If, for the public good, I should ever be called upon to pass judgment upon any of the actions that are the result of the beliefs of my neighbors and friends, and I, with my fellow jurors, deemed these actions subversive of the public good, I could unite with my fellows in suppressing these actions. But this would be done with a perfectly open heart, without malice, without censure even, without any presumption, without any interference with the _principle_ I have sought clearly to state and exemplify. It would be done as the result of our united judgment upon a matter of public policy--not a fixed, established assurance of right or wrong, but as a matter wherein, for the benefit of others, we regarded the restriction of an inherent and God-given freedom a justifiable act.
Herein, to my mind, lies the power of the argument of the political prohibitionists. They seek to prohibit men from the exercise of their undoubted right to manufacture and sell alcoholic stimulants--their undoubted right provided it could be done without injury to the bodies and souls of their fellow-beings. No one can claim an inherent right to injure his neighbor willfully and deliberately. No one can claim a God-given right to transgress God's own laws. Those who believe in God believe He has ordained laws for the government of all that He has created. The interpretation of the "moral law" as handed down to us in the Scriptures is, in the main, similar in all creeds in Christendom, and practically the same among all who, without so-called creeds, believe in the brotherhood of man.
Upon those points wherein men have conscientiously differed there have been instances where the ruling majority has restricted or taken away the rights of the minority to put their beliefs into practice, because the consensus of opinion has decided such acts to be contrary to public policy or public good, but it does not necessarily follow that the interference was based upon incontrovertible ideas of right or wrong.
My contention is that no man or body of men has the inherent right to interfere with the beliefs and acts of their fellow-beings who are sincerely and conscientiously seeking to love God with all the heart and their neighbors as themselves, but in all countries where the majority is supposed to rule it is expedient to submit to prevailing customs and laws unless conscience imperatively demands otherwise. In any case, however, it does not necessarily follow that the majority is always in the right and the minority in the wrong, especially in religious matters.