THE HOMILETIC REVIEW.

VOL. X.-—OCTOBER, 1885.-—No. 4.

REVIEW SECTION.

I. SYMPOSIUM ON PROHIBITION.

OUGHT PROHIBITION TO BE MADE A POLITICAL QUESTION? IF SO, WITH WHAT LIMITATIONS?

NO. IV.

BY JOSEPH COOK, BOSTON.

SLAVERY, before the Civil War, did not cause the destruction of 50,000 lives each year, as the liquor traffic now does in the United States. Slavery never whipped, or starved, or worked to death as many human beings in any one year previous to the Rebellion as the liquor traffic now kills every year in our nation. Slavery never cost the people as much in any one year outside the war as the liquor traffic now costs them. When the liquor traffic, which is already more murderous than slavery ever was, becomes as domineering as slavery became, its death-knell will be sounded. The crack of the whiskeydealer's whip in municipal, State and National politics, is already becoming as resonant as was once the slave-dealer's lash.

The writer of this article, owing to the exigencies of travel, was unable to vote in the last Presidential Election, and is to be regarded as an advocate of a National Reform party, rather than of any existing third party.

Is it advisable to attempt a reorganization of political parties on such lines as to make Constitutional Prohibition a National issue? Besides the use of all moral, religious and educational measures applicable to the case, a new political party was found necessary to the abolition of slavery. Besides all moral, religious and educational measures, the use of which in their utmost vigor is here taken for granted, can it be shown that a new political party, or a reorganization of parties, is necessary to the abolition of the liquor traffic?

I. The political necessity of dethroning the liquor traffic in municipal, State and National politics will ultimately force the people to make such new arrangements as are necessary for their self-protec

tion. Political necessity overthrew slavery. Political necessity will yet make the liquor traffic an outlaw. Municipal misrule is now the chief mischief in American politics. Its longest root is the liquor traffic. At the opening of the century, only one-twentieth of our population lived in cities. To-day, nearly one-tenth of the population is found in our ten chief towns. Fifty other towns of 30,000 inhabitants and over contain another tenth. One-fifth of our population is now found in cities large enough to have corrupt municipal governments. It is estimated that one-quarter of the voting population of our cities is made up of the employes and the patrons of the liquor saloons.

De Tocqueville predicted that the growth of great cities would ruin the American republic, unless they are kept in order by a standing army. Lord Beaconsfield was accustomed to lift up his jeweled finger and point across the Atlantic and affirm that not one American city of commanding size is well governed under universal suffrage, or ever will be. Sir Robert Peel predicted that American forms of government will fail to protect life and property in crowded populations. "As for America," said Lord Macaulay, "I appeal to the twentieth century. Either some Cæsar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 20th century as the Roman Empire was in the 5th, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged Rome came from without her borders, while your Huns and Vandals will be engendered within your own country and by your own institutions." As Wendell Phillips was accustomed to say: "While rum rules the great towns, universal suffrage is a farce." But universal suffrage is not to be given up, and is to be made effective in securing all the ends of good government. Precisely this is the Sphinx's Riddle in American politics-how to remedy the mischiefs of universal suffrage by means of universal suffrage. Govern great cities well under a free ballot, and the American Republic can be preserved, otherwise not. Outlaw the liquor traffic, and great cities can be governed well under a free ballototherwise not. The love of liberty and home in the Anglo-Saxon races is stronger than the love of intoxicating drinks. If it is clearly seen that the protection of liberty and home under universal suffrage is impossible without destroying the liquor traffic, the latter will be destroyed. When the mischief of municipal misrule, already so threatening, shall have become absolutely appalling, the people will remedy it, under the law of self-defence, by striking at its chief root.

II The aggressiveness and arrogance of the liquor traffic, its vast wealth, its unscrupulous and insatiable thirst for power in municipal, State and National politics, make its overthrow seem, as that of slavery did, a reform too prodigious to be effected under universal

suffrage. But this very aggressiveness and arrogance will operate in the case of the liquor traffic as they did in the case of slavery. Affairs may become worse before they are better; but they will become better through growing worse.

The moral enormity of slavery was the chief subsidiary cause of its overthrow. The moral enormity of the liquor traffic will sustain the conscience of the nation in making an end of the political power of the whiskey rings. As it is possible that the moral argument against slavery might not alone have secured its abolition, so the moral argument against the liquor traffic might not be enough to arouse the people to the enactment of Constitutional Prohibition as a National measure. But slavery was overthrown because it poisoned the leading political parties and attempted to control the National Government. The abolition of slavery became, and so may the abolition of the liquor traffic become, not only a moral, but a political, and, at last, a military necessity.

The dram-shop oligarchy in the United States now consists of some 200,000 brewers, distillers and dealers, united by common interest and a formal organization, and commanding a capital estimated at $1,200,000,000. The seat of its power is in the sediment of civilization. The enormous profits of the liquor traffic may make it as desperate as slavery was in defending its alleged rights. The drink bill of the United States is now not far from $1,000,000,000 every year. This is more than the nation expends for meat or bread or public education, or for all three of these together. The dram-shop oligarchy is already as powerful, if not as audacious, as the slavehold ing oligarchy was.

The attempt of the liquor traffic to secure a national constitutional amendment, for ever prohibiting National Prohibition, will undoubtedly prove a suicidal policy. If, in some closely-contested National election, the liquor traffic should foster riots, or be so insane as to take up arms in defence of its alleged rights, as slavery did, its destruction would be incredibly hastened. It is not impossible that some closelycontested election, municipal riot and the disturbance of State legislation may ultimately bring about, as they have already come near to doing in Maine, Cincinnati and Chicago, a collision between the corrupt elements controlled by the whiskey rings on the one hand, and the masses of respectable citizens, as represented by the authority of law, and by the army on the other. It may be that the power of the whiskey rings in the great cities will be broken in some street barricade war.

III. The hammer which breaks the lawless power of the liquor traffic will have insufficient force unless wielded by the National arm. To confine the sphere of political prohibition to the States is to forget that, in regard to importation, inter-State commerce, and law for

the District of Columbia and the Territories, the National Government has exclusive jurisdiction. It is to forget also that, in the probably severe conflicts of the future between the law and the lawless classes led by the liquor traffic, the Federal power, as in the case of several important riots already, will be found necessary to the pre

servation of order.

As, in the case of slavery, a political necessity of the first magnitude gradually caused the formation of the Republican party; so, in the case of the liquor traffic, a political necessity of the first magnitude is gradually forming a Prohibition party.

IV. As the anti-slavery education of the people gradually rose to such a height as to justify the people in making slavery an outlaw, so the temperance education of the people is gradually becoming so thorough that it will uphold the public conscience in making the liquor traffic an outlaw. No more important work for the advancement of the temperance reform has been done in this century than that which has brought the legislatures of fourteen States of the Union to enact laws making scientific temperance common-school education compulsory. Mrs. Hunt, to whose spiritual insight, political sagacity and unselfish and indefatigable personal activity this reform owes its remarkable success, predicts with confidence that in ten years after scientific temperance education is given with as much thoroughness in the common schools as is now a knowledge of arithmetic and grammar, the nation will contain a majority of voters in favor of Constitutional Prohibition. If a majority of voters are not at present in favor of stern legal measures against the liquor traffic, it seems now morally certain that a majority of the next generation will be.

Already fourteen States of the Union have favored legislative prohibition with more or less steadiness; seventeen favor local option in the counties and towns; while Iowa, Kansas and Maine, by great majorities, have adopted Constitutional Prohibition. After a generation of experience of the working of prohibitory laws in their legislative form, the State of Maine enacts Constitutional Prohibition by a majority of three to one. The experience of the States that have adopted Constitutional Prohibition has justified the people of these commonwealths in making the liquor traffic an outlaw.

Constitutional Prohibition is a rising tide. It needs to rise but a little higher to be deep enough to float the reform, not only in State, but also in National politics.

V. The feasibility of the proposal to secure an amendment to the Federal Constitution making the liquor traffic an outlaw, is certainly as great as that of securing a similar amendment abolishing slavery appeared to be forty years ago.

At one time or another, more than half of the voters of the United States have recorded themselves as in favor of either Prohibition or

local option. Let this half be increased by agitation and political necessity to three-fourths. The Constitution might then be so amended as to express the will of the people. A National Constitutional Amendment requires a two-thirds vote of Congress and afterwards a majority consent of three-fourths of the States. There are now 38, and may soon be 40 States in the American Union. Let it be assumed that 30 States must be gradually carried by the friends of Prohibition in order to give success to the reform in its National aspects. Let the insolence of the liquor traffic increase. Let municipal misrule, under the stimulation of the dram-shop oligarchy, grow more and more virulent. The example of Kansas, Iowa and Maine would, in these circumstances, become contagious. A concentration of effort on State after State would ultimately secure a majority in three-fourths of the States. The requisite two-thirds in Congress and subsequent ratification by the States would follow.

Canada, by vote of the Dominion Parliament, has submitted the question of National Prohibition to its people. District after district has declared for it. It is the confident expectation of the friends of the reform that Canada will soon make the liquor traffic an outlaw by National enactment.

It has been affirmed with confidence by a careful specialist on the subject of Prohibition, that "there are but three States in the American Union where there is even a plausible reason for affirming that if the voters were divided into two parties on this issue, the AntiProhibitionists would have a majority." Those States are Pennsylvania, Illinois and North Carolina.

There are reasons for believing that a majority of the people, in a majority of the States of the American Union, are in favor of severe prohibitory legislation. A distinction is to be made between a majority of the people and a majority of voters, and also between a majority of voters and a majority of any political party. If the votes of all the population above twenty-one years of age, including women as well as men, were taken, it is already probable that prohibitory measures would be carried in all, except perhaps ten of the American Commonwealths. These exceptional States are afflicted by great and corrupt cities, but would not outweigh, in a national vote, the suffrage of the sound part of the whole population

It is not impossible that in a majority of the States a majority of legal voters would favor Constitutional prohibition, were it fairly submitted to the people in an entirely non-partisan way, wholly disconnected with other issues. The reluctance of either of the leading parties to allow the submission of the question to the people in this manner is proof that party managers have a secret conviction that the reform might be carried were it thus allowed to have a fair chance in a non-partisan canvass.