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JUDGE RUSSELL’S ATLANTA SPEECH
N what I have to say, in reviewing
the great speech recently delivered
by Judge R. B. Russell, in our
city, I want it distinctly under
stood that I am dealing only with
the speech, and the matter there
in contained, and not with the
speaker personally.
So far as his personality appears,
I
and the language in which he enunciates his
platform and explains his position, there is
very little of which any citizen can complain.
His kind reference to the ministerial profession
will be as kindly received by the profession at
large, while, with but few exceptions, his lan
guage would do credit to any Christian gentle
man in the State. Only in two or three in
stances does he allow such expressions as
‘‘hypocrite,” “hypocritical jug-wumps,” “The
Puritanical soul of old Praise-God Barebones,”
and the like, to reveal his disappointment and
chagrin over the fact that the overwhelming
majority of the moral and religious sentiment
of the State is opposed to that part of his plat
form replacing prohibition with local option.
On the whole, a careful reading of his speech
has increased my former respect and kindly
feelings, and for him personally I have, only
the most profound feelings of respect and kind
ness.
Having written this much in favor of the
speaker, personally, let us turn to that part of
his speech in which he lays down his platform
on the subject of the liquor traffic in Georgia.
1 have carefully studied that part of the
speech, paragraph by paragraph, three times
over. 1 find it a most remarkable production.
It is only such a speech as an expert politician,
a profound thinker, and a versatile lawyer
could produce. It is a speech in which the
real purpose of the speaker docs not appear at
the front, but is hidden behind the greater and
more popular themes of “human liberty,”
“Democratic loyalty,” and the right of the
people of any particular county to regulate
their own county affairs. By making these
subjects prominent and sandwiching the whis
key traffic in between them, he, doubtless,
hoped to get the people to swallow it, as the
doctor coats the bitter pill with sugar to de
lude the children.
After the most careful study and analysis
of this speech, I am compelled, though in all
kindness, to pronounce it the most contradic
tory, the most illogical, and the most inconsist
ent declaration I ever read in my life, claim
ing to be a logical argument. lam aware that
these are strong statements, but I will take
them up separately and will fully justify every
one of them.
First, I say it is contradictory., even to the
extent of being ridiculous. His effort to hide
the real purpose —that of restoring the legal
ized liquor traffic in this State, and to make
the people believe that he is only contending
for the supremacy of “orthodox Democracy”
and the right of citizenship, is so bungling that
it reminds me of the ostrich, which hides its
head in the sand and imagines that thereby it
is entirely concealed.
Let me here quote two positive statements,
made at the very beginning of his speech:
“With me the question is not one of liquor but
of human liberty;” and further along—“ The
term, local opition, has no special reference to
the sale of liquor.”’ This, when he knows as
well as he knows he is a living man, that his
local option measure has not the slightest ref
erence to anything else under the sun but the
liquor traffic. He knows that every man and
woman in Georgia knows that his real purpose
is to exchange our Statewide prohibition law
for a law that will allow the whiskey men to
open saloons in every county in the State, in
The Golden Age For November 16, 1911.
A REVIEW AND REPLY
which, by fair means or foul, they can secure
enough votes to carry it.
The ostrich act is seen in the fact that not
withstanding he positively declares that “The
question is not one of liquor”—that “Local
opition has no special reference to the sale of
liquor,” from one end of his speech to the other
he reiterates the right of the people of each
county to regulate the sale of liquor in their
own county. I could fill a whole column with
quotations, proving that which he claims that
he is only contending for the civil right of the
“dear people,” he is striking at our prohibi
tion law and seeking to make it possible to re
introduce again into the State, under the plea
of local option, that worst of all curses —the
curse of making men and boys drunkards un
der the sanction of law. So complete a contra
diction and so flimsy a veil by which a politi
cian would hide his purpose I have never be
fore seen.
Having thus shown his contradiction, let us
now analyze his logic. Here, too, we will find
his reasoning as weak as a rope of sand. He
lays down as a basis for his argument in favor
of the right of each county to regulate the
liquor traffic within its borders that grand po
litical truth, first enunciated by Thomas Jeffer
son, that “All just laws derive their power
from the consent of the governed.” Let me
say here, in passing, Thomas Jefferson never
dreamed of applying that axiom to the right of
a county to regulate the whiskey traffic. He
intended it to have only a national-wide appli
cation. Could he know that a learned and in
genuous lawyer and politician was using it to
boost up this fearful political heresy, that the
State has no right to prohibit—but that a
county has the right to legalize the sale of a
deadly poison, it would make the grand old pa
triot turn over in his grave.
But to the Judge’s logic: His position is
clearly this: “The county is the unit of the
State; and as no law can have any power over
the unit, except by the consent of the unit—
the governed —it follows that any prohibition
law passed by the State, except a local option
law, passed by the county unit, is entirely
without power, not having obtained the con
sent of the unit —the governed.” Now, let us
follow up the Judge’s reasoning to its last
analysis, and see where it will land us. “The
county is the unit of the State.” Yes, but what
is the unit of the county? The township.
Therefore, the county cannot pass a law —ap-
plying the same principle—that will have any
power without “the consent of the governed,”
which is the unit, or the township. It is now
up to the township. But the same rule applies
here. They must have the consent of “the gov
erned” —or “the unit” of the township—which
is the individual. No laws the township can
pass can have any power that does not have
the “consent of the governed,” which is the
individual. Here we have reached the last
analysis, and where does it land us? In deadly
anarchy. All laws are rendered powerless, ex
cept that each individual is a law unto himself
to do right or wrong as his own will may dic
tate. If it is possible for any man to invent
a more deadly form of anarchism than that I
sincerely hope he will not make the effort.
Permit me to say here, in justice to the Judge
that this is not intended, in the slightest degree,
to even intimate that he is tainted with An
archism. That thought is as horrible to him
as to myself—or any other citizen of Georgia.
I am only showing where his mode of reason
ing leads us, when pressed to its last analysis.
Let us here “cut across lots,” and reach a
conclusion a little more quickly. In 1906, Con
gress passed a law known as “The Pure Food
Law.” A few months ago the Government was
led, in some way, to believe that one of Atlam
By DR. H. P. FITCH.
ta’s most honorable citizens was violating that
law; and instituted a long and expensive law
suit against him, costing tens of thousands of
dollars on each side. What a thousand pities
it is that that the defendant in that case did
not live this learned exponent of the law to de
fend him. What a short, simple and effective
plea he could have made. Hear it.
“May it please your Honor, the Court, we
shall not enter into the question in this case,
whether the defendant has or has not violated
the pure food law. Our purpose is to attack the
validity—the “powers” of the law itself. That
great lawyer and statesman, the immortal
Thomas Jefferson, laid down this great prin
ciple of law, namely: “All just laws derive
their powers from the consent of the gov
erned.”
“May it please the Court, the governed in
this case is the defendant. To this law he has
never given his consent. It has never been
submitted to him, and without his consent this
law has no powers over him. We therefore
move that the case be dismissed, at the ex
pense of the Government for costs.”
Anybody can understand how promptly the
case would have been dismissed, and the Wash
ington attorneys gone back home, wiser men.
We have an Act of Congress prohibiting the
importation and use of opium and cocaine—a
law precisely of the same nature as our prohi
bition law. Alcohol is classed among those same
poisons and thousands of people are using both
of the former as well as the the latter. If Judge
Russell’s logic is sound, that law is absolutely
powerßss. It should have first been submitted
to the States, the units of the Nation. By them
to the counties, as a local option measure. Then
to the townships—then to each individual, who
only constitutes “the governed.” Such is
Judge Russell’s logic.
It only remains now to show his inconsisten
cy. I confess that at this feature of his plat
form I stand amazed ; and I approach it with
feelings of genuine sadness. Surely, the Judge
coul dnot have given sufficient consideration
to his utterances or he would not have put him
self in a position of such inconsistency. Incon
sistency, I am pained to say, as heartless and
cruel as it is plainly manifest. And the strang
est part of it is he appeals to the fathers and
mothers of Georgia to assist him in perpetrat
ing this glaring and cruel inconsistency. Hear
what he says: “I want to make an appeal to
the fathers and mothers, to the young men who
are frank and straightforward and honest and
not sneaks and hypocrites.” An appeal for
what? For help to carry out my plan to slay
Statewide prohibition in Georgia. As Cassius
drove the dagger to the heart of Caesar, so I
propose to assassinate Statewide prohibition,
and put upon its throne a law by which your
boys may drink and become drunkards without
crucifying their manhood and becoming sneaks
and hypocrites. I know their honor and man
hood will keep them away from the blind tigers
and unlawful for them to drink and become
drunkards. Then, when they have become law
fully made drunkards, through the very temp
tations that I myself have put in their way,
what do I propose to do with these same
poor drunkards whom I have helped
to make such? Now, hear him again:
“Let a law be passed by which any
husband or father who is able to work and who,
on account of drunkenness, fails to support his
wife and children, shall be punished by impris
onment from one to twelve months, without the
alternative of a fine.”
There you have it in all its glaring, cruel in
consistency. Surelv all the demons in the in
fernal regions combined could not have devised
a scheme more horrible.
(Continued on Page 6.)
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