Legal Status of Prohibition and Joint Smashing,

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 States, 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.”