The Fallacy is Here.

It is assumed that because alcohol may be manufactured and sold for some purposes, it follows that it therefore must be permitted for page 40 all. This is not so. Some things are beneficial in every form and way in which they are appropriated to the service of mankind. Other things have uses for which they are necessary and beneficial, and again their appropriation may be disastrous to society; and when they become so, society, through the law, must protect itself. All laws restrict personal liberty when that much-abused term is used in the sense of license. I do not think it important to call further attention to the ipse dixit of theorists whose conclusions have been contradicted by experience and rejected by good sense wherever mankind have existed under the dominion of law. But the constitutionality of prohibitory or restrictive laws in the States has been settled by all the courts of the country; and I have previously endeavored to show that the right to license one man is the right to restrict all others, and implies the right to totally restrict when the public good requires. The general proposition is that the States have this power; that it should be extended and exercised over the whole country in the only way in which it effectually can be, by an amendment of the Constitution of the country giving concurrent power to the nation to make the prohibition general and efficient whenever isolated States shall fail.

I desire to cite a few sentences from the opinions of