Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1886 — From the Indianapolis Sentinel THE LIBERTY OF LINING. [ARTICLE]

From the Indianapolis Sentinel THE LIBERTY OF LINING.

The Democratic party standnow where it has always stood, ops posed to sumptuary legislation.— This position is not induced by fear of, or favor to, any particular elements or interests in the community, but is induced wholly by the devotion of the party to the cause of human rights, the privileges and the immunities of the masses of the people. The Constitution of our State, in the Bill of Bights, guarantees to every citizen the right of life, liberty and the nursuit of happiness The right to live necessarily includes the right to adopt a mode or manner of living and earning a livelihood. This adopt, on in free Governments, like ours, has always been left to the free choice of the citizen. Many citizens of our State in their manner of life make use of spirituous, vinous and malt beverages, and •any others are engaged in the business of making and furnishing the same for use, and a very large amount of capital is invested in

sucli occupations. To absolutely prohibit the use, sale or manufacture of such commodities after now 7 more than seventy years’ recognition of such business is a measure of gross injustice, even if the legal power to do so existed. — The right to live, and by consequence freely to choose a mode or manner of life, is classed in the Srime category as the right of free speech, free press, the right to bear arms, peaceably to assemble together and freedom of conscience in the mode of worship. These rights are declared by our Constitution to be inalienable —that is, such as the citizen cannot be deprived of. With resp. ct now to all these rights, the province of Government is to protect their exercise, to punish the abuse of them; but to forbid or prohibit their exercise is beyo d its power. THE RIGHTFUL POWERS OF MAJORITIES. Majorities rule, but they rule subject to law and to constitutional order. They may control absolutely all such matters as come within the scope of Government, but there are certain matters, very numerous and various, concerning which the State has declared from the first that it has no control and can not assnme any. In all these majorities have no authority whatever. There is thrown around every human being, however humble, an inner circle of life and action into which the Government—that is, the majority—-can never intrude. All the voters in Indianapolis, save one, might vote for a law establishing a mode of worship. They could not rightfully compel one man to conform to it, nor prohibit liis worship of God in his own way. Nor in the same manner can any majority, however vast, and professing whatever motives, legitimately prohibit to a single citizen his free choice of a mode of life, his manner of living, his food, drink or raiment, and what he should use there for. To say that any conceivable majority* could prohibit by law one mode of worship or manner of living and dictate another is to assert that these rights of life, speech, publication, assemblage and religion, instead of being free, shall be subject to destruction at any time the majority may see fir to end them; instead of being inalienable, that they may be taken away at any time by the result of an election at the polls. In which case this, our Government, instead of being free, would be numbered among the most despotic. A majority with unrestricted powers may constitute a tyranny quite as intollerant as that of one man; the many become as autocratic as the one; if if the powers of either be unlimited. This is the death and burial of liberty. THE ABUSE OF RIGHTS. All these great rights are subject to gross abuses. The right to bear arms may lead to murder and assassination, the right of free speech to slander and blasphemy, the right of a free press to libel and defamation, the right to gratify the tastes and appetite, harmless in itself, to drunkenness and disorder. The power of the majority—that is, the will of the people, which is the Government—the force of law, come in legitimately to punish these .abuses and the persons guilty of them, not to prohibit or forbid the exercise of the rights themselves. The abuse of a right is certainly no argument against its use. If it were, then there should be no use of arms allowed to the people because of murder, no right of assemblage because of mobs and riots, no right of newspapers because of libels, no conversation because of slander, no eating or drinking because of gluttony and debauch. Nor is the fact, known to be certain, that offenders will abu e any of these rights, any reason whatever why the mass of citizens or any number of them should be deprived of the right to use them. H all the newspapers in Indiana were to publish to-mor-row a false and infamous defamation of a well-known public char-

acter, this would not be the least reason for prohibiting or forbidding the .freedom of the press —but it would be most just c'uise for punishment of the offenders. LICENSE AND REVENUE. Certain excessively nice and punctilious purists say that license is wrong because it is authority by the State to do evil, iu which the public thus becomes a partner and partaker. If, then, permission be given to one man to transact a certain business at a certain place, does this necessarily compel any other or others to frequent this place, or in doing so to abuse the right they thus may exercise. The capacity or opportunity to lo evil is not the doing of it. There are some persons who have said, because the Deity is all-wise and allpowerful sin might have been prevented. But it is allowed, permitted, therefore God is the author of it and a participant therein. \\ e reject a blasphemy so horril le.— This class of hypocriti-al purists say also that they do not want money from such a source as the license Yet the common school fund in Indiana is the recipient of all the fines forfeitures and penalties imposed by the ciimiual code. Under its provisions the price of blood, even the price of woman’s honor outraged, in the form of forfeited recognizances find their way into the public treasury. Revenue is derived from a variety of sour ces; much of it, it is to be regretted, from the folly, weakness and wicked ness of mankind. Converted into a fund for education, it may happily teach our posterity to do and to be better than ourselves. LOCAL OPTION. What is called local option is as base and much more insidious assault upon civil rights than prohibition itself. It seeks to accomplish by piecemeal what prohibition would do at once and at large. At a glance it will be seen that the whole idea of option, local or general, is a servile evasion of the question at issue and a clandestine attack upon fundamental liberty. If the majority in a township can prescribe and dietate to a minority under the form of law what they shall eat, drink or wear, then the majority in a county may do the same therein, and a majority in the State may do the like in the State, and a majority in the United States may do the same in the whole country. And if a majority rightfully prohibit the free choice as to what shall be the food, drink or raiment, the manner of living, of the less number, they may in the same manner forbid exercise of any other personal rights. They may prohibit one mode of worship and establish another. The majority m a tawnship may be Catholic and prohibit the exercise there of any other religion, or it may be wholly Protestant and by a vote forbid the Catholic worship. Under the line of argument of the Prohibitionists, why not? They say this is home rule, this is the will of the majority, the majority in the neighborhood so wish, this is self-goverdment. Now. the answer to all this is that the prohibition of Catholic or other mode of worship by the vote of a majority in a township or elsewhere is not self-government, it is not government at all. It is not home rule, but it is misrule of the worst character. It is a meddlesome, dangerous, detestable inteference with a subject over which the Government has, and has declared that it had, no authority whatever. — The mode of worshiping God, notwithstanding what any majority may think of it, remains free under constitutional guarantee. The mode of life or manner of living stands upon the same basis. These things are left to the free choice of each citizen. He may use any or all of these rights; such use cannot be forbidden, he remaining always liable for any abuse of the same. TEMPERANCE ORDERS AND 8001 - . TIES. .The Democratic party has always declared itself in favor of the doctrine and practice of tem-

i perance and sobriety. It has nevI er opposed the formation or progress of those organizations among the people which foster these virtues and have accomplished so much practical good in the world by their advocacy. Its legislation has incorporated, recognized and protected th-in. But these associations grow out of voluntaiy ac”tion of their members. Their beneficial work is built upon counsel, persuasion, entreaty; not upon statutes or constitutional provisions. /That certain persons should mutually bi jd themselves by a pledge to live without the use of Intoxioants is an exercise f their free choice as to a mode of bfe that no man can quest on. But that thes e persons in any considerable number should vote for and enact a policy to compel all men, whether they wish or not, to become members of their society, this would be as it is illegal. This is precisely what the Prohibitionists require—that all men should be required by law to join the total abstinence society. It would perhaps be best that every man or woman in Indianapolis belong to some church.— Suppose a majority sincerely convinced of this, should pass a law compelling every person of a certain age to join some church or religious body. What would be thought of such an enactment? Of what benefit would a member so acquired be to the church ? What advantage would the church and its affairs bo’to a member so forced to become one? Of what account to the individual or community is a moral quality practiced from compulsion, because even the oppoi tunity to offend therein is taken away? Chastity and continence are great virtues; but suppose the opportunity for intercourse between the sexes were wholly lost, effectually prohibited, where wo’d tncn be the merit in a pure life?. ABSTINENCE FOB THE SAKE OF OTHERS. The Prohibitionist says even if a right be inalienable, and be exercised purely without danger to ourselves, we should be willing to surrender it for tbe sake of others. We can see that this is a great duty and that its practice is a Christian virtue. But how is this duty to be performed and this virtue to be encouraged? Certainly not by force, by law, by compulsion, by constitutional amendment or bv legislative enactment. For what is commendable in this high quality, abstinence for the sake of others, is the spirit of s lf-sacrifi.ee. but a man forced by law to surrender a right acts in no such spirit. He does |not deny, himself, but is forced by others—that is, by the law—to do so. The great apostle of the Gentiles was the first and ablest advocate of this doctrine of total abstinence and of the duty of abstaining for the sake of others. declared that if eating of meat offendecLhis hrother, he wo’d eat no more while the world stood. But in what words did he make this vow of self-denial? Did he say if eating of meat offended my brother, Csesar must make a decree forbidding it to be eaten; there must be a law passed prohibiting the sale or purchase of flesh in the mark t; the butcher and his occupation must be abolished? No; none of these things. The divine teacher says: “If eating of meat offend my brother I will eat no more.” This is a voluntary act and utterance of his own volition, not compelling or forcing others, not abolishing meats or forbidding the traffic in flesh, but saying with meat and flesh all around him, urged by appetite, surrounded by temptation, one to which he might yield without injury to himself, yet for the sake of others he would refrain. This is pure, simple, sincere self-renunciation, noble, generous, sublime, worthy of the saintly man who made it. But to speak of a law compelling s .ch self-denial is to sink the act and motive with all its virtue into an almost nameless infamy of hypocrisy and degredation.

DAVID TURPIE.

SlljelemocrAticSentincl RENSSELAER, INDIANA. i. W. McEWEN, - - - Publisher.