ing, temporary expediency. It is the commercial method of dealing with the traffic. It is made to stand aside in the interests of all parties, cliques, politicians and schemers. Its little ewe-lamb of Prohibition may be butchered for any stranger, be offered up to propitiate any liquor Moloch, and its blood may be sprinkled upon all the high places where sin holds its carnivals.

MORAL CONSIDERATIONS.

But far the greatest of all Local Option's defects is its rotten basis as to morals, where its presumptuous elective system appears most audacious. With its majority rule set up as the origin of right, the results are most destructive to all proper conceptions of divine law. Here it is best for us to compare the respective moral basis of Prohibition and Local Option, to see the broad difference between their foundation tenets. It is taken for granted in this discussion that there is a Ruler who governs the world by moral law; that this law is supreme in the affairs of men, and all human laws are, or should be, in conformity therewith; that all human statutes sanctioning that which is forbidden by the divine law must be wrong; that conformity with divine law in the more effective enforcement of its precepts is the only proper object of civil legislation -the only justification for such laws to assume jurisdiction over the lives, liberty, property and pursuits of men; and that the liquor traffic is wrong as judged by every moral standard. With these lights let us examine the moral basis of Prohibition and Local Option, as judged by this divine law.

Civil law should, per se, prohibit the wrong and uphold the right. No constitutional provisions-those symptoms of moral weakness-ought to be necessary to authorize Courts to prohibit and punish the evil. Such is the ideal relation of law to crime. But the force of evil habits, of perverted views, has given a kind of legalization to wrong. Therefore it has been felt necessary to give authority to Courts, by specific constitutional and statutory backing, to deal with the wrong. Thus human depravity has constantly added to the bulk of such laws, when the moral code alone should have been a sufficient warrant. But all these

the

civil laws must agree with, not contradict, the divine. Here is the basis of Prohibition, namely, in its harmony with God's law, which ever prohibits, never permits; always punishes, never legalizes the wrong. Prohibition does not assume the right of veto in moral law as does Local Option. A vote for it is a man's approval of the right. Prohibition provides for no alternative. Failure to carry it does not commit its adherents to license any more than the refusal of the multitude to accept Christ commits his followers to the service of Satan. The vote is not in regard to the rightness of Prohibition itself-only upon its acceptance or rejection. The exercising of the wrong is the issue-not the rightness of forbidding it. Israel might choose and risk the consequences, as to the Lord or the Baalim; but she did not choose as to the rightfulness of Jehovah's rule. So in the question of Prohibition, not the right of the law but adherence to it is the thing to be settled. Where Prohibition is already in force the right to repeal the law in favor of license cannot be morally conceded; where the inhibition does not exist, it should be incorporated into the fundamental law. If this can

be done only by popular vote then the question may be submitted-not for acceptance or rejection at irresponsible option, but only for legalization of the inhibition. It will be observed that Prohibition being a dealing with morals, the right to reject it for the immoral cannot belong to the powers of human option.

Local Option, as a principle, is the ignoring of the moral in law. It totally rejects the eternity of right, since it as readily endorses the wrong and as cheerfully legalizes it. Indeed, it eliminates. the moral entirely, save in so far as it itself, at its own will, creates it by its majority method. Thus the most destructive standards in morals are set upstandards which eliminate the moral from human action. The option principle recognizes no divine, unchanging, allpervading law of right. A majority vote is its highest authority in morals; the right this year may be the wrong after 12 months. It assumes the prerogative to make wrong into right by investing it with all the sanctity of law. It puts right on trial for its life by a probation

of one or two years. Local Option is merely a balancing between two wrongs, or a right-not as a right, howeveragainst a wrong. It is always Local Option in one end of the scale and license in the other, never Local Option balanced against some other form of Prohibition. If temperance does not succeed, drunkard-making may be lawfully endorsed. If law-breakers defy and violate the law, then to prevent the violation the law should be set aside, we are told, and the crime legalized. The amount of violation is to determine the life of the law. A premium is set for a greater degree of violation.

Local Option's practical lesson is to go with the multitude, even "to do evil." Local Option's moral standard is the will of the majority-one of the fatal deductions from a democracy. Necessarily, therefore, not only the liberty to exercise the traffic but the right of the traffic itself is assumed. To illustrate: Had Joshua said to Israel, "Determine this year whether ye will serve the Lord or other gods, and next Nisan the question may be again submitted," then, of course, the right of submission and of decision would have been in the people's hands; no crime could have attached to the choice of Baalim, for the right to choose and to worship other gods would have been Israel's, and neither guilt nor punishment could have been visited upon them in the matter. This is Local Option. Prohibition would say in the spirit of Joshua: "As voluntary agents, responsible for your actions and their consequences, choose, this day, whom ye will serve; for you must bear your own sins. Nay, more; remember, you cannot choose the Lord this year and Moloch the next, for he is a jealous God. If ye forsake the Lord and serve strange gods, then he will turn and do you hurt, and consume you after that he hath done you good."

Here we can easily see the province of the option principle. The right of choice without criminality in its result was never thought of. The option of submission-like that of mercy-admitted the possibility, never the right, to reject. The opportunity for choice was given; not liberty to choose the wrong. Responsibility still hung over the choice. Opportunity there may be to contract

debt, but no exemption from payment to the uttermost farthing. So of all questions having a criminal side as an alternate issue. A man has power and opportunity to steal; divine law inhibits the exercise of that opportunity, not the possibility of stealing. So far from guiltlessness attaching to choice, the choosing of the wrong but intensifies the criminality of the option.

Prohibition contemplates no other side-no alternative, no rejection of the divine law, least of all the right to reject. The choice of the right is to be final. "Put away, therefore, the strange gods from among you." Option would permit Israel to "hate knowledge" and "not choose the fear of the Lord."

But

for their option for the bad they must "eat of the fruit of their own way, and the turning away of the simple should slay them.' Israel must "choose none of the ways of the oppressor, for the curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked." For merely exercising this choice in the wrong direction they must "bow to the slaughter and be numbered to the sword." Option can choose, but never lawfully choose the wrong. The right to create right, to commit or permit crime, is at war with God's law. The option to approve and enforce this higher law never implies permission to subvert it. The option of obedience or rebellion. is presented, but the choice is not without sin. Standing in the gate of the camp Moses gives option to Israel in the call," Who is on the Lord's side let him come unto me;" but those who used their option to stay away soon felt the Levites destroying swords.

Prohibition, then, is popular assent to the divine law; confirmatory, it expresses the consent of men to the rightness of that law and willingness to keep it. Option, on the contrary, would sit in a higher than Moses's seat, cite this law to trial, accept or reject it, and set up another standard in its stead. Option would make a law to sin by, or rather to turn wrong into right. The distinction between the principles is very broad. Prohibition will choose only right. Option says: "License or No-License; For the sale or against the sale; make your choice; it is immaterial in morals." Such a principle, generally applied in morals, would wreck the universe. It

ignores the divine law and makes man's will supreme. H. A. SCOMP.

Additional Particulars.-The Local Option provisions in the statutes of the various States and Territories, past and present, are summarized in the article on LEGISLATION.

Although most of the Prohibition leaders at least in the North-regard Local Option measures with pronounced dissatisfaction, few of them have refused to co-operate in the campaigns brought on under such measures. These campaigns have frequently been waged with great vigor, and in their results have been of much significance by showing the strength of local sentiment, bringing the practical reasons for and against the license system under searching review and demonstrating that the demand for Prohibition is not ephemeral, capricious or confined to a few extremists, but is constant, determined and widespread, and indeed touches the thought and action. of the people more intimately than any other subject involving local policy.

The record made by the communities of the State of Massachusetts is especially impressive. The following tables show the number of towns and cities, respectively, voting for and against license, and the popular vote polled, each year from 1884 to 1889, inclusive :1

Combining the votes of the towns and cities, it is found that, on the Local Option issue, there were anti-license majorities in the whole State of Massachusetts of 5,888 in 1889, 7,200 in 1887, and 9,295 in 1886. Yet on the question of Constitutional Prohibition, in April, 1889, there was a saloon majority of 45,820 (see p. 119), and this despite the fact that the aggregate vote cast on Constitutional Prohibition (216,304) was more than 7,000 less than that cast in the Local Option elections in the same year (223,444). This difference is easily explained. Local Option excites comparatively little antagonism; and the liquor men, knowing from experience that Prohibition in localities can be circumvented without special difficulty, do not put forth their energies in Local Option campaigns. The figures also show that notwithstanding the apparent majority of 46,000 against Prohibition in Massachusetts, there really exists in that State a predominant antisaloon sentiment.

To further illustrate the strength of local feeling in favor of Prohibition, we give the following detailed exhibit of the vote by towns and cities on the license issue in Massachusetts in 1889:

License.

License.

POPULAR VOTE Against For License.

License.