Individual liberty and the liquor traffic.

Date:
Between 1860 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Individual liberty and the liquor traffic. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. It is a characteristic of our times that a high value is set upon Individual Liberty, and a wise jealousy felt of whatever seems to threaten its exist¬ ence, either by direct attack or insidious undermining. A nation may be free to appoint its own rulers—which is Political Liberty ; or it may have social equality carried to Democratic completeness, and to Com¬ munist ultraism; and yet Individual Liberty may be dwarfed and reduced to miserable dimensions. The opinion expressed by Mr. J. S. Mill, in his Essay on Liberty,” that the tendency of this age is to discourage personal independence of thought and action, derived no support from the favourable reception given to that essay. Nothing is more common than to hear denunciations levelled against any proposals that are believed, however erroneously, to jeopardise the freedom to which each individual member of society may lawfully lay claim. It is, for example, one of the most frequent objections to the policy of the Alliance, and the enactment of the Permissive Prohibitory Liquor Bill, that Individual Liberty wrould be infringed; and those who advance this objection do so wTitb. a pertinacity, not to say bitterness, that proves full well their sense of its value as a means of influencing the public mind against the Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic. The appeal is made, and often with success, to a just and most creditable sentiment, the strength of which no true friend of the Alliance would desire to see impaired. On the contrary, in proportion as that sentiment is upheld, and its application is intelligently directed, not only will the objection to Prohibition founded upon it be dispelled, but a resistless argument in favour of Prohibition will be provided. We shall endeavour to show—First, that the suppression of the liquor traffic would not transgress the proper limits of Individual Liberty ; and, Secondly, that, on the contrary, this liberty cannot be exercised and enjoyed as fully as it should be until that suppression is secured. I.—The Alliance agitation is opposed on the ground that, if successful in effecting the exclusion of the liquor traffic from distinct districts by a Permissive Act, or from the whole country by a general and peremptory