The "liquor interest" is rapidly growing into a moral and physical blight to our country. On one hand it corrupts and endangers our political liberties. On the other hand it bears down true hearts, bright minds, strong bodies, and throws them as wrecks upon society. No person so deeply knows and understands the extent of this blight as the physician. And no one so well as he understands that tampering with mild drinks įs concentrated folly, and that any attempt at "regulating" the traffic is little short of public idiocy. Corporations have but one "regulation" against the encroachments of yellow fever. They do not license certain vessels to import it from New Orleans and Grenada to Vicksburg and Memphis, and so make the disease eminently "respectable." Quarantine regulations make a clean sweep of it, and protect the healthy citizens by the total prohibition of infected vessels. In a like sweeping manner should it protect decent people and the rising generation from the fatal liquor contamination. While humanly caring for the diseased bodies and souls of those now stricken down with drink, let the fatal supply be stopped by a moral quarantine that shall enforce total prohibition.

Hon. Thomas M. Cooley, LL.D., one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Michigan, and Jay Professor of Law in the Michigan University, in his great work on "Constitutional Limitations," now the leading standard authority on such questions, says:

1

Those statutes which regulate or altogether prohibit the sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage have also been, by some persons, supposed to conflict with the Federal Constitution. Such of these, however, as assume to regulate only, and to prohibit sales by other persons than those who should be licensed by the public authorities, have not suggested any serious question of constitutional power. They are but the ordinary police regulations, such as the State may make in respect to all classes of trade or employment. But those which undertake altogether to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage have been assailed as violating express provisions of the national Constitution, and also as subversive of fundamental rights, and therefore not within the grant of legislative power.

That legislation of this kind was void, so far as it affected imported liquors, or such as might be introduced from one State into another, because in conflict with the power of Congress over commerce, was strongly urged in the license cases before the Supreme Court of the United States;

Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1878, pp. 725, etc.

but that view did not obtain the assent of the court. The majority of the court expressed the opinion-which, however, was obiter in those cases—that the introduction of imported liquors into a State, and their sale in the original packages as imported, could not be forbidden, because to do so would be to forbid what Congress, in its regulation of commerce, and in the levy of imports, had permitted; but it was conceded by all, that when the original package was broken up for use or for retail by the importer, and also when the commodity had passed from his hands into the hands of a purchaser, it ceased to be an import or a part of foreign commerce, and thereby became subject to the laws of the State, and might be taxed for State purposes, and the sale regulated by the State like any other property. It was also decided in these cases that the power of Congress to regulate commerce between the States did not exclude regulations by the States, except so far as they might come in conflict with those established by Congress; and that, consequently, as Congress had not undertaken to regulate commerce in liquors between the States, a law of New Hampshire could not be held void which punished the sale, in that State, of gin purchased in Boston and sold in New Hampshire, notwithstanding the sale was in the cask in which it was imported, but by one not licensed by the selectmen.

It would seem from the views expressed by the several members of the court in these cases, that the State laws known as Prohibitory Liquor Laws, the purpose of which is to prevent altogether the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks as a beverage, so far as legislation can accomplish that object, cannot be held void as in conflict with the power of Congress to regulate commerce, and to levy imposts and duties. And in several it has been held that the fact that such laws may tend to prevent or may absolutely preclude the fulfillment of contracts previously made, is no objection to their validity. Any change in the police laws, or indeed in any other laws, might have a like consequence.

The same laws have also been sustained when the question of conflict with State constitutions, or with general fundamental principles, has been varied. They are looked upon as police regulations established by the Legisla ture for the prevention of intemperance, pauperism, and crime, and for the abatement of nuisances. It has also been held competent to declare the liquor kept for sale as a nuisance, and to provide legal processes for its condemnation and destruction, and to seize and condemn the building occupied as a dramshop on the same ground. And it is only where, in framing such legislation, care has not been taken to observe those principles of protection which surround the persons and dwellings of individuals, securing them against unreasonable searches and seizures, and giving them a right to trial before condemnation, that the courts have felt at liberty to declare

that it exceeded the proper province of police regulation. Perhaps there is no instance in which the power of the Legislature to make such regulations as may destroy the value of property, without compensation to the owner, appears in a more striking light than in the case of these statutes. The trade in alcoholic drinks being lawful, and the capital employed in it being fully protected by law, the Legislature then steps in and, by an enactment based on general reasons of public utility, annihilates the traffic, destroys altogether the employment, and reduces to a nominal value the property on hand. Even the keeping of that, for the purposes of sale, becomes a criminal offense; and, without any change whatever in his own conduct or employment, the merchant of yesterday becomes a criminal of to-day, and the very building in which he lives and conducts the business, which to that moment was lawful, becomes the subject of legal proceedings, if the statute shall so declare, and liable to be proceeded against for a forfeiture. A statute which can do this must be justified upon the highest reasons of public benefit; but, whether satisfactory or not, the reasons address themselves exclusively to the legislative wisdom.

United States License. Within the last two or three years new questions have arisen in regard to these laws, and other State regulations, arising out of the imposition of burdens on various occupations by Congress, with a view to raising revenue for the national government. These burdens were imposed in the form of what are called license fees; and it has been claimed that when the party paid the fee he was thereby licensed to carry on the business, despite the regulations which the State government might make upon the subject. This view, however, has not been taken by the courts, who have regarded the Congressional legislation imposing a license fee as only a species of taxation, without the payment of which the business.could not be lawfully carried on, but which, nevertheless, did not propose to make any business lawful which was not lawful before, or to relieve it from any burdens or restrictions imposed by the regulations of the States. The licenses gave no authority, and are mere receipts for taxes.

CHAPTER VII.

RESULTS OF PROHIBITION.

THE practical efforts of prohibition have been variously

represented. The friends of license and moderation have freely disparaged prohibition as a failure, and many specious arrays of testimony have been produced to demonstrate the assertion. Attention is invited in this chapter to some incontestable facts in favor of prohibitory regimen.

It should, however, always be kept in mind that prohibitory laws will no more execute themselves than laws against murder, thieving, or any other offenses; that officers of law in sympathy with the drink traffic will not execute the law against illegal liquor selling any more than policemen in league with burglars will execute the law against burglary; that the fact that all liquor selling is not suppressed no more demonstrates the failure of prohibition than the fact that all illiteracy is not removed proves that our educational system is a failure, nor is civilization a failure because in some civilized countries there are some uncivilized people.

There are very considerable areas of people, among whom the prohibitory regimen prevails in the British Isles, in the British Dominion in North America, and in the United States, from which summaries of evidence will be presented, showing the great advantages of the situation, and the incalculable benefits enjoyed.

PROHIBITION IN THE BRITISH ISLES.

The Committee on Intemperance in their report to the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, in 1869, said:

Few are cognizant of the fact that at this time there are within the Province of Canterbury upward of one thousand parishes in which there is neither public house nor beer shop; and, in consequence, the intelligence,

morality, and comfort of the people are such as the friends of temperance would have anticipated.

The number of such districts is actually 1,454, with a population of 231,998. There is scarcely ever any arrears of rent. Infant mortality is very low as compared with other places. The tone and sense of selfrespect of the working people is much greater than of hands generally. Wages are not high, but they are enabled to secure more of the comforts and decencies of life than elsewhere, owing to the absence of drinking houses.

One rector said:

There is no public house or beer shop, I am happy to say, in this parish. Of this the advantage is great. It promotes, almost insures, sobriety and temperance. The village is very quiet and orderly. The constable's office is a sinecure; a drunken man is a very rare sight.

Another rector said:

The absence of any public house or beer shop has diminished temptation to evil. As one of my parishioners expressed it, "It has saved many a shilling." There is no case of habitual drunkenness within the parish, either man or woman.

Another said:

I have been in this parish since 1844, and have never seen any one tipsy. We have no public house or beer shop. We have had no case for the police since I came here.

Another:

We have no public house or

I have been in this parish sixteen years. beer shop. The inhabitants are all very sober. I have not, during my stay, seen one drunken man in the parish.

And another said:

Out of the twenty parishes in this district where there are no places for the sale of intoxicating drink, there is seldom a case of magisterial interference, and laboring classes are well fed and live comfortably; but in districts where public houses and beer shops exist, there is plenty of work for the police and magistrates, the cause of which is drink.

A writer in the "Edinburgh Review" for January, 1873, said:

We have seen a list of eighty-nine estates in England and Scotland where the drink traffic has been altogether suppressed with the very hap