George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

Every man must be responsible for the consequences of his own conduct. The law does not undertake to shield any man from ridicule, who does ridiculous things, nor to support for any man a factitious dignity or reputation, of which his daily life deprives him, or a respectability that is inconsistent with the nature of his occupation. If his occupation be disgraceful, especially if it be immoral (and no occupation is truly disgraceful which is not immoral), he must share in that disgrace. The law cannot shield, and does not undertake to shield, either distillers, or gamblers, or slave-traders, from the disgrace necessarily attendant on their profession. It shields the profession, it says to the individual, "You may follow it if you choose;" but it does not say to every other individual, " You shall not proclaim it disgraceful;" it does not undertake to make the profession honorable. In this respect there is a power higher than the law, the power of an enlightened public opinion, the moral sense of the community; a power that, in spite of the law protecting the traffic in ardent spirits, stamps that traffic an immorality. No one disputes these principles in the case of the common dram-seller. My learned friend the Attorney-General himself would never be caught arguing in favor of the keeper of a common groggery, on the ground that the law protects his profession, and therefore that man is a libeller who exposes him in that profession to ridicule.

Indeed, if I had been accused of attacking a common dram-seller, the idea of a prosecution for libel would have been hooted at. The rich distiller is shielded, it is notorious, while the middling retailer and the common dram-seller are the lawful scorn of the community. Yet there is no comparison as to the amount of guilt. Of the two, the dram-seller is least obnoxious to public indignation; because, of the two employments, that of the distiller is on the largest scale injurious to his fellow-beings. He is as much more guilty, as the forger is than the man who merely circulates the bills. When you have discovered a gang of counterfeiters, you have accomplished far 'more than you could possibly do in arresting all the individuals in the country engaged in merely circulating the counterfeit money. What you want to come at is the source of the evil; the place where, and the men by whom, the counterfeits are issued. Would that employment be thought any less guilty, or any more respectable, than the business of those who here and there are passing the counterfeit money in society? Is, then, the business of distilling any less guilty, or any more respectable, than the business of dram-selling, that the former can be shielded from attack, while the latter is the game of the community 1 The source, the fountain of intemperance is what We aim at; the place where, and the men by whom, the pestilential poison of strong drink is manufactured and poured through the world.