"
Hence, it is not necessary that the private citizen drum up evidence,
swear out warrants and prosecute liquor drug-stores and joints. That
is what officials are elected and paid for and if officers fail to abate
these liquor venders, then the duty devolves back on the patriotic citizen.
This decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, carried
up from Vermont, Spaulding vs. Preston, 21 p. 9, towit: "If any member
of the body politic instead of putting his property to honest uses,
converts it into an engine to injure the life, liberty, health, morals, peace
or property of others, he can, I apprehend, sustain no action against one
who withholds or destroys his property with the bona fide intention of
preventing injury to himself or others."
In Kansas every liquor selling place is not only a declared nuisance,
but a constitutional outlaw. And in the case from Pennsylvania
where a private individual had abated a nuisance, the court held: "We
consider it also well settled, as is claimed by this defendant, that a common
nuisance may be removed, or, in legal language, abated by any individual.
Any man, says Lord Hale, may justify the removal of a common
nuisance, either by land or by Nyater, because every man is concerned in
it."
It is not only the privilege of the patriotic citizen to abate a dangerous
nuisance but it is commendable. Bishop on Criminal Law, paragraph
1081, says: "This doctrine (of abatement of a public nuisance by an
individual) is an expression of the better instincts of our natures, which
lead men to watch over and shield one another from harm.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187