One of the issues which came up during the argument over adopting the prohibition amendment was whether or not the owners of breweries and distilleries – or of owners of large stocks of already-brewed or already-distilled liquor – should be compensated for their economic losses caused by prohibition. Early versions of the 18th amendment provided for compensation, but it was eventually dropped in favor of a one year delay between successful ratification and implementation of prohibition.
At least one of the arguments against compensation was somewhat disturbing.
“Less holy was the breathtakingly disingenuous no-compensation argument Representative Daniel E. Garrett of Texas had offered when Congress first debated the Hobson Amendment. After the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, he said, four billion dollars’ worth of ‘property’ had been rendered valueless. ‘I doubt if any man deplores more than myself that the institution of slavery ever existed in this country,’ Garrett claimed, and ‘as it has been with human slavery, so shall it be with alcoholic liquors.’ Therefore, he argued, the liquor and beer interests ‘must pocket their loss just as our fathers had to pocket theirs when you took their niggers away from them. That is all there is to it.’”
(–Last Call, by Daniel Okrent).
This should, perhaps, be a warning of where precedent can take you.
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