The very highest judicial authority, the Supreme Court of the Nation,
has made a most radical ruling, towit: "No legislature can bargain
away the public health or the public morals. The people themselves cannot
do it, much less their servants. Government is organized with a view
to their preservation and cannot divest itself of the power to provide
for them."—101 U. S. 816.
No state, therefore, can license or legalize immorality, vice or crime.
All such efforts are treason to society and organized government.
Again, the Supreme Court of the United States has declared: "If
the public safety or the public morals require the discontinuance of any
manufacture or traffic, the hand of the legislature cannot be stayed from
providing for its discontinuance, by any incidental inconvenience which
individuals or corporations may suffer."—97 U. S. 32. Thus the legislature
of any state can confiscate property by wholesale if necessary for
the protection of the community. Powder mills, slaughter houses and
pest houses, necessary institutions, are frequently so condemned and
rendered absolutely worthless.
The Federal Supreme Court gives ample power to all states to enforce
this great fundamental principle. It says: "The state cannot by any
contract limit the exercise of her power to the prejudice of the public
health and the public morals."—111 U. S. 751.
Speaking specifically, a sweeping decision of the highest tribunal of
the land, is as follows: "There is no inherent right in a citizen to thus
sell intoxicating liquors by retail; it is not a privilege of a citizen of a
state or a citizen of the United States."—137 U. S. 86.
No state or citizen of the United States then has any power, authority
or right to vend intoxicating liquors at all.
That there may be no misconception or misconstruction, in a case
from Kansas, this final court of appeal in American jurisprudence, said:
"For we cannot shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all,
that the public health, the public morals, and the public safety may be
endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact,
established by statistics accessible to everyone, that the idleness,
disorder, pauperism, and crime existing in the country are, in some
degree at least, traceable to the evil,"—Mugler vs. Kansas, 123 U. S.
623.
And again: "The statistics of every state show a greater amount
of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at
these liquor saloons than to any other source."—137 U. S. 86.
Hon. Justice Grier said: "It is not necessary to array the
appalling statistics of misery, pauperism, and crime that have their
origin in the use and abuse of ardent spirits. The police power, which
is exclusively in the state, is competent to the correction of these
great evils, and all measures of restraint or prohibition necessary to
effect that purpose are within the scope of that authority, and if a
loss of revenue should accrue to the United States, from a diminished
consumption of ardent spirits, she will be a gainer a thousand-fold in
health, wealth and happiness of the people."—5 Howard 532.
These far-reaching decisions settle forever the disloyalty and
un-Americanism of any state or citizen presuming to authorize or condone
liquor selling. The whole license system of the United States is clearly
illegal and unconstitutional.
Abraham Lincoln interpreted the Constitution right, when he wrote
the Emancipation Proclamation. The Presidents of the United States
are oath bond to enforce it, and the license to vend intoxicating liquors
as unconstitutional. Mr. Roosevelt is violating his oath to allow this
business to continue. He has the same right and more cause than Abraham
Lincoln to cancel every license, and shut up every brewery and distillery
in the United States. God says, "Woe to the crown of pride, to
the drunkards—Yes, this thing at the head of the nation is cursed—Look
at the assassinated Presidents, since the license was given by the Republican
Party in 1863. Lincoln refused to put his name to the bill at
first, but was over persuaded to do so by those parties who said it was
to pay a war debt, and when that was done, the license would be revoked,
but poor, honest Abe Lincoln was not suffered to undo the wrong he
was persuaded to commit. Every drunkard's wife and drunkard's mother
and child ought to bring suit against the Government, for the durgging,
poisoning and murdering of their loved ones. A man can recover if his
wife's affections are alienated from him, a person can recover damages
even, if he injures his foot on a defective sidewalk—the inference is clear.
And now let us look at the Legal Status of Joint Smashing. Let
every lawyer, judge and law-abiding person read carefully the following:
Kansas, true to the doctrines enunciated above, and loyal to the best
welfare of her populace, enacted constitutional prohibition forbidding the
sale of ardent spirits.
Section 14 of the Prohibitory Law reads: "It shall be the duty of
all sheriffs and constables, in their respective counties and townships, to
file complaints and make arrests for violation of this act, whenever they
shall be informed of the violation thereof, and any such officer who shall
neglect or refuse to file such complaint or make such arrest, upon being
informed of the omission of such offense, shall be subject to a fine not
exceeding $100, and his office shall be vacant: Providing that no such
officer shall in any event be liable for costs of such prosecution." ,
Hence, it is not necessary that the private citizen drum up evidence,
swear out warrants and prosecute liquor drug-stores and joints. That
is what officials are elected and paid for and if officers fail to abate
these liquor venders, then the duty devolves back on the patriotic citizen.
This decision of the Supreme Court of the United State;, carried
up from Vermont, Spaulding vs. Preston, 21 p. 9, towit: "If any member
of the body politic instead of putting his property to honest uses,
converts it into an engine to injure the life, liberty, health, morals, peace
or property of others, he can, I apprehend, sustain no action against one
who withholds or destroys his property with the bona fide intention of
preventing injury to himself or others."
In Kansas every liquor selling place is not only a declared nuisance,
but a constitutional outlaw. And in the case from Pennsylvania
where a private individual had abated a nuisance, the court held: "We
consider it also well settled, as is claimed by this defendant, that a common
nuisance may be removed, or, in legal language, abated by any individual.
Any man, says Lord Hale, may justify the removal of a common
nuisance, either by land or by Nyater, because every man is concerned in
it."
It is not only the privilege of the patriotic citizen to abate a
dangerous nuisance but it is commendable. Bishop on Criminal Law, paragraph
1081, says: "This doctrine (of abatement of a public nuisance by an
individual) is an expression of the better instincts of our natures, which
lead men to watch over and shield one another from harm."
"The buildings, premises and paraphernalia of a nuisance are not
legitimate property and have no rights in law. Damages cannot be recovered
for their destruction by an individual. The question of malice does
not enter into the case at all."
I Bishop's Criminal Law 828; I Hilliard on Torts, 605.
"At common law it was always the right of a citizen, without official
authority, to abate a public nuisance, and without waiting to have it
adjudged such by legal tribunal. His right to do so depended upon the
fact of its being a nuisance. If be assumed to act upon his own adjudication
that it was, and such adjudication was afterwards shown to be
wrong, he was liable as a wrong-doer for his error, and appropriate damages
could be recovered against him. This common law right still exists
in full force. Any citizen, acting either as an individual or as a public
official under the orders of local or municipal authorities, whether such
orders be or be not in pursuance of special legislation or charter provisions,
may abate what the common law deemed a public nuisance. In
abating it, property may be destroyed, and the owner deprived of it
without trial, without notice and without compensation. Such destruction
for public safety or health is not a taking of private property for
public uses without compensation, or due process of law, in the sense
of the constitution. It is simply the prevention of its noxious and unlawful
use, and depends upon the principle that every man must so use his
property as not to injure his neighbors, and that the safety of the public
is the paramount law. These principles are legal maxims or axioms
essential to the existence of regulated society. Written constitutions
presuppose them, are subordinate to them, and cannot set them aside."
These great principles of civil jurisprudence and popular government
apply alike in every state in the Union. An eminent jurist, Judge
James Baker, of Evanston, Ill., formerly a resident of Missouri, gives
his professional opinion of the late crusading by the women there. He
maintains that it was legal; he points out that the saloons raided, at
Denver and Lathrop, were unlawful and that they were "nuisances at
common law." He quotes Illinois law as follows: "As the summary
abatement of nuisances is a remedy which has ever existed in the law,
its exercise cannot be regarded as in conflict with constitutional provisions
for the protection of the rights of private property and giving
trial by jury. Formal legal proceedings and trial by jury are not appropriate
and have never been used in such cases." Judge Baker sums up
the case thus: "The women who destroyed such property are not criminals.
They have the same right to abate such common nuisances as men
have to defend their persons or domiciles when unlawfully assailed. As
the women of that state are denied the right to vote or hold office, I
think they are fully justified, morally and legally, in protecting their
homes, their families, and themselves from the ravages of these demons
of vice in the summary manner which the law permits."
More citations might be given proving the legality of joint smashing
by the crusaders, but the foregoing is ample, for all fairminded, loyal
people. Had the joint smasher's cases been tried on their merits, not one
would have been convicted of a misdemeaner. They were arrested, tried,
convicted, imprisoned and fined for disturbing the "peace" of a common
nuisance, and "malicious" destruction of rebel paraphernalia. Their only
intent was against the treasonable liquor traffic. Had there been no liquor
dispensing there had been no smashing. This the liquorized courts would
not admit for a moment. Every ruling was a burlesque on civil law, a
travesty on justice and a contemptible farce. The whole proceedings
from beginning to end were a miserable outrage.
