A GOVERNOR ON PROHIBITION.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1034, 30 December 1909, Page 22

A GOVERNOR ON PROHIBITION.

“ A DETRIMENT TO THE STATE.” The following is part of the text of a message submitted to the Legislature of Tennessee by Governor R. M. Patterson. “If we can legislate against the manufacture and sale of liquor because it often produces crime and frequently becomes hurtful to the individual and society, can we not also legislate against the manufacture and sale of tobacco or poisonous drugs? And if we begin such legislation, where is it to end? “ Shall we prohibit the manufacture and sale of liquor to all the people because some, by reason of intemperate use, ruin themselves? “ Shall we so legislate that a man who uses it moderately and without injury to himself or others shall be wholly deprived of its use, because another uses it immoderately? “ Shall the sick not use it if the physician prescribes it, because some who are well abuse it? “ Shall its manufacture and sale be wholly forbidden by law, without' regard to its proper use or abuse? “The use or non-use of liquor should be left to the individual. “ In my conception, in popular governments and the relation of the individual to society, it is just as much an invasion of personal liberty to attempt by law to forbid its use as it is by law to forbid the use of anything else. “ Character in the individual is not made by prohibition or the withdrawing of temptation, but by resistance to temptation. The scheme of God in the redemption of man has not been to take from him temptation, but to leave him free to resist, and as he resists, he will have his reward. “ Shall we destroy property to make men honest? “Shall we abolish the manufacture of gunpowder because men sometimes use it to murder their fellow men? “ Can we make men virtuous by law, or is it only through education. Christian influence and the growth of the intelligence, conscientiousness and responsibility in man himself? “ The answer is but one, and that is the man must work out his own

destiny under human law, as he must his own salvation under divine law. “I recommend that no general prohibition law be passed abolishing the manufacture and saie of liquor, believing, as I nave always done, a.id tor the reasons stated, that such a law will prove a failure and be a detriment to the state. “1 do recommend, however, high license, strict regulation and loil’eiture of license for violations of law. “In my opinion, if these recommendations were carried into law, the liquor question would be at rest in every state and the people as a whole would approve your course. As genuine temperance measures and real rereforms they are infinitely to be preferred to ill-considered drastic legislation, which provoke intemperance under the guise of prohibition.”