in
in the future as they have been in the past. There is no hope, no help,
no refuge in anything but _Prohibition_!

And here we art met by two questions, fairly and honestly asked. First.
Is prohibition right in the abstract as a legislative measure? Second.
Can prohibitory laws be enforced, and will they cure the evil of
drunkenness?

First, as to the question of legislative action. Can the State forbid
the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage without violating the
natural right of certain citizens, engaged in the manufacture and sale
of these articles, to supply them to customers who wish to purchase?

We answer, that no man has a natural right to do wrong; that is, to
engage in any pursuit by which he makes gain out of loss and injury to
his neighbor. The essential principle of government is the well-being of
the people. It guarantees to the weak, security against the strong; it
punishes evil doers, and seeks to protect its citizens from the evil
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 UNCONSTITUTIONA