would revive the opprobrium which public sentiment always adjudges to a monopoly established by law, rendered all the more intense by the offensive nature of the business thus supported by the sanction and protection of the Legislature.

Hon. Judge Pitman,' of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, speaking of the liquor law of that State, adopted in 1855, says:

It has stood the sharpest test of judicial criticism. In the hundreds of cases that have been taken up on questions of law before the highest tribunal of the State, there has been found only a single and incidental effect, which was, however, substantially remedied by the general provisions of law. Nor has the statute been found difficult to work intelligently and efficiently. Its enemies being judges, it is a well-constructed machine.

Ex-Governor Van Zandt, of Rhode Island, at a temperance meeting at Rocky Point, in 1877, gave the following account of how he became a prohibitionist:

I sat in your Senate chamber as its temporary presiding officer. By education, by association, I was naturally conservative. I doubted the influence and benefit of so-called "sumptuary" legislation, because I had been brought up in that school. But, my friends, in one moment, . . . when the so-called prohibitory law of this State was before our General Assembly for its action, my mind acted. It was a tie vote upon the postponement of the law until the January session, and the clerk handed me the roll of the House, for which I was entirely and utterly unprepared, and announced that it was a tie vote, and the whole thing marvelously and magically and wondrously rested upon me. The burden was pressed on my shoulders. My mind moved with almost inconceivable rapidity, and a train of thought something like this passed before me like a weird panorama. I looked back to the days of my youth, and I saw those who started out with life full of bloom and promise and happiness fallen at my side, the victims of this great and terrible Moloch; I saw society disorganized and deranged; I saw men who honestly and with Christian faithfulness lifted their hearts and aspirations to God, and they were dragged down into the mud and slime and filth of corruption and degradation by this same power; I saw the fairest happiness of woman soiled and ruined; I saw little children pauperized and ignorant and degraded. And it occurred to me, sir, What has produced all this? What is the

"The State and Alcohol," p. 292.

leading cause that has created it? And there was only one thing that I could see. Every thing pointed right at this one element in social life, intoxicating spirits; and I made up my mind, if by my vote I could experimentally, at any rate, test that law, I would cast it against the postponement of that law. And I did so, and never regretted it. By that vote, ladies and gentlemen, I stand or I fall.

EX-GOVERNOR BROWN ON PROHIBITION.'

Hon. B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, formerly Governor of that State, and also United States Senator, and candidate for Vice-President upon the ticket with Horace Greeley, in 1872, published a letter of much political significance, in which he says:

The way to make sure of all the ground which is gained in any great moral revolution is to destroy the agencies of immorality, reaction, and seduction as you go along. Leave no armed foe behind. In this matter of Temperance Reform it is essential. Close up the saloons that invite to the social glass. Make it unlawful to publicly vend intoxicating liquor under any pretense. Send the dram-shop keepers at once to making a living in other callings that are not harmful to the public. Correct public sentiment as you go along by striking examples of the reprobation it is intended thereafter to visit upon such callings. Do these things, and do them thoroughly, and of the one thousand men who have donned the red ribbon, or the blue, you will find that at the end of the year nine hundred and ninety-nine will join again in your procession, and hold the fort. But to do this requires the amending of the laws, the revision of the statutes, the correcting of local charters, the invocation, in short, of the power of the State, and that is politics. It is idle to think about it in any other light.

THE RIGHT OF PROHIBITION.?

The right of a Legislature of a State to pass prohibitory liquor laws has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. It appears that fifty years ago the Massachusetts Legislature incorporated a company to manufacture beer. It was claimed by the company in question that subsequent legislation interfering with its market for beer caused it to

From "The National Temperance Advocate."

2 Ibid.

suffer loss. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts sustained the action of the Legislature as constitutional, and an appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision, rendered in 1878 by Justice Bradley, affirmed, in very distinct and unmistakable terms, the right of a State to enact laws "prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors." It declared:

If the public safety or the public morals require the discontinuance of any manufacture or traffic, the hand of the Legislature cannot be stayed from providing for its discontinuance by any incidental inconvenience which individuals or corporations may suffer. All rights are held subject to the police power of the State.

We do not mean to say that property actually in existence, and in which the right of the owner has become vested, may be taken for the public good without due compensation. But we infer that the liquor in this case [as in a former case] was not in existence when the liquor law of Massachusetts was passed. Had the plaintiff in error relied on the existence of the property prior to the law, it behooved it to show that fact. But no such fact is shown, and no such point is taken.

The plaintiff in error takes the ground that, being a corporation, it has a right, by contract, to manufacture and sell beer forever, notwithstanding, and in spite of, any exigencies which may occur in the morals or the health of the community requiring such manufacture to cease. We do not so understand the rights of the plaintiff. The Legislature had no power to confer any such rights.

Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the extent and boundaries of the police power, and however difficult it may be to render a satisfactory definition of it, there seems to be no doubt that it does extend to the protection of the lives, health, and property of the citizens, and to the preservation of good order and the public morals. The Legislature cannot, by any contract, divest itself of the power to provide for these objects. They belong emphatically to that class of objects which demands the application of the maxim, salus populi suprema lex. And they are to be attained and provided for by such appropriate means as the legislative discretion may devise. That discretion can no more be bargained away than the power itself.

Since we have already held [in a former case] that as a measure of police regulation, looking to the preservation of public morals, a State law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors is not

repugnant to any clause of the Constitution of the United States, we see nothing in the present case that can offord any sufficient ground for disturbing the decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.

JUDGE WESTBROOK UPON THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.'

Judge Westbrook, in a charge to the Grand Jury of the Ulster County (N. Y.) Oyer and Terminer, in 1879, made a powerful arraignment of the liquor traffic, from which we quote as follows:

No practice tends more to the violation and breaking of all law than the habit of drinking. It is useless to talk about it. If you have eyes you can see it. If you have ears you can hear it. And yet, strange to say, it is almost impossible so to quicken the consciences of grand jurors that they will see that these laws which regulate the sale of liquors are enforced. Why is this so? Is this traffic beyond the law? Is this business something which the law cannot reach and cannot control? Are you a merchant? You expect to observe the law in your pursuits. Are you a farmer? You obey the mandates of the law. Every avocation everywhere is governed and controlled by the law; but, strange to say, this traffic flaunts itself right in the very teeth and eyes of justice, and justice seems to be paralyzed in its presence-paralyzed in its presence, when all the evils of this traffic are before us continually, and when we know that of all the evils with which the land is afflicted, it is the greatest curse which exists and rests upon it.

In sentencing a prisoner convicted of the crime of arson, committed under the influence of strong drink, Judge Westbrook took occasion to say:

For myself, I am prepared to say, and do say, that I am opposed to all dealing in intoxicating drinks under any and every form. The bar shall not, with my countenance, tempt men to ruin and crime, whether it be in the gilded tavern or the filthy corner grocery. Looking above for help. I pledge my official and personal action against it, and invite the cooperation and the prayers of all God-fearing men and women in the same direction.

The "Physio-Medical Recorder," of Cincinnati, in a thoughtful article, says:

1 From the "National Temperance Advocate."