effects of that unscrupulous selfishness in the individual which would
trample on the rights of all the rest in its pursuit of money or power.

Now, if it can be shown that the liquor traffic is a good thing; that
it benefits the people; makes them more prosperous and happy; improves
their health; promotes education and encourages virtue, then its right
to exist in the community has been established. Or, even if the good
claimed for it be only negative instead, of positive, its right must
still be unquestioned. But what if it works evil and only evil in the
State? What if it blights and curses every neighborhood, and town, and
city, and nation in which it exists; laying heavy taxes upon the people
that it may live and flourish, crippling all industries; corrupting the
morals of the people; enticing the young from virtue; filling jails, and
poor-houses, and asylums with a great army of criminals, paupers and
insane men and women, yearly extinguishing the light in thousands of
happy homes? What then?

Does this fruit of the liquor traffic establish its right to existence
and to the protection of law? Let the reader answer the question for
himself. That it entails all of these evils, and many more, upon the
community, cannot and will not be denied. That it does any good, cannot
be shown. Fairly, then, it has no right to existence in any government
established for the good of the people; and in suppressing it, no wrong
can be done.


PROHIBITION NOT UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

How the question of prohibition is regarded by the highest legal
authority in the United States will appear from the following opinions