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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

No legislating for temperance! / letter from Gerrit Smith.

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 576

NO LEGISLATING FOR TEMPERANCE!

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH.

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PETERBORO July 10^th 1873

To the gentlemen, who composed the recent two State Temperance Conventions in Albany:

If my presuming to argue with you - one person with hundreds - shall savor of egotism, I trust you will pardon much to my old age, and to the fact that I have toiled, nearly half a century in the cause of temperance and expended, tens of thousands of dollars in it.

Alcoholic beverages work more evil in christendom than any thing else, and, perhaps, than all things else. The drunkard is the most miserable of men; his wife the most miserable of women ; and their children are more to be pitied than any other children. But for these beverages the inmates of our almshouses and prisons would be few, and few would be the victims of the gallows. But for these beverages there would be safety and peace in our unhappiest families and unhappiest neighborhoods. Nor is it only when they induce drunkenness, that alcoholic beverages work this immeasurable evil. They, probably, work even more through "temperate drinkers" than through drunkards. The drunkard is but one man in a dozen or two of men; and no person trusts his judgment, or takes his advice, or puts himself under his influence. But the vast majority of the men amongst us are "temperate drinkers"; and a large share of these drinkers drink frequently, if not habitually, for the purpose of exciting themselves and of elevating the tone of their flagging spirits. What, however, is this excitement or elevation but a greater or less degree of intoxication, craziness or insanity? And yet who is afraid to take legal or medical or even spiritual advice from a "temperate drinker", or to come into the closest relations with him? Our nation is ruled, society fashioned, the church, influenced by "temperate drinkers", and largely by their alcoholic inspirations.

Since, then, alcohol is not necessary, nor to any extent useful as a beverage, and since a large share of the people are much harmed by it, and no small share ruined by it, how plain is it that every one should feel bound to abstain from it as a beverage. His personal safety is a very urgent consideration to this end. The contribution of his example to the safety of others he should feel to be another, if not, indeed, more urgent one. By all that is precious in his protection from a fate more horrible and loathsome than any other fate; by all that is precious in the protection of others from it; and by all that is precious in the salvation of this great nation over which impends the RUM RUIN, no American should so much as wet his lips with alcohol unless it be prescribed by a wise physician, who dreads it as a drink. No other physician is a safe counsellor in the case. Physicians, with comparatively few exceptions, are the great enemies of temperance. He, who drinks what the Doctor prescribes, drinks freely - for he drinks upon an authority in whose presence his own judgment is distrusted and submissive, and his conscience therefore quieted. There is no greater extravagance in saying that, in the, making of drunkards, the doctors do not fall very far behind the dramshops.

Here, then, in what I have said, is that which every man owes to the cause of temperance. He should discharge this duty; and do what, he can to persuade others to discharge it. Thus far there is, probably, no disagreement between us. But when I add that this comprises his whole duty to this great cause, you dissent from me. You hold, that he is bound to endeavor to draw Government into the aid of it, whilst I, on the contrary, hold that Government is not to identify itself with the temperance reform, nor with any other moral reform. Civil Govern-

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ment is by far, the most important of earthly institutions and it is vital to all valuable interests that if be kept unperverted, and confined to its legitimate sphere. Instead of being allowed to trench upon some interests for the benefit of others, it should remain the common and impartial protector of them all. It must uphold, not alone the, rights of the collective people, but the right's of the individual also; and must not be allowed to invade his rights even under the most plausible pleas and strongest assurances of advancing the public good.

The province of Government is very far from being commensurate with that of moral influence. The protection of person and property is, as all admit, its chief work and I would that all might admit that it is its only work. Moreover, this. is not unlimited protection - but protection only from such evils as Government alone can protect from, and as society could not long continue to exist, unless protected front. Other and controllable evils must remain to be dealt with by moral influence instead of Governmental coercion. In many a dwelling there is gambling, and in many a dwelling there is lewdness. But Government must not undertake to purge them of these evils. Society could not, however, withstand the tide of corruption, were Government to allow the vile to multiply, at pleasure, public gambling-hells and public houses of prostitution. So, too, in many a private house are alcoholic beverages. Nevertheless, Government must not search for them. Society can maintain itself against this lamentable usage of home-drinking. But it is threatened with utter destruction by the growing evil of such beverages in hotels and saloons and other dramselling places. New York reels under the incessant blows from her ten thousand licensed and unlicensed drunkard manufactories. Any material addition to their number, or any occasion, which should fire them with afresh inspiration from hell, might serve to engulf the city in the wild waves of anarchy and ruin New York staggers under her load of fraudulently-contracted debts - but she staggers far worse under her dramshop demoralization. Indeed, this load of debts has come mainly from this demoralization.

Dramselling is the manufacturing of madmen, incendiaries, and criminals of every grade from the petty thief to the murderer. It is, far more than all things else, the fruitful source of peril to person and property. Moreover, no candid person will hold that it is, to any extent, a public convenience, or, that its suppression would, in the slightest degree, curtail individual or family rights. Hence, the first duty of Government is to strike at and extirpate the dramshop, be it the palatial or vulgar hotel, the gilded saloon or the dirtiest drink-den. And this it is to do, not at all as a temperance measure - not at all to please the temperance reformers - but simply because Government is instituted to protect person and property.

The friends of temperance are contemplating the organization of a political temperance party. They will fail to gather a considerable party. But they will not need an independent political party, if, they shall consent to confine their political war to the dramshop. A call, upon the extisting political parties, not in the alarming name of temperance, but in the quest and accepted name of protection - of that, protection, which is due from Government to every man and child - to shut up the satanic dramshop, of be in vain, if backed up by the undivided temperance host. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party would rival each other in their quickness to respond to this call. Then down would go the dramshop, that Gibraltar of intemperance ; and the way be thus prepared for completing by moral agencies

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the work of temperance. Effectually, though but incidentally to its working for protection of person and property, will Government then open the way in which the friends of temperance can march on to victory. [If the existing parties should refuse to adopt this principle of protection, then, by all that is just and necessary, let there be no delay in organizing an independent party - for the Government that is unfaithful to this principle is no Government.]

But you are impatient to ask me: "How about beer?" When I say that Government must stop dramselling, however severe the penalties upon both seller and buyer necessary to effect it, I include in dramselling such and only such liquors, without naming them, as intoxicate or craze, and thereby fearfully peril person and property. If, as some juries have found, beer but dulls or stupefies instead of crazing, then Government is not to include it in its condemnation of dramselling - for, in such case, the drinker of it would but damage himself, and not be an occasion of danger to others. In every prosecution let a jury decide whether the liquor in question is or is not intoxicating or crazing.

I wish I could live to see the friends of temperance cease from their long and vain practice of asking Government for so much, as to get nothing. All that Government has the right to do for their cause, or that they need to have done for it by Government, is to shut up the dramshops ; and even this much it can legitimately do, not as aiming to help temperance, but only as the official protector of person and property. I am happy to believe that the vast majority, of the temperance men, have become sick of "license law." What can be innocently sold Government should suffer to be freely sold; and what cannot be innocently sold Government should not suffer to be sold at all. A large share of the temperance men still cling to the fancy of local option laws. It is, however, a wild fancy. Giving a town permission to decide for itself whether a road or bridge shall, be built here or there may be very well. But to leave it to decide whether perjury, forgery, theft, or that great fountain-head of crimes the dramshop, shall or shall not be allowed within its limits, is both wild and wicked. The "civil damages law," which the mass of temperance men make themselves hoarse with praising, reaches the very climax of absurdity. Nothing can be more absurd than licensing a man to sell intoxicating liquors, and then punishing him for the perfectly natural results of the licensed business. The cry for "absolute prohibition'' is swelling just now. But "absolute prohibition" is absolute folly, as is every other vain and utterly impracticable thing.

I said that I wished to live to see the friends of temperance give up, their unwise political action. I add that I should not need to live more than two or three years to see temperance on a sure road to triumph were its friend to give up such action and to betake themselves unitedly to one essential work of urging Government to fulfil its highest duty in shutting up the dramshop.

A great blessing, aside from its decisive advantage to the cause of temperance, would the friends of temperance confer upon their country and upon mankind by uniting at this time to insist with all the power of their votes on the duty of Government to protect person and property. But a far greater blessing than this would come of it. It would be a wide step toward the ground that this is the only duty of Government - that its only duty is to hold a shield over the heads of the people beneath which they may be left free to work out their own salvation or their own destruction. A wise people can save themselves. A foolish people Government cannot save.

When the government shall be brought back from all its usurpations and kept within its limits, the people will be

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as much blessed by it, as they are now and, ever have been cursed by the transcension of its limits. Then, there will be no more approaches to a union of church and state. Then Government will have nothing more to do with the sabbath question. It will be held to afford no more protection to sabbath-keepers than to non-sabbath keepers. Then Government will be shut out of the school, where it makes so much disturbance now, and will make still more ere it is shut out. Then will be seen the falseness of the plea that the people will not voluntarily support the cause of education. The present voluntary contributions to that cause very far exceed the compulsory: and the void there would be front the withdrawal of Government would be quickly filled by private benevolence. Then Government will no longer be the self-constituted almoner of the people's bounty - but the people will deal out, their charities for themselves. They will themselves give away of their own ; and not suffer Government to give it away for them. Then, too, Government will leave the people to build their own canals and railroads, and will itself undertake no work but what is strictly for the protection of the country. Then, in a word, would Government be confined to its one duty of protecting person and property - and, this too, simply by brute force - leaving moral force to be exerted by the people. But does this duty include all its duties? It does. You cannot conceive of one, which it does not include.

1st. Will it not leave an honest man's reputation at the mercy of the slanderer and libeller? It will not. Reputation is property, and property of the most sacred kind: and Government is, therefore, emphatically in the line of its duty when it provides redress for a wronged reputation.

2d. Would not this narrow definition of Government allow the grossest indecencies to be enacted in our streets with impunity? Certainly not! For, if permitted, they would render the property, which they face, untenantable and valueless. From this and all other nuisances Government must protect our persons and our property. It must, especially, forbid obscene publications and pictures, which by their sudden inflaming of the passions, endanger personal security.

3d. And must not Government provide lunatic asylums? Certainly! For the insane left at large, are a source of danger to person and property. Government must secure society from them as well as from the criminal classes. I admit that asylums for the blind and for deaf mutes and some other institutions and objects, which Government is wont to aid, would, under my definition of its province, have to depend upon private benevolence. The dependence would not, however, be vain.

The gain from confining Government to its one legitimate work is not only to hold it back from usurping the work of the people, but it is also to, secure a doing of its own work far, more thoroughly than when it is distracted and seduced by numberless claims to its attention.

I confess that I am jealous of Government and dread its tendency to invade individual and family rights. I will, also, confess that I have great confidence in the people, and believe it to be derogatory to their dignity to be held in the leading strings of Government, and destructive to their manhood to hamper them with sumptuary laws, or follow them with any dog-at-the-heels laws. The people can do their own work. All that they require at the hand of Government is to be protected whilst they are doing it.

I close with referring to a great lack. The statesman lacks the ardor of the reformer; and the reformer lacks the wisdom of the statesman. Happy for the world when both shall be blended in the same person.

Respectfully yours,

GERRIT SMITH.