness, vice, and debauchery, and to create nuisances. The Supreme. Court of the United States and the highest courts of the States have decided that laws entirely prohibiting the traffic are constitutional ; that “ialesness,vice, and debauchery" being cancers on the body politic, endangering its very life, there must of necessity be inherent power in it to remove them, in order to prevent its own destruction. In such decisiops these courts have alto held that these laws are for the protection of society, and not for the regulation or control of the conduct of the individual, and hence in no sense partaking of the character of "sumptuary laws, as they are so often falsely and knowingly styled by the liquor leagues and politicians of one of the great political parties; and that neither are they restrictive of “personal liberty," except in so far as they restrain the individual from inflicting injury upon others or upon society. In all such cases the public safety must be the supreme law. The letter reviews the growth of the prohibition sentiment from the enactment of the Maine law in 1851 to the present day, and shows that the feeling is now regarded as a great force in a majority of the States of the Union. In spite of the strength of the sentiment, it is unorganized and of no great monetary and political pow- r. There has been too much praying, preaching, and resolving until election day, and not enough steadfastness then. Mr. Daniel claims that the policy of the Government, as illustrated in its jurisdiction over Territories and the District of Columbia, and the policy of many States, is to license the evil. He claims that the only way to change these policies is by the election of a straight Prohibition ticket, because the old parties are opposed to prohibition, and the suppression of the liquor traffic is a necessity.