The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation [94]
what its homes are. The family first, then the nation.
Nothing can injure an individual or a family that is not an injury to
the state. The fight for firesides means a fight for our national life.
Our revolutionary sires fought for this. This is the fight that Carry A.
Nation is making. It is the heart of love, liberty and peace. Some of
these thoughts I have copied from an article I read on a few leaves of a
torn pamphlet, no name. But the writer has the true meaning of government.
I am a prohibitionist because I am a christian. I want to get
to heaven. None but prohibitionists ever do. Hell is made for those
who take license to sin.
HELL'S CONSPIRACY.
England has the same struggle that we have. The government conspiring
against the people. This article from the pen of Lady Carlisle
tells of the same vile plot the Prime Minister of England sustains, the
brewer against the people, just as Roosevelt and his crowd here:
THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE AGAINST THE LIQUOR TRADE.
(Spirited appeal by Lady Carlisle.)
Throughout the past year we have been face to face with a grave
crisis in the history of our temperance movement, but the present Session
of Parliament is the moment of our most imminent peril.
In March, 1903, the Prime Minister, surrendering to the threats of
the liquor trade, recklessly attacked the Magistrates because in the public
interest they had here and there reduced the number of licensed houses,
and he declared to the Brewer's Deputation that in so doing the Magistrates
had been guilty of "gross injustice," and that "to such unjust confiscation
of property the Government could not remain indifferent." In
April the Government supported Mr. Butcher's Compensation Bill, and
in August Mr. Balfour gave a pledge in the House of Commons that the
Government would introduce legislation "at the earliest possible moment
in the following Session," which would put an end to the present "wide-
spread feeling of insecurity on the part of English license-holders."
Since the Prime Minister made these pronouncements, our forces
have everywhere set themselves in array to fight the impending legislation,
by which the 'Trade' is to be endowed at the expense of the nation's
welfare, and is to have its privileges and its powers greatly increased.
The government, having yielded to the dictation of the Publican interest,
indicated that either the Magistrates must be hindered from exercising
their ancient power of not renewing annual licenses when in their
discretion they deem such renewal to be against the public good; or else
that some measure of compensation must be enacted, whereby this wealthy
liquor monopoly should have its huge financial profits made permanently
secure by the grant from Parliament of a vested interest in their
licenses. If after the passing of such a measure the Magistrates should,
for the protection of the people, refuse the renewal of a license, the holder
of that speculative public-house investment would be by law guaranteed
against loss. He would thus no longer need to insure himself against
the risk of non-renewal, for the State would have turned this annual
license into a freehold property. Then for the first time this dangerous
'Trade' would have obtained that fixity of tenure which it has so long
coveted, but which Parliament in its wisdom has always vigorously refused
to grant; and the nation, which has already too long suffered under the
oppression of the Liquor Traffic with its terrible licensed temptations,
would then be permanently crushed under one of the most perilous of
all the political tyrannies that ever sapped the strength and the freedom
of a great people. For these Liquor Traffickers have proclaimed cynically
their anti-social aloofness, from the ideals of good citizenship; "they
know no interest but their own," and their defiant boast is heard at all
elections, "Our Trade our Politics."
Today the people and the 'Trade' have come to close quarters in
their conflict; and all Temperance workers must join
Nothing can injure an individual or a family that is not an injury to
the state. The fight for firesides means a fight for our national life.
Our revolutionary sires fought for this. This is the fight that Carry A.
Nation is making. It is the heart of love, liberty and peace. Some of
these thoughts I have copied from an article I read on a few leaves of a
torn pamphlet, no name. But the writer has the true meaning of government.
I am a prohibitionist because I am a christian. I want to get
to heaven. None but prohibitionists ever do. Hell is made for those
who take license to sin.
HELL'S CONSPIRACY.
England has the same struggle that we have. The government conspiring
against the people. This article from the pen of Lady Carlisle
tells of the same vile plot the Prime Minister of England sustains, the
brewer against the people, just as Roosevelt and his crowd here:
THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE AGAINST THE LIQUOR TRADE.
(Spirited appeal by Lady Carlisle.)
Throughout the past year we have been face to face with a grave
crisis in the history of our temperance movement, but the present Session
of Parliament is the moment of our most imminent peril.
In March, 1903, the Prime Minister, surrendering to the threats of
the liquor trade, recklessly attacked the Magistrates because in the public
interest they had here and there reduced the number of licensed houses,
and he declared to the Brewer's Deputation that in so doing the Magistrates
had been guilty of "gross injustice," and that "to such unjust confiscation
of property the Government could not remain indifferent." In
April the Government supported Mr. Butcher's Compensation Bill, and
in August Mr. Balfour gave a pledge in the House of Commons that the
Government would introduce legislation "at the earliest possible moment
in the following Session," which would put an end to the present "wide-
spread feeling of insecurity on the part of English license-holders."
Since the Prime Minister made these pronouncements, our forces
have everywhere set themselves in array to fight the impending legislation,
by which the 'Trade' is to be endowed at the expense of the nation's
welfare, and is to have its privileges and its powers greatly increased.
The government, having yielded to the dictation of the Publican interest,
indicated that either the Magistrates must be hindered from exercising
their ancient power of not renewing annual licenses when in their
discretion they deem such renewal to be against the public good; or else
that some measure of compensation must be enacted, whereby this wealthy
liquor monopoly should have its huge financial profits made permanently
secure by the grant from Parliament of a vested interest in their
licenses. If after the passing of such a measure the Magistrates should,
for the protection of the people, refuse the renewal of a license, the holder
of that speculative public-house investment would be by law guaranteed
against loss. He would thus no longer need to insure himself against
the risk of non-renewal, for the State would have turned this annual
license into a freehold property. Then for the first time this dangerous
'Trade' would have obtained that fixity of tenure which it has so long
coveted, but which Parliament in its wisdom has always vigorously refused
to grant; and the nation, which has already too long suffered under the
oppression of the Liquor Traffic with its terrible licensed temptations,
would then be permanently crushed under one of the most perilous of
all the political tyrannies that ever sapped the strength and the freedom
of a great people. For these Liquor Traffickers have proclaimed cynically
their anti-social aloofness, from the ideals of good citizenship; "they
know no interest but their own," and their defiant boast is heard at all
elections, "Our Trade our Politics."
Today the people and the 'Trade' have come to close quarters in
their conflict; and all Temperance workers must join