Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 4

[241] acts which no legislative assembly, no representative body, not the people themselves, though in entire agreement, have a right to do or sanction; and they are those acts from which necessarily and inevitably flow more of evil than good, more of damage than recompense, more of wretchedness than solace, more of peril than security, and which lead to a violation of those physical and moral laws which are binding upon the whole human race. The Legislature of Massachusetts may not find, therefore, in any amount of opposition to the prohibitory law, any warrant or justification for passing a license law as a substitute. Even if it shall feel constrained to repeal the former, on the ground of the impracticability of its enforcement, it has no moral, and therefore should exercise no legal, right to enact the latter, thus throwing around the most demoralizing of all licenses the sanction of the Commonwealth.

When, by the passage of a local-option law in 1871, the question of License or No License was submitted to popular vote, Mr. Garrison cast his first (and only) ballot since that he had given for Amasa Walker in 1834. He did not¹ favor the formation of a Prohibitory political party, however, and, after Mr. Phillips's defeat as the candidate of the Prohibition and Labor parties for Governor in the fall of 1870, he expressed his disbelief in third-party² movements, in an article on ‘Moral and Political Action.’ Time had only confirmed the objections to them first³ evoked by the Liberty Party.

I trust not to be misapprehended. I am not for divorcing⁴ moral from political action, nor do I deprecate an earnest interest in the results of our State and national elections. Perhaps there are few who watch those results with more vigilance than I do; or who despise more heartily the hollow outcry that men are not to be made good—i. e., better citizens—by legislative enactments. But I fail to see the wisdom or expediency of adding a third wheel to a mill when there is not sufficient water-power to turn the two great wheels which are already in position, which are ample to do all the work required, and which only need a greater supply of water to move with celerity and efficiency in accordance with the law of gravitation. This was the conviction I cherished throughout the anti-slavery struggle, and it remains unchanged, unless in growing more profound.