here is no such thing as liberty. It is
plainly impossible to find any right more individual or intimate. To say
that a man has a right to a vote, but not a right to a voice about the
choice of his dinner, is like saying that he has a right to his hat but
not a right to his head.

Prohibition, therefore, plainly violates the rights of man, if there are
any rights of man. What its supporters really mean is that there are
none. And in suggesting this, they have all the advantages that every
sceptic has when he supports a negation. That sort of ultimate
scepticism can only be retorted upon itself, and we can point out to
them that they can no more prove the right of the city to be oppressive
than we can prove the right of the citizen to be free. In the primary
metaphysics of such a claim, it would surely be easier to make it out
for a single conscious soul than for an artificial social combination.
If there are no rights of men, what are the rights of nations? Perhaps a
nation has no claim to self-government. Perhaps it has no claim to good
government. Perhaps it has no claim to any sort of government or any
sort of independence. Perhaps they will say _that_ is not implied in the
Declaration of Independence. But without going deep into my reasons for
believing in natural rights, or rather in supernatural rights (and
Jefferson certainly states them as supernatural), I am content here to
note that a man's treatment of his own body, in relation to traditional
and ordinary opportunities for bodily excess, is as near to his
self-respect as social coercion can possibly go; and that when that is
gone there is nothing left. If coercion applies to that, it applies to
everything; and in the future of this controversy it obviously will
apply to everything. When I was in America, people were already applying
it to tobacco. I never can see why they should not apply it to talking.
Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes with beer; and what is more
relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and tobacco. Talking often
drives a man to drink, both negatively in the form of nagging and
positively in the form of bad company. If the American Puritan is so
anxious to be a _censor morum_, he should obviously put a stop to the
evil communications that really corrupt good manners. He should
reintroduce the Scold's Bridle among the other Blue Laws for a land of
blue devils. He should gag all gay deceivers and plausible cynics; he
should cut o