Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/796

776 unhappy change is proof plenary of the wide departure from truth, among other things, of assertions that sales were all the while going on, which have been suppressed and only now resumed. Such assertions have come chiefly from persons residing elsewhere, in the face of the testimony officially given by the Governor of Iowa, judges, and other State officers. That there are other offenses against society unpunished and unforbidden is nothing to. the purpose as to why liquor-selling is forbidden. If advocates of temperance argue, in the way of philanthropic moral suasion, that "those who indulge in alcoholic liquors or tobacco spend money which could otherwise be more profitably used," it is just what they should do; but in not even the smallest measure does it go to prove that laws devised for other objects were intended, after all, though their authors do not know it, to prevent this spending of money. If they have this effect incidentally, so much the better for the money spenders and no worse for the law. Any good "social influence" of a Code of Criminal Procedure which provides penalties for such "Offences against Public Policy" Dr. Hammond is precluded from recognizing by his assertion that they are null and void. What, then—should such offenses go scot free? "What crimes, then, should be punished at all? His boast of evading the law of Rhode Island" at a prominent hotel n by a trick—be it professional or unprofessional—with impunity is certainly very good evidence that the law did not prohibit the private act of drinking, but the public act of selling. Does any law anywhere interfere with liberty of buying, save in the harangues of Personal Liberty Leagues? Prohibitionists everywhere disclaim such interference, but claim the right of "every independent State" to suppress the common and public sale of anything deemed detrimental to "the welfare of society." Any argument against this has little weight, save with those who subordinate this "welfare" to personal convenience, and, moreover, goes too far in that it sanctions the open sale of powder and dynamite by anybody who sets up his "personal liberty" in this regard. The real objection of the free-sale advocates is to the actual obstacle "to get any kind of liquor a person wants" in any kind of "packages," and "as many more on the same terms," i. e., by some unlawful evasion—which obstacle is denied in the same breath to exist! One horn or the other of the dilemma the advocates of free sale should now choose, after so long playing pendulum between the one and the other.

It is not a little surprising that under the head of "social influence" a stronger denial than this self-contradictory one is not made. It is here suggested gratuitously to the liquor interest.