The Liquor Question. 



This illustrates in a small way the practical difficulty in trying to 

 solve this question through political agencies. I believe there are 

 more people in this State and in these United States who belong to 

 the law and order side of society than otherwise, and yet without concert 

 of action they are powerless to accomplish any thing substantial, any 

 thing beyond the legitimate results of agitation, which I concede are 

 great while the minority have their own way. This matter never will 

 be solved if treated as a political question, until the friends of temper- 

 ance, embracing all shades of opinion, looking to the elimination or 

 minimizing of the evils resulting from the traffic, shall so far modify 

 their extreme views as that their associates, by yielding in like manner, 

 will be able to stand as an army of earnest workers, seeking to benefit 

 their fellow-men. The friends of temperance here, although clearly 

 In the majority, fail to accomplish any result, and yet by the applica- 

 tion of a little concession on the part of all, there might be a middle 

 ground upon which all could unite and thus make a real and substan- 

 tial advance, laboring in a common cause free from dissensions in their 

 own ranks, that shall retard or interfere with the accomplishment of 

 the desire of all. 



Political parties are but aggregations of men, who act together upon 

 public matters because they agree in the main upon a given line of 

 policy. Individual differences sink into obscurity, extremes are 

 avoided, the middle course is adopted and all work together for a 

 common result. Practically, then, the political aspect of this ques- 

 tion is tested in bringing to an expression by legislative enactment 

 the best reason and conscience of the people. An eminent scholar 

 has said- "The strain of civil liberty is in the demand which it 

 makes on the whole mass of the people for perpetual activity of 

 reason and conscience to re-examine rights and duties, and to read- 

 just their equilibrium. * * * The equilibrium of rights and 

 duties constitutes the terms on which the struggle for existence is 

 carried on in a given society after the reason and conscience of the 

 community have pronounced judgment on those terms. The very 

 highest conception of the State is that it is an organization for bring- 

 mg that judgment to an expression in the Constitution and laws. A 

 State, therefore, is good, bad or indifferent, according to the direct- 

 ness and correctness with which it brings to an expression the best 

 reason and conscience of the people, and embodies their judgment in 

 l nstitutions and laws. The State, therefore, lives by deliberation and 

 discussion, and by tacit or overt expressions of the major opinion. 

 The fact that laws and institutions must be constantly remolded, in 



