sale of alcoholic
drinks is recognized as such. The supporters of state prohibition
declare that it is morally wrong to sanction a trade out of which
springs so much misery; the supporters of local option and high license,
admitting and fighting against all this misery and crime, declare that
it is morally wrong to shut one's eyes to the uncontrolled sales and the
political corruption under state-wide prohibition. The strongest
arguments for limiting by law the hours of labor for women and children
have always been based on moral principles; and all arguments for
political reform hark back to the Ten Commandments. One has the
strongest of all arguments if he can establish a moral right and wrong
in the question.

The difficulty comes in establishing the right and wrong, for there are
many cases where equally good people are fighting dead against each
other. The question of prohibition, as we have just seen, is one of
those cases; the slavery question was a still more striking one. From
before the Revolution the feeling that slavery was morally wrong slowly
but steadily gained ground in the North, until from 1850 it became more
and more a dominant and passionate conviction.[1] Yet in the South,
which, as we must now admit, bred as many men and women of high devotion
to the right, this view had only scattered followers. On both sides
tradition and environment molded the moral principle. In arguing,
therefore, one must not be too swift in calling on heaven to witness to
the right; we must recognize that mortal vision is weak, and that some
of the people whom we are fighting are borne on by principles as
sincerely held to be righteous as our own.

Nevertheless, a man must always hold to that which to him seems right,
and fight hard against the wrong, tolerantly and with charity, but with
unclouded purpose. In politics there are still in this country many
occasions when the only argument possible is based on moral right. The
debauching of public servants by favors or bribes, whether open or
indirect, injustice of all sorts, putting men who are mentally or
morally unfit into public office, oppression of the poor or unjust
bleeding of the rich, stirring up class or race hatred, are all evils
from which good citizens must help to save the republic; and wherever
such evils are found the moral argument is the only argument worthy of a
decent citizen.

By far the most numerous of arguments of policy, however, are those
which d