CHAPTER VIII
“THE FEAR FOR THEE, MY COUNTRY”
THE Prohibitionists contend, when we who are but human suggest that the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act should be changed, that the law is the law; and now that these are part of our statutes, they are there to stay, that they must not be tampered with or altered in any way; that it is up to every good American to accept them, not to complain, not to make any utterance which would be apt to disturb the sweet peace these laws are intended to bring to us.
They forget that it is they themselves who saw fit to change our laws. Are they bad Americans because they did so? When the shoe is on the other foot.... But the analogy is so obvious that there can scarcely be any necessity of arguing the matter.
I have written, in a previous chapter, about a few of the laws which are disobeyed. Am I a bad American, a poor sport, for instance, because I refuse to believe in capital punishment? It is the law of my State that a man found guilty of murder in the first degree must go to the electric chair. Called to serve upon a criminal jury, I plainly say that I do not believe in capital punishment. I am excused. My conscientious scruples are taken into consideration. I imagine that only a small percentage of us believe in sending a man to his death, even for so serious a crime as murder; yet the statute abides. We continue to send men to the gallows, or the chair—though some States have been wise enough to abolish the barbarous habit.
I have conscientious scruples about trying a man for violation of the Volstead Act; for it would hardly be possible for me to convict a fellow citizen who had been spied upon by a detective in a bathing-suit, as I read not long ago that one man had been. I am against the manner in which evidence is obtained; and I would distrust, even under oath, statements of witnesses who hired themselves to the Government as plain-clothes men to visit beaches and bathing pavilions in order to discover some unlucky devil in the act of taking a nip from a pint bottle after he was shivering from his plunge in the ocean. There is a human element in such a case. I may be too emotional for perfect jury service. Granted. But that is something beyond my control. I cannot change my temperament. I loath the spectacle of one part of the population striving to discover something evil in the other part. It seems unnecessary to me. Peeping Toms are a far greater menace than the people peeped at. I do not feel morally bound to respect a law which so many respectable fellow citizens likewise disrespect. I think stupid legislation is an abomination; that the world would be a happier place were it not for censorship of morals and manners. I think that most people instinctively know the difference between right and wrong, and that, through education, they can be made to understand and see all those little differences and shades which sometimes confound us.
There are divorce laws upon our Statutes which millions of people violently and bitterly oppose. Is a good Roman Catholic a bad American citizen because his conscience refuses to let him condone the rulings of our Courts in divorce trials?
On April 24, 1922, in St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Emmerton, Maryland, a sermon was preached by the Reverend W. A. Crawford-Frost on the subject of “Obeying a Disreputable Law.”
The minister took as his text the verses from Esther 1:7 and 8: “And they gave them drink in vessels of gold, (the vessels being diverse one from another,) and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king. And the drinking was according to the law; none did compel: for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man’s pleasure.”
He said in part: