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Show 1 STATE AND INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. Butte City, Mont., Oct. 1. Editor Intermountain Catholic: The dispatches announce that Carrie Xation is again entangled in the meshes of the law. Her mission is the furtherance of temperance. The state,, instead of sympathizing, or aiding her in her noble work, thwarts her at every step, and imprisons im-prisons her for combating what every right-minded person deplores. Could not the state, knowing: the evils" of intemperance, enact liquor laws that would forever debar the sale of intoxicants ? TEMPERANCE. A common error, as to the prerogative of the state, .underlies the query of our correspondent. Intemperance is a grievous sin, to be avoided. Temperance ic a virtue, which all should practice. But how to suppress the evil and establish the virtue vir-tue are problems which the wisest statesmen ai'e: unable to solve. There are evils in society which the state cannot reach, or always remedy. Its function is to protect the natural rights of its citizens, i. e., the right to live and the right to acquire and hold property. When Carrie Xation wantonly destroys property she therefore tramples' on individual rights. Hence it becomes the duty of the- state, which guarantees to its citizens the right to acquire and hold property, to punish offenders of-fenders against law, and Carrie Xation is a violator vio-lator of such rights. The state cannot punish intemperance in-temperance because it is a sin. neither can it legislate legis-late in favor of temperance because it is a virtue; hut it can punish the drunkard as a nuisance, because he infringes on the rights of others whom the stato guarantees to protect. Every citizen has the lawful liberty to indulge his appetite, be it for whisky, beer or cordial, and so long as he is peaceable peace-able and does not interfere with the rights of others, or make public exhibition of inebriety, the state is bound to protect him,, because it does not undertake .to teach morals or say what is right or wrong in the moral order. If Carrie Xation and ber followers had their way, they would not stop short of civil despotism to remedy the evils of intemperance in-temperance ysnd establish the virtue of temperance. temper-ance. When the state punishes the drunkard, its mission in jthat direction ends. |
