IN THE NAME OF THE PUBLIC

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1911, Page 5

IN THE NAME OF THE PUBLIC

VERY LIKE LINCOLN,

GOVERNOR’S GREAT SPEECH

Governor Patterson, of Tennessee, said : “In the name of temperance I refuse assent to an intemperate measure (the Prohibition Law) which will cause more evils than it pretends to cure. . . .In the name of morality, I will not sanction a law that will foster hypocrisy and invite evasion and deceit in the people. . . . For the manhood of Tennessee, proven on every field of war and exemplified in all her glorious history of peace, I do not approve a legislative guardianship which would make weaklings of men instead of leaving them unhampered and unfettered by onerous and sumptuary laws interfering with their personal rights and privileges. ... For the youth who will bear our burdens when we are gone, whose todies, .minds, and souls should be robust with the hardy virtues of the race from which they sprung, I would forbid a law which would teach and set before them daily lessons of duplicity and evasion. .

In the name of our women whose tame and heaven-hom mission is to bless the hemes and teach honour, courage and truth to their children, who are the strength, the inspiration and the saving grace of man, I condemn any measure which will bring even a part of them into the heated and poisoned atmosphere of political strife. . . Vicious and undemocratic as I believe -.this prohibitory enactment to be, forced upon communities without their consent, it will be my duty as Governor to enforce it, if passed, and no man who breaks it need expect from mo any different treatment than will be accorded other violators. . . . But before you make it the law over my veto, you shall not, in the name of morality, commit an immoial act, and in the name of the public welfare commit this political crime without hearing through me the voice of an 'indignant, pi’otesting, and outraged people. . . . [This sounds uncommonly like President Lincoln’s “Prohibition will work great injury to the temperance cause.”] In the name of the South, and as Governor of a State which is one of its ancient, most conservative and illustrious members, I may not be able to avert, but I can and do sound the signal of ,danger against this new and strange, spirit which seems now to possess us. ;• . . Prohibition is the present

bone of our civilisation, the future peril 0* our land. ... Our fathers fought

ai no soldiers did since war among the human race began; suffered, as none ethers have suffered and died as none others have died since the annals of man were first recorded. It was not for conquest, pelf or power; not to force their views, of institutions upon others, but for tne holy purpose of pieserving the rights *t!¥ — Sheir States and that sacred principle of self-government dear it- every Southern heart, sprinkled with Southern tears and baptised in the purest Southern blood. . It has been their pride and boast that I while they lost on the field of force they •won on, the field of honour and saved the trfasure from all the perils and dangers which beset them. . . . They left it

a ■ heritage to, their , children above price, secure in possession, separate and apart from all that could tempt, or betray. . .

These men and women who made the South immortal needed no law to make them great and good, for they held the title by right of sovereign manhood and spotless womanhood. 'lf their children are true to them they will stand as they stood; do as they would have done.” Is not this enough to induce all lovers of freedom, of liberty, of morals, and of patriotism to strike out the bottom line or- both ballot papers, and free this conntry from the domination of tyrannous Prohibitionists ?—AIB.