The Portland daily press., 1872-06-06
The Gr0g ShOps-No. XVII,

gentleman said to me to-day:-"The dis
tinction that you draw between the prohibi-
ton to drink intoxicating liquors, and the
prohibition to sell is not very obvious to me,
since practically, they are about the same
thing. If nobody can sell, very few can
drink, so that in effect, the Maine Law is
prohibition to drink" But in fact, replied,
the distinction, as matter of legal regula-
tion, is broad and obvious. In every civilized
country, the law deals with trade-with every
trade-freely and boldly, precisely as the gem
eral good may seem to require: but at the
same time, the law interferes very rarely and
carefully with personal habits. The law
often seeks to reach habits in that way.
In 1888 when the cholera first visited this
country, it was thought important that the
people. should abstain from green corn and Gu
cumbers, but they were not forbidden to buy
and use them, the trade in them only, was
forbidden; and in the large cities, those ar
ticles were vigorously excluded from the mar
kets, by the authorities. John Stuart Mill
made to me the same objection that you men
ton. He said if men have right to drink
what they like and as much as they like, if
they do not injure other people thereby, then
it follows that they have a right to demand
that places should be allowed where they can
obtain the drink.
He forgot the important qualification,
that he had mentioned but a mopment be-
fore ;-"ifthey donoti injure other people there
BY" That precise point is the one on which
the Maine law is based. The liquor traffic
does injure other people; it Injuries every
body-the non-drinkers as well as the drink
ers; it imposes enormous burdens of taxation
upon society, of which every man has to pay
his share, they who do not drink, as well as
those who do drink. An infinite misery is
brought into thousands of households by it,
where the fathers and mothers do not drink.
OF all the evils which result from the grog
shops, by far the larger share falls upon
and those who do not drink, the helpless wo-
men children.
The law has therefore a substantial b1sis
of right, when it steps in authoritatively, be-
tween the liquor traffic and these millions of
people who suffer from it. The law says to
the drinker, ''You are not forbidden to drink
whatyou like and as much as you like provided
you do not interfere with the rights of other
people. The grog shops inflict dreadful
mischief upon society and fill the land with
beggers, paupers and criminals, and they can
not be tolerated. If you can devise some
mode by which you can obtain your drink,
that will be free of that objection, the law
will not interfere"
How many of the readers of the PRESS re-
member Maine as it was in the old time,
when every waterfall in the State was encum-
bered with saw-mills, busy in cutting up the
magnificent forests which covered the land.
Night and day, in winter and summer, those
voraclous machines were at work, until the
pines have almost entirely disappeared from
| our vast territory: and the people are no
| richer but rather the poorer, for all that
wealth of timber and all that vast
amount of labor Why? because the
whole-timber and labor went down their
| throats in the shape of ruml In those old
| days we had five distilleries in Portland run
ming night and day; and at the same time our
4 wharyes would sometimes display acres of
| puncheons of West India rum, just landed
from the vessels which had brought it home
! in exchange for the outward cargoes of lum-
Der. And this vast quantity of alcohol would
pass off into all the channels OF trade and
penetrate into every part of the State. In
all the State there was not town, village O.
hamlet that was not reached by it; there was
not farmhouse so remote as to be beyond its
influence, and the consequences could be seen
everywhere ;-dilapidated houses and barns
doors off the hinges; old hats and petticoats
| in the broken windows; fences all down
about the farm; pigs in the garden, cattle in
the corn, chased out by ragged women all
down at the heel and shock-headed children
| barefooted, who ought to have been at school
and would have been, only the roof of the