Syracuse University Library
Special Collections Research Center
Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Temperance : Gerrit Smith to John Stuart Mill.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 549

TEMPERANCE.

GERRIT SMITH TO JOHN STUART MILL.

[p. 1, col. 1]

STATE OF NEW YORK
PETERBORO, February 5, 1869.

JOHN STUART MILL, England,

HONORED AND DEAR SIR,

A gentleman in England, who is rendering eminent, service to the Cause of Temperance, requests me to criticise your attitude toward that Cause. So profound is my sense of your pre-eminent wisdom - perhaps, well-nigh as profound as was Buckle's sense of it - that I could not, without heavily taxing my diffidence, presume to criticise you in any respect. Nevertheless, I venture to comply with the request.

The gentleman I refer to would have Government shut up the dramshop. You would have Government leave it open. How shall so wide a difference on a subject of so vast importance be explained? Is he more radical in his theories than you are ? Probably not. Few of the world's great writers are less cramped than yourself by the spirit of conservatism. Are you less disposed than be to reduce radical theories to practice ? Your admirable pleas for, woman's voting prove that you do not shrink from the boldest practical innovations. This wide difference must be otherwise accounted for. Perhaps, whilst his philanthropy is particularly moved by Intemperance, yours is by some other vice or suffering. Or, perhaps, it is to be accounted for, in part or entirely, by the supposition that you are especially jealous of the interference of society with the rights and practices of the individual, and he, of the interference of the individual with the interests and welfare of society. On this supposition it is quite natural that one of you should argue the right of the individual to buy or sell drams, and the other the right of society to punish him for such buying or selling

You make the province of Civil Government much narrower than most do. I (though not forgetting that, in doing so, I go against the judgment of many a man far wiser and better than myself) make it still narrower. For instance, whilst you would have Government compel the idler to work, I would let him remain an idler, should moral influences prove inadequate to change him and whilst you would have the parent compelled to educate his child, I, with my dread of all possibly avoidable compulsion, would look to his enlightened and benevolent neighbors to supply, as far as they can, the unnatural parental lack. Again, I would have Government shut out not only from the Church but also from the School. It should have nothing to do with either. Then, too, I would have the right to buy and sell so free, as not to leave a Custom-House upon the earth. Nor would I allow Government to concern itself with the Cause of Temperance, nor with any other Moral Reform, nor with Asylums for the Blind or the Deaf Mutes, nor with any other Benevolent Institutions. Why, then, you will ask me, am I in favor of the enactment of sumptuary laws ? I am not. Families should be left to dress as they please, and to eat and drink what they please. There should be no laws to regulate living. If, in saying so, I open the way for the question - how I can then consistently be in favor of Government's shutting up the dramsbop-my reply is that this question will be answered in what I shall say of the province of Government. I have said what is not its province in other words, what it should not do. I will now say what is its province - in other words, what it should do. It should protect person and property; and it should attempt nothing more. Its one work is to hold a shield over its subjects beneath which they can, unjostled by each other, and secure from foreign aggression, pursue each his own chosen calling, and each live out his own views of life. The protection of person and property being its sole office, Government is to protect society

[p. 1, col. 2]

not only from the criminal but from the insane, be it liquor or disease that has produced the insanity. Hence, whilst we are to look to enlightened and benevolent persons for Asylums for the sick and poor, we are to regard Lunatic Asylums including Inebriate Asylums as a part of the machinery of Government. By the way, the Almshouse and kindred Institutions would scarce ly be needed were the dramshop abolished. Rare, in that case, would be the person who is so impoverished or debased, as to tact himself upon the public charity; and rare too, in that case, would be the person, whose friends are so impoverished or debased, as to allow him to be cast upon it.

If I have rightly defined the office of Civil Government, then, manifestly, were every part of the earth to be blessed with a true Civil Government, there would not be so much as one dramshop left in any part of the earth. For what is the dramshop but, the great mane factory of incendiaries, madmen and murderers ? Its staggering army in Great Britain counts up nearly a million; in America scarcely less. Because of the dramshop hundreds of thousands of British and American families are deep-sunk in misery, stricken with terror, and not a very small proportion of them besmeared with blood. Because of the dramshop night is so often made hideous in Britain and America by screams of "Murder," and sunrise made sorrowful by its revelations of the deeds of drunkenness. And, yet, even John Stuart Mill will not have Government suppress the dramshop ! Its evils, surpassing the sum total of all other evils, stare him in the face - and, yet, he allows himself to be swayed by that microscopic view, which detects in such suppression a particle of seeming sumptuary legislation! Pardon me for being reminded by your hypercritical and fastidious objection to the only way of salvation in this life and death case, of the old story of the extreme ceremoniousness of the gentleman, who made his never-having-been-introduced to the drowning man his excuse for not rescuing him. Even if there is in this proposed suppression of the dramshop something of the form or semblance of sumptuary legislation, there, nevertheless; is not the least of the spirit of it. Moreover, were it so that, incidental to this suppression, there must be violations of some minor rights and inconsiderable interests, no account should be made of the violations, but all of them should be forgotten in the joy of the accomplished object.

I admit that the shutting up of the dramshops might put some families to a little inconvenience, if not also to a slightly additional expense, in obtaining alcoholic liquor. I admit, too, that, whilst it is not only unnecessary but pernicious to persons in health, there is occasionally a bodily ailment, in which, provided there are not other remedial agents of similar effect at hand, such liquor is useful. But to make trifles like these excuses for keeping open the flood-gates of the deadly dramshop argues the impossibility of finding worthier excuses for continuing the murderous wrong.

I do not forget that, although you would leave the dramseller unpunished for keeping a soul-and-body-slaughter-house, you would have his customer punished for the violence of which he may have been guilty in his drunkenness. But to make this the only security against such violence is too much like stipulating with the men, reckless or malignant enough to bring fire into the powder-house, that they shall not be punished until an actual explosion has come of their recklessness or malignity. Surely, surely, London is entitled to more security against dramshop violence than this, which you propose - yes, to immeasurably more, seeing that, probably, never a day passes without some of her dramshops being chargeable with one or more deaths.

2

[col. 1]

The deaths may be from suicide or murder-produced suddenly or gradually - nevertheless, they are all dramshop deaths.

I do not forget the frequent cavil, that, even were the dramshop shut up, drinking and drunkenness would not thereby be diminished. Nevertheless, overwhelming are the proofs, that the drinking and drunkenness are in proportion to the temptations - in proportion to the frequency and attractiveness of the places for gratifying the unhappy appetite. Of course, no one is less chargeable with such cavil than yourself. For your argument against shutting up the dramshop is the solemn one that human rights would thereby be invaded - invaded by lessening the facilities for tippling and drunkenness ! I scarcely need add that the cavillers I refer to entirely ignore your argument. With your fear of the increased difficulty of getting rum they have no sympathy. Their confidence that rum will still be within as easy reach as ever remains undiminished.

How sad it is that even the wisest and best of men do, by getting used to crimes - to the presence of criminal usages - become patient with them! Possibly, before the year is ended, thousands of shops may be opened in London for the sale of a newly discovered gas. It will craze no small part of their frequenters. Some of them it will turn into incendiaries and some into murderers. Nevertheless, so attractive will be the gas that scores of thousands will go to inhale it. No sooner, however, will the effect of it be well-ascertained than Petitions for shutting up these gas-shops will pour into Parliament. Amongst the most influential names upon them will be your own. The gas-shops, unsustained by the plea of custom, would be tried solely by their character, and would, therefore, be as quickly and as thoroughly condemned as would be the dramshops, were they also unsheltered by this plea, and put on trial for their

[p. 2, col. 2]

character only - their emphatically infernal character.

We are both in favor of having the people own Government instead of being, as is the case in many nations, owned by it. Hence, we both deprecate Government's travelling beyond its legitimate limits. Could it be kept within them, it would be a blessing above all price. Travelling beyond them, it becomes an evil, not only from its meddling with matters, which do not belong to it, but from its consequent neglect of its own proper duty. Has it never occurred to you, that the most effective way to recall Government from its meddlings is to hold it firmly and constantly to the discharge of its one duty to protect person and property? When it shall have been brought to see that, in leaving the dramshop to pour out destruction and death, it leaves person and property more unprotected than from any or all other causes; and when it shall, consequently have been brought to see that it has no higher duty to perform than to shut up this fountain of woe, then will Civil Government be in a process of education and change, that will leave it no taste nor time nor talent for continuing its usurpations. And then, with hands filled with its legitimate work, and with heart filled with zeal to perform it, and destitute alike of affinity and ability for every other work, Civil Government will realize the sublimest expectations of the most enlightened and philanthropic statesmen. In that day, it will be held, not only that Civil Government has the right to shut up the dramshops, but that, wherever it fails to exercise this right, it fails to prove itself worthy of the name of Civil Government.

With the highest regard

yours

GERRIT SMITH.