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Show TRUTHFUL CHARGES. The Salt Lake Herald pretends to be a representative and defender of the popular views of the masses of the people of Utah upon political and social matters. The great majority of the people of Utah are in favor of laws prohibiting the liquor traffic. This is the sentiment of nine-tenths of the people of Northern Utah, and many of the municipalities in this part of the Territory have enacted and are trying to enforce prohibitory ordinances. The Herald, however, notably within the past year, has been exerting an influence the opposite of favorable to the cause of prohibition, and some of its articles manifest its disapproval of prohibitory laws in a marked degree. Municipalities, in endeavoring to enforce prohibition, have enough to contend with without having to stem the tide of a public opinion created by journals that pretend to represent the views of the people upon such questions. This was the view entertained by the Journal when we first remonstrated with the Herald upon its course and sentiments with respect to prohibition in general, and in Logan in particular. Our first criticism of its course was not written with a view to injure the Herald, but to counteract an influence which was being excited by that paper, antagonistic to the cause of prohibition in this city. The Herald has felt the justice and truthfulness of the Journal's strictures, and has given ample evidence of the conscious guilt of a culprit who, detected in sin, and having no proof of innocence to offer, resorts to railery, abuse and blackguardism. The grossness and vulgarity shown in the Herald's attempted replies to the Journal exceed in low coarseness anything we decreed that paper capable of, and are in absurd contrast with the assumption of lofty contempt with which, as it would have the public believe, if views its "amateur," "bucolic," "cow county," contemporary. The Journal can abundantly prove all it has charged against the Herald; or, if we cannot, and have libeled our contemporary to its injury, financially or otherwise, we have simply to say that the Journal is published by a responsible company, and the Herald has its remedy in the courts. In closing, on our part, this controversy, we append quotations from editorial articles which have appeared in the columns of our esteemed contemporary; all italics are ours: From the Salt Lake Herald of Aug. 9, 1882: The prohibition wave is rapidly rolling westward. Iowa has encountered it and gone under; Illinois is threatened, and Nebraska is about to be submerged. We'll wager that when the wave strikes Wyoming and Colorado it will be dashed back. And yet the people of Colorado will not drink more, or get drunk oftener than those of Iowa, Kansas, Maine, or any other teetotal state. From the Salt Lake Herald of June 29, 1882: Experience everywhere teaches that prohibition does not prohibit, that it does not, in fact, decrease drunkenness nor drinking; but it does put the liquor traffic into the hands of irresponsible, roguish people-men who delight in breaking laws engender a disregard for law. The reform of the drunkard is not accomplished by making intoxicating liquors more difficult to procure. It is somewhat surprising that the progressive young state of Iowa should undertake an impossibility and put itself into a position to be laughed at by those other communities that are fighting intemperance intelligently. It cannot be an experiment that Iowa is entering upon, any more than it would be an experiment for a man to attempt a known impossible thing. Iowa has simply permitted a sentiment-good in itself-to run away with its judgment, and the consequences will be the liquor trade will fall into the hands of rogues, tricksters and irresponsible characters, while drinking goes on as before. From the Salt Lake Herald of June 9, 1882: The framers of the present state constitution of Ohio held that rum-selling was improper and immoral, and that a moral state had no right to recognize it in any way, any more than it had to recognize prostitution and kindred offenses against society and Christianity, it was therefore provided in the constitution that the traffic should not be licensed, as that would be a legal recognition of the illegitimate business. It was strange sort of reasoning. The framers did not, apparently, reflect that the refusal to recognize the traffic would not in the least check the sale of whisky. Experience has everywhere demonstrated that the best way to regulate the rum traffic is by a high license. A state may be extremely moral in sentiment, and think it highly improper and unchristianlike to become a party to the whisky trade, by licensing it, but if the desire is to do something in the temperance cause, and not hide behind a sentiment, purely, then the traffic must be recognized. The above extracts from the Herald certainly do not convey the idea to the ordinary reader that that journal is a prohibitionist, and yet, on August 25th, 1882, it asserts: From the first issue of the Herald it has stood by the temperance cause. It goes further, and is in furor of prohibition. Can the Herald editor whistle and chew meal at the same time? He will find even greater difficulty in reconciling the inconsistencies in his utterances respecting the liquor traffic. The Journal's indictment against the Herald was as follows: We have before noticed, in the columns of the Herald, articles that were calculated to afford aid or comfort or both, to whisky men, and the disbelief of that paper in the policy or practicability of prohibition has often been shown in its editorials. In concluding the discussion of the subject with our esteemed contemporary, we submit our case to the public for their verdict, confident that it will be "guilty, as charged in the indictment." |