Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1886 — Some Sound Remarks Upon The Prohibition Question. [ARTICLE]

Some Sound Remarks Upon The Prohibition Question.

' Indianapolis '’dtirual I It is not worth while, perhaps, to repeat the old formula that “prohibition i does not prohibit,” but it is always ! worth while to keep before the people : the fallacy of the belief that the enact- ! ment of a prohibitory eohstitutional ' amendment, or the passage of a pfo- , hibitory law, is a full and final settleJ meat of the liquor 'question. Krohibiti ion does not prohibit any more than i local option prohibits, or than high taxI at'on prohibits. The difference is only !in degree and net in kind, if there be i any difference at all. To adopt lanI guage we have lately h.eard r prohibition whiskey is just arfbad as as local-option whiskey or high taxation whiskey, and that there is prohibition whiskey is a fact not to be discredited. Indeed, it is proved by the testimony of P.’ohibiti ionists themselves.- In the Slate of . Maine they have had a prohibitory law , for more than thirty years,- and public j sentiment is such that the law could ■ not be repealed. And yet there is whiskey; and plenty of it, in/ the State of Maine, just as there is whiskey in the State of Nebraska under a high-tax. ation law, or; possibly, in Georgia, ‘ Missouri and Kentucky under localoption laws. . It is found necessary to have a Prohibition party in the State of

Alain e. It is headed by General Neal Dow, and it has recently met and nominated candidates for office. The candidate for Governor, in bis speech accepting the nomination, said: “It is high time that something: -should be done in this State to put down the liquor traffic. ” Delegates to the convention all united in this view. One said that “in his town of Brunswick rum was freely sold.” Another, a clergyman, said “there are forty saloons in Belfast,” a place of 5,000 population. With these ex pi essions before them, from Prohibitionists in a State that has had a prohibitory law in force fbr thirty years, backed by a public opinion quite exceptional, those deluded beings who believe in testing tlie efficacy of high taxation, or of local option, iu regulating the liquor traffic will likely adhere to their opinions, despite the sneers of the half-baked philanthropists and disgruntled statesmen who think they have discharged a columbiad when they talk of “local option whiskey” being as battas “free whiskey, ’’ and assort that all who do not join a prohibition third party, where such a delectable compound is in - existence, arc equally responsible for the evils cf the liquor traffic with the saloon-keepers themselves. Bueh talk is the babble of the feeble-minded. ”,