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Vices are not Crimes - Lysander Spooner · The Republic

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  Speaker 1: Part one of Vices are not crimes. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information, ought to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Vices are not crimes by Lesanders Spooner Part one. Vices
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  Speaker 1: are those acts by which a man harms himself or
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  Speaker 1: his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man
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  Speaker 1: harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply
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  Speaker 1: the errors which a man makes in his search after
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  Speaker 1: his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward
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  Speaker 1: others and no interference with their persons or property. In vices,
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  Speaker 1: the very essence of crime, that is, the design to
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  Speaker 1: injure the person or property of another, is wanting. It
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  Speaker 1: is a maxim of the law that there can be
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  Speaker 1: no crime without a criminal intent, that is, without the
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  Speaker 1: intent to invade the person or property of another. But
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  Speaker 1: no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent.
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  Speaker 1: He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and
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  Speaker 1: not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction
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  Speaker 1: between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws,
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  Speaker 1: there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty,
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  Speaker 1: or property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another
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  Speaker 1: man to the control of his own person and property.
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  Speaker 1: For a government to declare a vice to be a
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  Speaker 1: crime and to punish it as such, is an attempt
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  Speaker 1: to falsify the very nature of things. It is as
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  Speaker 1: absurd as it would be to declare truth to be
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  Speaker 1: falsehood or falsehood truth. Two. Every voluntary act of a
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  Speaker 1: man's life is either virtuous or vicious. That is to say,
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  Speaker 1: it is either in accordance or in conflict with those
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  Speaker 1: natural laws of matter and mind on which his physical, mental,
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  Speaker 1: and emotional health and well being depend. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: every act of his life tends, on the whole either
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  Speaker 1: to his happiness or to his unhappiness. No single act
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  Speaker 1: in his whole existence is indifferent. Furthermore, each human being
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  Speaker 1: differs from his physical, mental, and emotional constitution, and also
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  Speaker 1: in the circumstances by which he is surrounded from every
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  Speaker 1: other human being. Many acts, therefore, that are virtuous and
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  Speaker 1: tender happiness in the case of one person, are vicious
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  Speaker 1: and tend to one happiness in the case of another person.
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  Speaker 1: Many acts also that are virtuous and tender happiness in
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  Speaker 1: the case of one man at one time and under
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  Speaker 1: one set of circumstances, are vicious and tend to unhappiness
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  Speaker 1: in the case of the same man at another time
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  Speaker 1: than under other circumstances. Three. To know what actions are
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  Speaker 1: virtuous and what vicious, In other words, to know what
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  Speaker 1: actions tend on the whole to happiness and what to
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  Speaker 1: unhappiness in the case of each and every man, in
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  Speaker 1: each and all the conditions in which they may severally
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  Speaker 1: be placed, is the profoundest and most complex study to
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  Speaker 1: which the greatest human mind ever has been, or ever
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  Speaker 1: can be directed. It is nevertheless the constant study to
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  Speaker 1: which each and every man, the humblest in intellect, as
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  Speaker 1: well as the greatest, is necessarily driven by the desires
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  Speaker 1: and necessities of his own existence. It is also the
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  Speaker 1: study in which each and every person, from his cradle
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  Speaker 1: to his grave, must necessarily form his own conclusions, because
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  Speaker 1: no one else knows or fear, or can know or
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  Speaker 1: feel as he knows and feels the desires and necessities,
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  Speaker 1: the hopes and fears and impulses of his own nature,
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  Speaker 1: or the pressure of his own circumstances. Four. It is
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  Speaker 1: often not possible to say of those acts that are
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  Speaker 1: call vices, that they really are vices, except in degree.
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  Speaker 1: That is, it is difficult to say of any action
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  Speaker 1: or courses of action that the call vices, that they
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  Speaker 1: would really have been vices if they had stopped short
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  Speaker 1: of a certain point. The question of virtue or vice, therefore,
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  Speaker 1: in all such cases, is a question of quantity and degree,
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  Speaker 1: and not of the intrinsic character of any single act
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  Speaker 1: by itself. This fact adds to the difficulty, not to say,
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  Speaker 1: the impossibility of any one's, except each individual for himself,
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  Speaker 1: drawing any accurate line, or anything like any accurate line
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  Speaker 1: between virtue and vice, that is, of telling where virtue
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  Speaker 1: ends and vice begins. And this is another reason why
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  Speaker 1: this whole question of virtue and vice should be left
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  Speaker 1: for each person to settle for himself. Five vices are
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  Speaker 1: usually pleasurable, at least for the time being, and often
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  Speaker 1: do not disclose themself as vices by their effects until
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  Speaker 1: after they have been practiced for many years, perhaps for
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  Speaker 1: a lifetime, to many, perhaps most of those who practice them,
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  Speaker 1: they do not disclose themselves as vices at all during life. Virtues,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, often appear so hard and rugged
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  Speaker 1: they require the sacrifice of so much present happiness at least,
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  Speaker 1: and the results which alone prove them to be virtuous,
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  Speaker 1: are often so distant and obscure, in fact, so absolutely
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  Speaker 1: invisible to the minds of many, especially of the young,
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  Speaker 1: that from the very nature of things, there can be
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  Speaker 1: no universal or even general knowledge that they are virtues.
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  Speaker 1: In truth, the studies of profound philosophers have been expended,
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  Speaker 1: if not wholly in vain, certainly with very small results,
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  Speaker 1: in efforts to draw the lines between the virtues and
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  Speaker 1: the vices. If then it becomes so difficult, so nearly impossible,
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  Speaker 1: in most cases, to determine what is and what is
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  Speaker 1: not vice, and especially if it be so difficult in
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  Speaker 1: nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends and vice begins.
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  Speaker 1: And if these questions, which no one can really and
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  Speaker 1: truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be
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  Speaker 1: left free and open for experience, by all, each person
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  Speaker 1: is deprived of the highest of all his rights as
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  Speaker 1: a human being, to wit, his right to inquire, investigate, reason,
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  Speaker 1: try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself what is to
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  Speaker 1: him virtue and what is to him vice? In other words,
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  Speaker 1: what on the whole conduces to his happiness, and what
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  Speaker 1: on the whole lends to his unhappiness. If this great
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  Speaker 1: right is not to be left free and open to all,
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  Speaker 1: then each man's whole right as a reasoning human being
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  Speaker 1: to liberty and the pursuit of happiness is denied to him. Six.
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  Speaker 1: We all come into the world in ignorance of ourselves
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  Speaker 1: and of everything around us. By a fundamental law of
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  Speaker 1: our natures. We are all constantly impelled by the desire
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  Speaker 1: of happiness and the fear of pain. But we have
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  Speaker 1: everything to learn as to what will give us happiness
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  Speaker 1: and save us from pain. To all of us are
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  Speaker 1: wholly alike, either physically, mentally or emotionally, or consequently in
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  Speaker 1: our physical, mental, or emotional requirements for the acquisition of
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  Speaker 1: happiness and the avoidance of unhappiness. Not one of us, therefore,
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  Speaker 1: can learn this indispensable lesson of happiness and unhappiness, of
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  Speaker 1: virtue and vice for another. Each must learn it for himself.
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  Speaker 1: To learn it, he must be at liberty to try
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  Speaker 1: all experiments that commend himself to his judgment. Some of
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  Speaker 1: his experiments succeed, and because they succeed are called virtues.
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  Speaker 1: Others fail, and because they fail are called vices. He
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  Speaker 1: gathers wisdom as much from his failures as from his successes.
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  Speaker 1: From his so called vices as from his so called virtues.
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  Speaker 1: Both are necessary to his acquisition of that knowledge of
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  Speaker 1: his own nature and of the world around him, and
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  Speaker 1: of their adaptations or non adaptations to each other, which
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  Speaker 1: shall show him how happiness is acquired and pain avoided.
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  Speaker 1: And unless he can be permitted to try these experiments
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  Speaker 1: to his own satisfaction, he is restrained from the acquisition
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  Speaker 1: of knowledge, and consequently from pursuing the great purpose and
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  Speaker 1: duty of his life. Seven. A man is under no
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  Speaker 1: obligation to take anybody's word or yield to anybody's authority
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  Speaker 1: on a matter so vital to himself and regard to
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  Speaker 1: which no one else has or can have, any such interest,
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  Speaker 1: as he he cannot if he would safely rely upon
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  Speaker 1: the opinions of other men, because he finds that the
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  Speaker 1: opinions of other men do not agree. Certain actions or
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  Speaker 1: courses of action have been practiced by many millions of
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  Speaker 1: men through successive generations, and been held by them to
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  Speaker 1: be on the whole conducive to happiness. Other men in
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  Speaker 1: other ages or countries, or under other conditions, have held,
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  Speaker 1: as a result of their experience and observation, that these
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  Speaker 1: actions tended on the whole to unhappiness and were therefore vicious.
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  Speaker 1: The question of virtue or vice, as already remarked in
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  Speaker 1: a previous section, has also been in most minds a
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  Speaker 1: question of degree, that is, of the extent to which
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  Speaker 1: certain actions should be carried, and not of the intrinsic
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  Speaker 1: character of any single act by itself. The questions of
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  Speaker 1: virtue and vice have therefore been as various, and in
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  Speaker 1: fact as infinite as the varieties of mind, body, and
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  Speaker 1: condition of the different individuals inhabiting the globe. And the
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  Speaker 1: experience of ages has left an infinite number of these
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  Speaker 1: questions unsettled. In fact, it can scarcely be said to
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  Speaker 1: have settled any of them. Eight in the midst of
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  Speaker 1: this endless variety of opinion, what man or what body
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  Speaker 1: of men has the right to say in regard to
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  Speaker 1: any particular action or course of action. We have tried
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  Speaker 1: this experiment and determined every question involved in it. We
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  Speaker 1: have determined it not only for ourselves, but for all others,
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  Speaker 1: and as to all those who are weaker than we
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  Speaker 1: we will coerce them to act in obedience to our conclusions.
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  Speaker 1: We will suffer no further experiment or inquiry by any one,
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  Speaker 1: and consequently no further acquisition of knowledge by anybody. Who
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  Speaker 1: are the men who have the right to say this?
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  Speaker 1: Certainly there are none such. The men who really do
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  Speaker 1: say it are either shameless impostors and tyrants, who would
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  Speaker 1: stop the progress of knowledge and usurp absolute control over
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  Speaker 1: the minds and bodies of their fellow men, and are
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  Speaker 1: therefore to be resisted instantly and to the last extent.
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  Speaker 1: While they are themselves too ignorant of their own weakness
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  Speaker 1: and of their true relations to other men, to be
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  Speaker 1: entitled to any other consideration than sheer pity or contempt.
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  Speaker 1: We know, however, that there are such men as these
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  Speaker 1: in the world. Some of them attempt to exercise their
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  Speaker 1: power only within a small sphere, to wit upon their children,
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  Speaker 1: their neighbors, their townsmen, and their countrymen. Others attempt to
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  Speaker 1: exercise it on a larger scale. For example, an old
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  Speaker 1: man at Rome, aided by a few subordinates, attempts to
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  Speaker 1: decide all questions of virtue and vice, that is, of
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  Speaker 1: truth or falsehood, especially in matters of religion. He claims
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  Speaker 1: to know and teach what religious ideas and practices are
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  Speaker 1: conducive or fatal to a man's happiness, not only in
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  Speaker 1: this world, but in that which is to come. He
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  Speaker 1: claims to be miraculously inspired for the performance of this work,
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  Speaker 1: thus virtually acknowledging, like a sensible man, that nothing short
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  Speaker 1: of miraculous inspiration would qualify him for it. This miraculous inspiration, however,
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  Speaker 1: has been ineffectual to enable him to settle more than
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  Speaker 1: a very few questions. The most important to which common
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  Speaker 1: mortals can attain is an implicit belief in his the
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  Speaker 1: Pope's infallibility, and secondly, that the blackest vices of which
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  Speaker 1: they can be guilty are to believe and declare that
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  Speaker 1: he is only a man like the rest of them.
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  Speaker 1: It required some fifteen or eighteen hundred years to enable
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  Speaker 1: him to reach definite conclusions on these two vital points.
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  Speaker 1: Yet it will seem that the first of these must
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  Speaker 1: necessarily be preliminary to his settlement of any other questions,
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  Speaker 1: because until his own infallibility is determined, he can authoritially
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  Speaker 1: fully decide nothing else. He has, however, heretofore attempted or
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  Speaker 1: pretended to settle a few others, and he may perhaps
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  Speaker 1: attempt or pretend to settle a few more in the future,
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  Speaker 1: if he shall continue to find anybody to listen to him.
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  Speaker 1: But his success so far certainly does not encourage the
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  Speaker 1: belief that he will be able to settle all questions
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  Speaker 1: of virtue and vice, even in his peculiar department of religion,
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  Speaker 1: in time to meet the necessities of mankind, he or
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  Speaker 1: his successes will undoubtedly be compelled at no distant day
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  Speaker 1: to acknowledge it is undertaken a task to which all
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  Speaker 1: his miraculous inspiration was inadequate, and that of necessity, each
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  Speaker 1: human being must be left to settle all questions of
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  Speaker 1: this kind or himself, And it is not unreasonable to
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  Speaker 1: expect that all other popes in other unless spheres will
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  Speaker 1: sometimes have cause to come to the same conclusion. No one,
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  Speaker 1: certainly not claiming supernatural inspiration, should undertake a task to
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  Speaker 1: which obviously nothing less than such inspiration is adequate. And
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  Speaker 1: clearly no one should surrender his own judgment to the
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  Speaker 1: teaching of others unless he first be convinced that these
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  Speaker 1: others of something more than ordinary human knowledge on this subject.
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  Speaker 1: If those persons who fancy themself gifted with both the
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  Speaker 1: power and the right to define and punish other men's vices,
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  Speaker 1: would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find
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  Speaker 1: that they have a great work to do at home,
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  Speaker 1: and that when that shall have been completed, they will
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  Speaker 1: be little disposed to do more toward correcting the vices
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  Speaker 1: of others than simply to give to others the results
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  Speaker 1: of their experience and observation. In this sphere, their labors
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  Speaker 1: may possibly be useful, But in the sphere and fallibility
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  Speaker 1: and coercion, thou all, probably, for well known reasons, meet
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  Speaker 1: with even less success in the future such men have
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  Speaker 1: met with in the past. Nine It is now obvious,
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  Speaker 1: from the reasons already given, that governments would be utterly
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  Speaker 1: impractical if it were to take cognizance of vices and
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  Speaker 1: punish them as crimes. Every human being has his or
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  Speaker 1: her vices. Nearly all men have a great many, and
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  Speaker 1: they are of all kinds physiological, mental, emotional, religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. If government is to take cognisance
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  Speaker 1: of any of these vices and punish them as crimes.
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  Speaker 1: Then to be consistent, it must take cognisance of them
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  Speaker 1: all and punish all impartially. The consequence would be that
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  Speaker 1: everyone would be imprisoned for his or her vices. There
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  Speaker 1: would be no one left outside to lock the doors
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  Speaker 1: upon those within. In fact, courts enough could not be
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  Speaker 1: found to try the offenders, or prisons enough built to
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  Speaker 1: hold them. All. Human industry, in the acquisition of knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: and even in acquiring the means of subsistence, would be arrested,
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  Speaker 1: for we would all be under constant trial or imprisonment
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  Speaker 1: for our vices. But even if it were possible to
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  Speaker 1: imprison all the vicious, our knowledge of human nature tells
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  Speaker 1: us that, as a general rule, they would be far
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  Speaker 1: more vicious in prison than they ever have been out
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  Speaker 1: of it. Ten. A government that shall punish all vices
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  Speaker 1: impartially is so obviously an impossibility that no one was
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  Speaker 1: ever found, or ever will be found foolish enough to
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  Speaker 1: propose it. The most that anyone proposes is that government
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  Speaker 1: should punish some one, or at most a few, of
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  Speaker 1: what he esteems the grossest of them. But this discrimination
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  Speaker 1: is an utterly absurd, illogical, and tyrannical. What right has
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  Speaker 1: any body of men to say, the vices of other
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  Speaker 1: men we will punish, but our own vices nobody shall punish.
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  Speaker 1: We will restrain others men from seeking their own happiness
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  Speaker 1: according to their own notions of it, but nobody shall
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  Speaker 1: restrain us from seeking our own happiness according to our
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  Speaker 1: own notions of it. We will restrain other men from
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  Speaker 1: acquiring any experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary
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  Speaker 1: to their own happiness, But nobody shall restrain us from
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  Speaker 1: acquiring an experimental knowledge of what is conducive or necessary
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  Speaker 1: to our own happiness. Nobody but knaves or blockheads ever
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  Speaker 1: thinks of making such absurd assumptions as these. And yet
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: evidently it is only upon such assumptions that anybody can
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  Speaker 1: claim the right to punish the vices of others and
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  Speaker 1: at the same time claim exemption from punishment for his own. Eleven.
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  Speaker 1: Such a thing as a government formed by voluntary association
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  Speaker 1: would never have been thought of if the object proposed
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  Speaker 1: had been the punishment of all vices, impartially because nobody
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  Speaker 1: wants such an institution or would voluntarily submit to him.
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  Speaker 1: But a government formed by voluntary association for the punishment
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  Speaker 1: of all crimes is a reasonable matter, because everybody wants
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  Speaker 1: protection for himself against all crimes by others, and also
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  Speaker 1: acknowledges the justice of his own punishment if he commits
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  Speaker 1: a crime. Twelve. It is a natural impossibility that a
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  Speaker 1: government should have a right to punish men for their vices,
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  Speaker 1: because it is impossible that a government should have any
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  Speaker 1: rights except such as the individuals composing it had previously
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  Speaker 1: had as individuals. They could not delegate to a government
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  Speaker 1: any any rights which they did not themselves possess. They
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  Speaker 1: could not contribute to the government any rights except such
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  Speaker 1: as they themselves possessed as individuals. Now, nobody but a
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  Speaker 1: fool or an impostor pretends that he, as an individual,
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  Speaker 1: has a right to punish other men for their vices.
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  Speaker 1: But anybody and everybody have a natural right as individuals
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  Speaker 1: to punish other men for their crimes. For everybody has
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  Speaker 1: a natural right not only to defend his own person
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  Speaker 1: and property against aggressors, but also to go to the
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  Speaker 1: assistance and defense of everybody else whose person or property
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  Speaker 1: is invaded. The natural right of each individual to defend
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  Speaker 1: his own person and property against an aggressor and to
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: go to the assistance and defense of everyone else whose
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: personal property is invaded is a right without which men
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  Speaker 1: could not exist on the earth. And government has no
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  Speaker 1: rightful existence except in so far as it embodies and
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  Speaker 1: is limited by this natural right of individuals. But the
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  Speaker 1: idea that each man has a natural right to decide
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  Speaker 1: what a virtues and what are vices, that is, what
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  Speaker 1: contribute to that neighbour's happiness and what do not, and
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  Speaker 1: to punish him for all that do not contribute to
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  Speaker 1: his is what no one ever had the impudence or
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  Speaker 1: folly to assert. It is only those who claim that
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  Speaker 1: government has some rightful power which no individual or individuals
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  Speaker 1: ever did or ever could delegate to it, that claim
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  Speaker 1: that government has any rightful power to punish vices. It
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  Speaker 1: will do for a pope or a king who claims
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  Speaker 1: to have received direct authority from Heaven to rule over
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  Speaker 1: his fellow men, to claim the right, as the vice
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  Speaker 1: regent of God to punish men for their vices. But
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  Speaker 1: it is a sheer and utter absurdity for any government
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  Speaker 1: claiming to derive its wholly from the grant of the governed,
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  Speaker 1: to claim any such power, because everybody knows that the
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  Speaker 1: governed never would grant it. For them to grant it
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  Speaker 1: would be an absurdity, because it would be granting away
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  Speaker 1: their own right to seek their own happiness, since to
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  Speaker 1: grant away their right to judge of what will be
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  Speaker 1: for their happiness is to grant away all their right
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  Speaker 1: to pursue their own happiness. And of Part one, Part
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  Speaker 1: two of Vices are not crimes, This LibriVox recording is
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  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Vices Are not Crimes by Lesander Spooner,
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  Speaker 1: Part two thirteen. We can now see how simple, easy,
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  Speaker 1: and reasonable a matter is a government for the punishment
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  Speaker 1: of crimes as compared with one for the punishment of vices.
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  Speaker 1: Crimes are few and easily distinguished from all other acts,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and mankind are generally agreed as to what acts are crimes,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: whereas vices are innumerable, and no two persons are agreed,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: except in comparatively few cases, as to what are vices. Furthermore,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: everybody wishes to be protected in his person and property
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: against the aggressions of other men, but nobody wishes to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: be protected, either in his person or property, against himself.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Because it is contrary to the fundamental laws of human
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: nature itself that any one should wish to harm himself.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: He only wishes to promote his own happiness, and to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: be his own judge as to what will promote and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: does promote his own happiness. This is what every one
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: wants and has a right to as a human being.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And though we all make many mistakes, and necessarily must
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: make them from the imperfection of our knowledge, yet these
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: mistakes are no argument against the right, because they all
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: tend to give us the very knowledge we need and
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: are in pursuit of, and can get in no other way.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: The object aimed that in the punishment of crimes, therefore,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: is not only wholly different from, but is directly opposed to,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: that aimed at the punishment of vices. The object aimed
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: at in the punishment of crimes is to secure to
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: each and every man alike the fullest liberty he can
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: possibly have, consistently with the equal rights of others, to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: pursue his own happiness under the guidance of his own
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: judgment and by the use of his own property. On
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the other hand, the object aimed at in the punishment
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: of vices is to deprive every man of his nons
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: natural right and liberty to pursue his own happiness under
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the guidance of his own judgment and by the use
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: of his own property. These two objects then are directly
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: opposed to each other. They are as directly opposed to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: each other as a light and darkness, or as truth
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and falsehood, or as liberty and slavery. They are utterly
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: incompatible with each other, and to suppose the two to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: be embraced in one and the same government is an
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: absurdity and impossibility. It is to suppose the objects of
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a government to be to commit crimes and to prevent crimes,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: to destroy individual liberty, and to secure individual liberty. Fourteen. Finally,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: on this point of individual liberty, every man must necessarily
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: judge and determine for himself as to what is conducive
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: and necessary to and what is destructive of his own
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: well being, because if he omits to perform this task
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: for himself, nobody else can perform it for him, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: nobody else will even attempt to perform it for him
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: except in very few cases. Popes and priests and kings
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: will assume to perform it for him in certain cases
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: if permitted to do so, but they will in general
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: perform it only in so far as they can minister
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: to their own vices and crimes by doing it. They will,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: in general perform it only in so far as they
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: can make him their fool and their slave. Parents with
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: better motives, no doubt than the others, too often attempt
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the same work. But in so far as they practice
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: coercion or restoring a child from anything not really and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: seriously dangerous to himself, they do him a harm rather
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: than a good. It is a law of nature that
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to get knowledge and to incorporate that knowledge into his
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: own being, each individual must get it for himself. Nobody,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: not even his parents, can tell him the nature of fire.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So he will really know it. He must experiment with
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: it and be burnt by it before he can know.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Nature knows a thousand times better than any parent what
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: she designs each individual for, what knowledge he requires, and
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: how he must get it. She knows that her own
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: processes communicating that knowledge are not only the best, but
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the only ones that can be effectual. The attempts of
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: parents to make their children virtuous are generally little else
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: than attempts to keep them in ignorance of vice. They
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: are little else in attempts to teach their children to
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: know and prefer truth by keeping them in ignorance of falsehood.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: They a little else than attempts to make them seek
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and appreciate health by keeping them in ignorance of disease
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and of everything that will cause disease. They are little
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: else and attempts to make their children love the light
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: by keeping them in ignorance of darkness. In short, they
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: are little else than attempts to make their children happy
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: by keeping them in ignorance of everything that causes them unhappiness.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: In so far as parents can reli aid their children
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: in the latter search after happiness by simply giving them
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the results of theirs, the parents own reason and experience.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: It is all very well, and is a natural and
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: appropriate duty. But to practice coercion and matters of which
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the children are reasonably competent to judge for themselves, is
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: only an attempt to keep them in ignorance. And this
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: is as much a tyranny and as much a violation
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: of the children's right to acquire knowledge for themselves, and
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: such knowledge as they desire, as is the same coercion
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: when practiced upon older persons. Such coercion practiced upon children
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: is a denial of their right to develop faculties that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: nature has given them, and to be what Nature designs
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: them to be. It is a denial of their right
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: to themselves and to the use of their own powers.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: It is a denial of their right to acquire the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: most valuable of all knowledge, to wit, the knowledge that Nature,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the great teacher, stands ready to impart to them. The
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: results of such coercion are not to make the children
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: wise or virtuous, but to make them ignorant and consequently
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: weak and vicious, and to perpetuate through them, from age
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to age the ignorance, the superstitions, the vices, and crimes
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: of the parents. This is proved by every page of
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the world's history. Those who hold opinions opposite to these
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: are those whose false and vicious theologies, or whose own
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: vicious general ideas have taught them that the human race
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: are naturally given to evil rather than to good, to
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the false rather than to the true, That mankind do
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: not naturally turn their eyes to the lights, that they
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: love darkness rather than light, and they find their happiness
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: only in those things that tend to their misery. Fifteen.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: But these men who claim that government shall use its
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: power to prevent vice, will say, or are in the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: habit of saying. We acknowledge the right of an individual
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: to seek his own happiness in his own way, and
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: consequently to be as vicious as he pleas. We only
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: claim that the government shall prohibit the sale to him
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of those articles by which he minisces to his vice.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: The answer to this is that the simple sale of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: any article whatever, independently of the use that is to
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: be made of that article, is legally a perfectly innocent act.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: The quality of the act of sale depends wholly upon
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the quality of the use for which the thing is sold.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: If the use of anything is virtuous and lawful, then
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: the sale of it for that purpose is virtuous and lawful.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: If the use is vicious, then the sale of it
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: for that use is vicious. If the use is criminal,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: then the sale of it for that use is criminal.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: The celler is at most only an accomplice in the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: use that is to be made of the article sold,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: whether the use be virtuous, vicious, or criminal. When the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: use is criminal, the cellar is an accomplice in the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: crime unpunishable as such. But where the use is only vicious,
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the cellar is only an accomplice in the vice and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: is not punishable. Sixteen. But it will be asked, is
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: there no right on the part of government to arrest
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the progress of those who are bent on self destruction?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: The answer is that government has no rights. What are
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: in the matter so long as these so called vicious
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: persons remain sane compass mentors capable of exercising reasonable discretion
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: and self control. Because so long as they do remain sane,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: they must be allowed to judge and decide for themself
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: whether their so called vices really are vices, whether they
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: really are leading them to destruction, and whether on the
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: whole they will go there or not. When they shall
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: become insane non compass mentis incapable of reasonable discretion or
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: self control, their friends or neighbors or the government must
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: take care of them and protect them from harm and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: against all persons who would do them harm, in the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: same way as if their insanity had come upon them
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: from any other cause than their supposed vices. But because
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: a man is supposed by his neighbors to be on
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the way to see distruction from his vices, it does
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: not therefore follow that he is insane. Non compassmentus incapable
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of reasonable discretion and self control within the legal meaning
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: of these terms. Men and women may be addicted to
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: very gross vices, and to a great many of them,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: such as gluttony, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, prize fighting, tobacco, dwing,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: smoking and snuffing, opion eating, corset wearing, eyedleness, waste of property, avarice, hypocrisy,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, and still be sane. Compassmentus capable
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of reasonable discretion and self control within the meaning of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: the law. And so long as they are sane, they
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: must be permitted to control themselves and their property, and
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: to be their own judges as to where their vices
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: will finally lead them. It may be hoped by the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: lookers on in each individual case that the a vicious
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: person will see the end to which he is tending
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and be induced to turn back. But if he chooses
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: to go on to what other men call destruction, he
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: must be permitted to do so. And all that can
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: be said of him, so far as this life is concerned,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: is that he made a great mistake in his search
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: after happiness, and that others will do well to take
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: warning by his fate. As to what may be his
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: condition in another life. That is a theological question with
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: which the law in this world has no more to
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: do than it has with any other theological question touching
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: men's condition in a future life. If it be asked
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: how the question of a vicious man's sanity or insanity
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: is to be determined, the answer is that it is
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to be determined by the same kinds of evidence as
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: in the sanity or insanity of those who are called
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: virtuous and not otherwise. That is, by the same kinds
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: of evidence by which the legal tribunals determine whether a
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: man should be sent to an asylum for lunatics, or
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: whether he is competent to make a will or otherwise
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: dispose of his property. Any doubt must weigh in favor.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: His sanity, as in all other cases, are not of
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: his insanity. If a person really does become insane, non compassmentous,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: incapable of reasonable discretion or self control, it is than
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: a crime on the part of other men to give
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: him or sell to him the means of self injury footnote.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: To give an insane manner knife or any other weapon,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: or a thing by which he is likely to injure
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: himself is a crime, and a footnote. There are no
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: crimes more easily punished, no cases in which juries would
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: be more ready to convict than those where a sane
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: persian should sell or give to an insane one any
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: article by which the latter was likely to injure himself. Seventeen.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: But will be said that some men are made by
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: their vices dangerous to other persons, that a drunkard, for example,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: is sometimes quarrelsome and dangerous towards his family or others.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: And it will be asked, has the law nothing to
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: do in such a case. The answer is that, if,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: either from drunkenness or any other cause, a man be
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: really dangerous, either to his family or to other persons,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: not only himself may be rightfully restrained so far as
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the safety of other persons requires. But all other persons
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: who know or have reasonable grounds to believe him dangerous
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: may also be restrained from selling or giving to him
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: anything that they have reason to suppose will make him dangerous.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: But because one man becomes quarrelsome and dangerous after drinking
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: spirits liquors, and because it is a crime to give
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: or sell liquor to such a man. It does not
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: follow at all that it is a crime to sell
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: liquors to the hundreds and thousands of other persons who
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: are not made quarrelsome or dangerous by drinking them. Before
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: a man can be convicted of crime in selling liquor
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: to a dangerous man, it must be shown that the
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: particular man to whom the liquor was sold was dangerous,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and also that the seller knew or had reasonable grounds
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: to suppose that the man would be made dangerous by
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: drinking it. The presumption of law is in all cases
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that the sale is innocent, and that the burden of
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: proving it criminal in any particular case rests upon the government,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: and that particular case must be proved criminal independently of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: all others. Subject to these principles, there is no difficulty
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: convincing and punishing men for the sale or gift of
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: any article to a man who is made dangerous to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: others by the use of it. Eighteen. But it is
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: often said that some vices are nuisances public or private,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and that nuisances can be abated and punished. It is
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: true that anything that is really and legally a nuisance,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: either public or private, can be abated and punished. But
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: it is not true that the mere private vices of
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: one man are in any legal sense nuisances to another
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: man or to the public. No act of one person
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: can be a nuisance to another unless it in some
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: way obstructs or interferes with that other's safe and quiet
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: use or enjoyment of what is rightfully his own. Whoever
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: obstructs a public highway is a nuisance, and may be
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: abated and punished. But a hotel where liquors are sold,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: a liquor store, or even a grog shop so called
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: no more obstructs a public highway than does a dry
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: goods store, a jewelry stoy, or a butcher's shop. Whatever
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: poisons the air or makes it either offensive or unhealthy,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: is a nuisance. But neither a hotel, nor a liquor store,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: nor a grog stop poisons the air or makes it
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: offensive or unhealthy to outside persons. Whatever obstructs the light
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to which a man is legally entitled is a nuisance.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: But neither a hotel, nor a liquor store, nor a
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: grog shop obstructs anybody's light, except in cases where a church,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: a schoolhouse, or a dwelling house would have equally obstructed
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: it on this grounds. Therefore, the former are no more,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: oh no less nuisances than the latter would be. Some
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: people are in the habit of saying that a liquor
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: shop is dangerous in the same way that gunpowder is dangerous,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: but there is no analogy between the two cases. Gunpowder
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: is liable to be exploded by accident, and especially by
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: such fire, often occur in cities. For this reasons, it
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: is dangerous to persons and properties in this immediate vicinity.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: But liquors are not liable to be thus exploded, and
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: therefore are not dangerous nuisances in any such sense as
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: is gunpowder in cities. But it is said again that
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: drinking places are frequently filled with noisy and boisterous men,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: who disturb the quiet of the neighborhood and the sleep
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: and rest of the neighbors. This may be true occasionally,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: though not very frequently, But whenever in any case it
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: is true, the nuisance may be abated by the punishment
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: of the proprietor and his customers, and if need be,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: by shutting up the place. But an assembly of noisy
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: drinkers is no more a nuisance than is any other
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: noisy assembly. A jolly or hilarious drinker disturbs the quiet
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of a neighborhood no more and no less than does
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: a shouting really LIFs fanatic. An assembly of noisy drinkers
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: is no more and no less a nuisance than is
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: an assembly of shouting religious phanatics. Both of them are
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: nuisances when they disturb the rest and sleep or quiet
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: or neighbors. Even a dog that is given to barking
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: to the disturbance of the sleep or quiet of the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: neighborhood is a nuisance. Nineteen. But it is said that
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: for one person to entice another into a vice is
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: a crime. This is preposterous. If any particular act is
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: simply a vice, then a man who entices another to
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: commit it is simply an accomplice in the vice. He
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: evidently commits no crime, because the accomplice can certainly commit
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: no greater offense than the principal. Every person who is sane,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: compass mentors possessed of reasonable discretion and self control, is
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: hun to be mentally competent to judge for himself of
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: all the arguments pro and con that may be addressed
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to him. To persuade him to do any particular act,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: provided no fraud is employed to deceive him, And if
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: he is persuaded or induced to do the act, his
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: act is then his own. And even though the act
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: proved to be harmful to himself, he cannot complain that
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the persuasion or arguments to which he yielded his assent
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: were crimes against himself. When fraud is practiced, the case
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: is a course different. If, for example, I offer a
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: man poison, assuring him that it is safe and wholesome drink,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: while he, on the faith of my assertion, swallows it,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: my act is a crime volenty non fit in juria
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is a maxim of the law. To the willing, no
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: injury is done, that is no legal wrong. And every
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: person who has sane compass me capable of exercising reasonable
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: discretion in judging of the truth or falsehood of the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: representations or persuasions to which he yields his assent, is
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: willing in the view of the law, and takes upon
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: himself the entire responsibility for his acts when no intentional
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: fraud has been practiced upon him. This principle that to
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the willing, no injury is done has no limit, except
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: in the case of frauds or of persons not possessed
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: of reasonable discretion for judging. In the particular case, if
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: a person possessed of reasonable discretion and not deceived by fraud,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: consents to practice the grossest vice, and thereby brings upon
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: himself the greatest moral, physical, or pecuniary sufferings or losses,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: he cannot allege that he has been legally wronged. To
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: illustrate this principle, take the case of rape. To have
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: carnal knowledge of a woman against who will will is
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the highest crime, next to murder, that can be committed
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: against her. But to have commonal knowledge of a with
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: her consent is no crime but at most device. And
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: it is usually holden that a female child of no
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: more than ten years of age has such reasonable discretion
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: that her consent, even though procured by rewards or promise
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: of reward, is sufficient to convert the act, which would
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: otherwise be a high crime, into a simple act of vice. Footnote.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: The Statute Book of Massachusetts makes ten years the age
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: at which a female child is supposed to have discretion
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: enough to part with her virtue, but the same statute
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: book holds that no person, man or woman, of any age,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: or any degree of wisdom or experience, has discretion enough
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: to be trusted to buy and drink a glass of
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: spirits on his or her own judgment. What an illustration
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: of the legislative wisdom of Massachusetts. End of footnote. We
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: see the same principle in the case of prize fight us.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: If I but lay one of my fingers upon another
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: man's person against his will, no matter how lightly, and
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: no matter how little practical injury is done, the act
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: is a crime. But if two men agree to go
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: out and pound each other's faces to a jelly, it
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: is no crime, but only a vice. Even duels have
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: not generally been considered crimes, because each man's life is
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: his own, and the parties agree that each mutate the
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: other's life if he can, by the use of such
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: weapons as are agreed upon and in conformity with certain
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: rules that are also mutually assented to. And this is
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: a correct view of the matter, unless it can be said,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: as it probably cannot, that anger is madness that so
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: far deprives men of their reason as to make them
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: incapable of reasonable discretion. Gambling is another illustration of the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: principle that to the willing no injury is done. If
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I take but a single scent of a man's property
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: without his consent, the act is a crime. But if
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: two men who are compassmenttis possessed of reasonable discretion to
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: judge of the nature and probable results of their act,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: sit down together, and each voluntary stakes his money against
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the money of another on the turn of a die,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: and one of them loses his whole estate, however large
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that may be, it is no crime, but only a vice.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: It is not a crime even to assist a person
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: to commit suicide if he be in possession of his reason.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: It is a somewhat common idea that suicide is of
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: itself conclusive evidence of insanity. But although it may ordinarily
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: be a very strong evidence of insanity, he is by
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: no means conclusive. In all cases. Many persons, in undoubted
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: pusion of their reason, have committed suicide to escape the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: shame of a public exposure for their crimes, or to
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: avoid some other great calamito. Suicide in these cases may
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: not have been the highest wisdom, but was certainly not
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: proof of any lack of reasonable discretion. Footnote Kateo committed
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: suicide to avoid falling into the hands of Caesar, whoever
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: suspected that he was insane. Brutus did the same. Colt
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: committed suicide only an hour or so before he was
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: to be hanged. He did it to avoid bringing upon
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: his name and his family the disgrace of having it
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: said that he was hanged. This, whether a really wise
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: act or not, was clearly an act within reasonable discretion.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Does anyone suppose that the person who furnished him with
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the necessary instrument was a criminal and a footnote, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: being within the limits of reasonable discs agression, it was
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: no crime for any other persons to aid it, either
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: by furnishing the instrument or otherwise. And if in such
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: cases it be no crime to aid a suicide, how
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: absurd to say that it is a crime to aid
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: him in some act that is really pleasurable, and which
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: a large portion of mankind are believed to be useful.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: Twenty But some persons are in the habit of saying
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: that the use of spirituous liquors is the great source
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of crime, that it fills our prisons with criminals, and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: that this is reason enough for prohibiting the sale of them.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Those who say this if they talk seriously, talk blindly
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: and foolishly, they evenly mean to be understood as saying
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: that a very large percentage of all the crimes that
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: are committed among men are committed by persons whose criminal
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: passions are excited at the time by the use of liquors,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: and in consequence of the use of liquors. This idea
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: is utterly preposterous. In the first place, the great crimes
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: committed in the world are mostly prompted by avarice and ambition.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: carried on by governments to plunder, enslave, and destroy mankind.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: The next greatest crimes permitted in the world are equally
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: prompted by avarice and ambition, and are committed not on
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: sudden passion, but by men of calculation, who keep their
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: heads cool and clear, and have no thought whatever of
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: going to prison for them. They are committed not so
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: much by men who violate the laws as by men who,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: either by themselves or their instruments, make the laws. By
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: men who have combined to usurp arbitrary power and to
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: maintain it by force and fraud, and whose purpose in
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: usurping and maintaining it is by unjust and unequal legislation
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: to its secure for themselves such advantages as monopolies as
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: will enable them to control and exhort the labor and
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: properties of other men, and thus impoverish them, in order
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to minister to their own wealth and angrandizement. Footnote. An
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: illustration of this fact is found in England, whose government,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: for a thousand years or more has been little or
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: nothing else than a band of robbers who have conspired
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: to monopolize the land and as far as possible, all
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: other wealth. These conspirators, calling themselves kings, nobles, and freeholders,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: have by force and fraud, taken to themselves all civil
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: and military power. They keep themselves in power solely by
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: force and fraud and the corrupt use of their wealth.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: And they employ their powers solely in robbing and enslaving
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the great body of their own people, and in plundering
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and enslaving other peoples. And the world has been and
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: now is full of examples substantially similar, and the governments
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: of our own countries do not differ so widely from
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: others in this respect. To some of us imasion and
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: a footnote The robberies and wrongs thus committed by these
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: men in conformity with the laws, that is, their own laws,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: are as mountains to molehills compared with the crimes committed
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: by all other criminals in violation of the laws. But Thirdly,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: there are vast numbers of frauds of various kinds committed
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: in the transactions of trade, whose perpetrators, by their coolness
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and sagicity, evade the operations of the laws. It is
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: only their cool and clear heads that enable them to
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: do so. Men under the excitement of intoxicating drinks are
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: little disposed and utterly unequal to the successful practice of
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: these frauds. They are the most incautious, the least successful,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the least efficient, and the least to be feared of
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: all the criminals with whom the law has to deal. Fourthly,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the prefersed burglars, robberers, thieves, forges, counterfeaters, and swinders who
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: prey upon society are anything but reckless drinkers. Their business
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: is of too dangerous a character to admit of such risk,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: as they would thus incurve. Fifty the crimes that can
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: be said to be committed under the influence of intoxicating
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: drinks are mostly assaults and batteries, not very numerous and
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: generally not very aggravating. Some other small crimes, as petty
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: faiths or other small trespasses upon property, are sometimes committed
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: under the influence of drink by feeble minded persons not
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: generally addicted to crime. The persons who commit these two
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: kinds of crime are but few. They cannot be said
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: to fill our prisons, or if they do, we are
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: to be congratulated that we need so few few prisons,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: and so small prisons to hold them. The state of Massachusetts,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: for example, has a million and a half people. How
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: many of these are now in prison for crimes, not
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: for the vice of intoxication, but for crimes committed against
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: persons or property under the instigation of strong drink. I
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: doubt if there be one in ten thousand, that is
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty in all. And the crimes for
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: which they are in prison are mostly small ones. And
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I think it will be found that these few men
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: are generally much more to be pitied than punished, for
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: the reason that it was their poverty and misery, rather
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: than any passion for liquor or for crime, that led
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: them to drink, and thus led them to commit their
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: crimes under the influence of drink. The sweeping charge that
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: drink fills out prison with criminals is made, I think,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: only by those men who know no better than to
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: call a drunkard a criminal. And I have no better
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: foundation for their charge than a shameful fact that we
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: are such brutal and senseless people that we condemn and
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: punish such weak and unfortunate persons as drunkards as if
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: they were criminals. The legislators are authorized, and the judges
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: who practice such atrocities as these are intritsically criminals, unless
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: their ignorance be such as it probably is not as
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: to excuse them. And even if they were themselves to
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: be punished as criminals, there would be more reason than
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: our conduct. A police judge in Boston once told me
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: that he was in the habit of disposing of drunkards
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: by sending them to prison for thirty days. I think
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that was the stereotyped sentence, at the rate of one
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: in three minutes, and sometimes more rapidly even than that,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: thus condemning them as criminals and sending them to prison
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: without mercy and without inquiry into circumstances for an infirmity
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: that entitled them to compassion and protection, and instead of punishment.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: The real criminals in these cases were not the men
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: who went to prison, but the judge and the men
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: behind him who sent them there. I recommend to those
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: persons who are so distressed lest the prisons of Massachusetts
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: be filled with criminals, that they employ some portion, at
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: least of their philanthropy in preventing our prisons being filled
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: with persons who are not criminals. I do not remember
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: to have heard that their sympathies have ever been very
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: actively exercised in that direction. On the contrary, they seem
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to have such a passion for punishing criminals that they
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: care not to inquire particularly whether a candidate for punishment
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: really be a criminal. Such a passion, let me assure them,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: is much more dangerous one, and one entitled the far
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: less charity, both morally and legally, than the passion for
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: strong drink. It seems to be more consonant with the
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: merciless character of these men to send an unfortunate man
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: to prison for drunkenness, and thus crush and degrade and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: dishearten them, and ruin him for life that it does
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: for them to lift him out of the poverty and
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: misery that caused him to become a drunkard. It is
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: only these persons who have either little capacity or little
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: disposition to enlighten, encourage, or aid mankind, that are possessed
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: of this violent passion for governing, commanding, and punishing them. If,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: instead of standing by and giving their consent and sanction
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: to all the laws by which the weak man is
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: first plundered, oppressed, and disheartened, are then punished as a criminal,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: they would turn their attention to the duty of defending
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: his rights and improving his condition, and of thus strengthening
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: him and enabling him to stand on his own feet
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and withstand the temptations that surround him. They would, i think,
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: have little need to talk about laws and prisons for
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: either rum sellers or rum drinkers, or even any other
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: class of ordinary criminals. In short, if these men who
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: are so anxious for the suppression of crime would suspend
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: for a while their calls upon the government for aid
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: in suppressing the crimes of individuals, and a call upon
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the people for aid in suppressing the crimes of the government,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: that would show both their sincerity and good sense in
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: a much stronger light than they do now. When the
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: law shall all be so just and equitable as to
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: make it possible for all men and women to live
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: honestly and virtuously, and to make themselves comfortable and happy,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: there will be much fewer occasions than now for charging
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: them with living dishonestly and viciously. End of Part two,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Part three of Vices Are Not Crimes. The sliprivox recording
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. Vices Are Not Crimes by Lesanderspooner,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Part three, twenty one. But it will be said again
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: that the use of spiritous liquors tends to poverty and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: thus to make men paupers and burdensome to the taxpayers,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: and that this is sufficient reason why the sale of
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: them should be prohibited. There are various answers to this argument.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: One answer is that if the fact the use of
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: liquors tends to poverty in pauperism be a sufficient reason
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: for prohibiting the sale of them, it is equally a
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: sufficient reason for prohibiting the use of them, For it
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: is the use and not the sale, that tends to poverty.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: The seller is at most merely an accomplice of the drinker.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: And it is a rule of law as well as
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: of reason, that if the principle in any act is
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: not punishable, the accomplice cannot be. The second answer to
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the argument is that if government has the right and
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: is bound to prohibit any one act that is not
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: criminal merely because it is supposed to tend to poverty,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: then by the same rule, it is the right and
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: is bound to prohibit any and every other act, though
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: not criminal, which in the opinion of the government, tends
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: to poverty. And on this principle, the government would not
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: only have the right, but would be bound to look
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: unto every man's private affairs and every person's personal expenditures,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and determine as to which of them did and which
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: of them did not tend to poverty, and to prohibit
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and punish all of the former class. A man would
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: have no right to expend a cent of his own
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: property according to his own pleasure or judgment, unless the
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: legislature should be of the opinion such expenditure would not
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: tend to poverty. A third answer to the same argument
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: is that if a man don't bring himself to poverty,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: and even to beggary, either by his virtues or his vices,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the government is under no obligation whatever to take care
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: of him unless it pleases to do so. It may
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: let him perish in the street, or depend upon private charity.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: If it so pleases. It can carry out its own
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: free will and discretion in the matter, for it is
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: above all legal responsibility. In such a case. It is
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: not necessarily any part of a government's duty to provide
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: for the poor. A government, that is a legitimate government
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: is simply a voluntary association of individuals who unite for
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: such purposes, and only for such purposes as suits them.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: If taking care of the poor, whether they be virtuous
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: or vicious, be not one of those purposes, then the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: government as a government has no more right, and is
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: no more bound to take care of them, than has
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: or is a banking company or a raw road company.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Whatever moral claims a poor man, whether he be virtuous
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: or vicious, may have upon the charity of his fellow men,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: he has no legal claims upon them. He must depend
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: wholly upon their charity if they so please. He cannot
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: demand as a legal right that they either feed or
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: clothe him, and he has no more legal or moral
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: claims upon a government, which is but an association of individuals,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: than he has upon the same or any other individuals
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: in their private capacity. Insomuch, then as a poor man,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: whether virtuous or vicious, has no more or other claims
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: legal or moral upon a government for food or clothing
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: than he has upon private persons. A government has no
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: more right than a private person to control or prohibit
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the expenditures or actions of an individual on the grounds
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: that they tend to bring him to poverty. Mister A,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: as an individual, has clearly no right to prohibit any
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: acts or expenditures of mister z through fear that such
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: acts or expenditures may tend to bring him Zed to poverty,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: and that he Zed may, in consequence that, at some
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: future unknown time come to him A in distress and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: ask charity. And if A has no such right as
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: an individual to prohibit any acts or expenditures on the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: part of ZID, then government, which is a mere association
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: of individuals, can have no such right. Certainly, no man
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: who is compassmentous holds his right to the disposal and
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: use of his own property by any such worthless tenure
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: as that which would authorize any or all of his neighbors,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: whether calling themselves a government or not, to interfere and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to forbid him to make any expenditures except such as
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: they might think would not tend to poverty, and would
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: not tend to ever bring him to them as a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: supplicant for their charity. Whether a man who is compassmentos
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: come to poverty through his virtues or vices, no man,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: nor body, or men can have any right to interfere
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: with him on the ground that their sympathy may sometimes
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: be appealed to in his behalf, Because if it should
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: be appealed to, they are at perfect liberty to act
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: their own pleasure or discretion as to complying with his solicitations.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: The right to refuse charity to the poor, whether the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: latter be virtuous or vicious, is one that governments always
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: act upon. No government makes any more provision for the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: poor than it pleases. As a consequence, the poor are
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: left to suffer sickness and even death, because neither public
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: nor private charity comes to their aid. How absurd, then,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to say that government has a right to control a
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: man's use of his own property through fear that he
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: may sometime come to poverty and ask charity. Still, a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: fourth answer to the argument is that the great and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: only incentive which each individual has to labor and to
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: create wealth is that he may dispose of it according
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: to his own pleasure or discretion, and for the promotion
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: of his own happiness and the happiness of those to
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: whom he loves. Footnote. It is of this incentive alone
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: that we are indebted for all the wealth that has
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: ever been created by human labor and accumulated for the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: benefit of mankind. End a footnote. Although a man may, often,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: from inexperience or want of judgment, expends some portion of
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: the products of his labor injudiciously and so as not
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: to promote his highest welfare, Yet he learns wisdom in
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: this as in all other matters, by experience, by his mistake,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: as well as by his successes. And this is the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: only way in which he can lo learn wisdom. When
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: he becomes convinced that he has made one foolish expenditure,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: he learns thereby not to make another like it. And
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: he must be permitted to try his own experiments, and
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: to try them to his own satisfaction. In this, as
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: in all mother matters, for otherwise he has no natives
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of labor, nor to create wealth at all. Any man
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: who is a man would rather be a savage and
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: be free, creating or procuring only such little wealth as
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: he could control and consume from day to day, than
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: to be a civilized man, knowing how to create and
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: accumulate wealth indefinitely, and yet not permitted to use or
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: dispose of it, except under the supervision, direction, and dictation
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: of a set of medicine superserviceable fools and tyrants, who,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: with no more knowledge than himself, and perhaps not half
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: so much, should assume to control him on the ground
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: that he had not the right or the capacity to
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: determine for himself as to what he would do with
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: the proceeds of his own labor. A fifth answer to
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: the argument is that if it be the duty of
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: government to watch over the expenditures of any one person
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: who is compassmentous and not criminal, to see what ones
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: tend to poverty and what do not, and to prohibit
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: and punish the former, then by the same rule it
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: is bound to watch over the expenditures of all other
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: persons and prohibit and punish all that in its judgment
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: tend to poverty. If such a principle were carried out impartially,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: the result would be that all mankind would be so
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: occupied in watching each other's expenditures and in testifying against, trying,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: and punishing such as tended to poverty, that they would
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: have no time left to create wealth at all. Everybody
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: capable of productive labor would either be in prison or
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: be acting as judge, dura, witness, or jailer. It would
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: be impossible to create courts enough to try, or to
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: build prisons enough to hold the offenders. All productive labor
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: would cease, and the fools that were so intent on
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: preventing poverty would not only all come to poverty, imprisonment,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: and starvation themselves, but would bring everybody else to poverty, imprisonment,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: and starvation. If it be said that a man may
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: at least be rightfully compelled to support his family, and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: consequently to abstain from all expenditures that, in the opinion
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: of the government, tend to disable him to perform that duty,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: various answers might be given, but this one is sufficient, viz.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: That no man, unless a fool or a slave, would
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: acknowledge any family to be his If that acknowledgment were
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: to be made an excuse by the government for depriving
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: him either of his personal liberty or the control of
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: his property. When a man is allowed his natural liberty
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: and the control of his property, his family is usually
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: almost universally the great paramount object of his pride and affection,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: and he will, not only voluntarily, but at his highest pleasure,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: employ his best powers of mind and body, not merely
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to provide for them the ordinary necessities and comforts of life,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: but to lavish upon them all the luxuries and elegancies
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: that his labor can procure. A man enters into no
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: moral or legal obligation with his wife or children to
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: do anything for them except what he can do consistently
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: with his own personal freedom and his natural right to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: control his own property at his own discretion. If a
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: government can step in and say to a man who
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: is compassmentous, and who is doing his duty to his
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: family as he sees his duty, and according to his
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: best judgment, however imperfect that may be, we the government
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: suspect that you are not employing your labor to the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: best advantage for your family. We suspect that your expenditures
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: and your disposal of your property are not so judicious
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: as they might be for the interests of your family.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: And therefore we the government, will take you and your
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: property under our special surveillance and prescribe to you what
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: you may and may not do with yourself and your property,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: and your family shall hereafter look to us, the government,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and not to you for support. If a government can
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: do this, all a man's pride, ambition, and affection relative
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: to this family would be crushed so far as it
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: would be possible for humanarily to crush them, and he
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: would either never have a family whom he were publicly
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: acknowledged to be his, or he would bisk both his
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: property and life in overthrowing such an insulting, outrageous, and
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: insufferable tyranny. Had any woman who would wish her husband,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: he being compassmentors to submit to such an unnatural insult
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: and wrong is utterly undeserving of his affection, or of
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: anything but his disgust and contempt, and he would probably
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: very soon cause her to understand that if she chose
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: to rely on the government for the support of herself
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: and her children rather than him, she must rely on
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the government alone. Twenty two Still Another and all sufficient
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: answer to the argument that the use of spirituous liquors
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: tends the poverty is that, as a general rule, it
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: puts the effect before the cause. It assumes that it
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: is the use of liquors that causes the poverty, instead
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: of it being the poverty that causes the use of liquors.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Poverty is the natural parent of nearly all the ignorance, vice, crime,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: and misery there are in the world footnote except those
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: great crimes with the few calling themselves governments practice upon
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: the many by means of organized, systemic extortion and tyranny,
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: and as only the poverty, ignorance, and consequent weakness of
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: the many that enable the combined and organized few to
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: acquire and maintain such arbitrary power over them. And a
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: footnote Why is it that so large a portion of
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: the laboring people of England are drunken and vicious? Certainly
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: not because they are by nature any worse than other men,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: But it is because their extreme and hopeless poverty keeps
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: them in ignorance and servitude, destroys their courage and self respect,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: subjects them to such constant insults and wrongs, to such
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: incessant and bitter miseries of every kind, and finally drives
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: them too such despair that the short respite that drink
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: or other vice affordns them is for the time being
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: a relief. This is the chief cause of the drunkenness
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: and other vices that prevail among the laboring people of England.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: If those laborers in England who are now drunken and
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: had had the same chances and surrounding in life as
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: the more fortunate classes they had, if they had been
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: reared and comfortable and happy and virtuous homes instead of
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: squalid and wretched and vicious ones, if they had opportunities
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: to acquire knowledge and property, and make themselves intelligent, comfortable, happy,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: independent and respected, and to secure to themselves all the intellectual, social,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and domestic enjoyments which honest and justly rewarded industry could
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: enable them as secure. If they could have had all
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: this instead of being born to a life of hopeless,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: unrewarded toil, with a certainty of death in the workhouse,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: they would have been as free from their present vices
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: and weaknesses as those who approached them now are. It
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: is of no use to say that drunkenness or any
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: other vice only adds to their miseries. For such as
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: human nature the weakness of human nature. If you please,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: that men can endure but a certain amount of misery
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: before their hope and courage fail, and they yield to
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: almost anything that promises present relief or mitigation, though at
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: the cost of still greater misery in the future. To
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: preach morality or temperance to such wretched persons, instead of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: relieving their sufferings or improving their conditions, is only insulting
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: their wretchedness. Will those who are in the habit of
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: attributing men's poverty to their vices instead of their vices
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: to their poverty, as if every poor person or most
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: poor persons were specially vicious. Tell us whether all the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: poverty within the last year and a half have been
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: bought so suddenly as it were, in a moment upon
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: at least twenty millions of the people of the United
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: States were brought upon them as a natural consequence either
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: of their drunkenness or of any other of their vices.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: Was it their drunkenness or any other of their vices
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: that paralyzed, as by stroke of lightning, all the industries
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: by which they lived, and which had but a few
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: days before been in such prosperous activity. Was it their
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: vices that turned the adult portion of those twenty millions
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: out of door without employment, compelled them to consume their
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: little accumulations if they had ney, and then to become beggars,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: beggars for work, and fouling in this beggars for bread.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Was it their vices that all at once, without warning,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: filled the homes of so many of them with want, misery, sickness,
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: and death. No, clearly, it was neither the drunkenness nor
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: any other vices of these laboring people that brought upon
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: them all this ruin and wretchedness. And if it was not,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: what was it? This is the problem that must be answered,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: for tis one that is repeated, their occurring and constantly
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: before us, and that cannot be put aside. In fact,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: the poverty of the great body of mankind the world
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: over is the great problem of the world. That such
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: extreme and nearly universal poverty exists all over the world,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: and has existed through all past generation, proves that it
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: originates in causes which the common human nature of those
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: who suffer from it had not hitherto been strong enough
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: to overcome. For these sufferers are at least beginning to
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: see these causes, and are becoming resolute to remove them,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: let it cost what it may. And those who imagine
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: that they have nothing to do but to go on
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: attributing the poverty of the poor to their vices and
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: preaching to them against their vices, will ere long wake
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: up to find that the day for all such talk
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: is past, and the question will be, then, not what
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: are men's vices, but what are their rights? End of
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Part three. End of Vices are not Crimes? By Lessander
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Spooner