Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-07-17

fetal, and tend to promote the great.
cause of human progress.
This is confessedly an age of mercen-
airy impulses, and the whole business
world has become great battlefield
upon which men contend for wealth, the
old fashioned notions of honesty and
business integrity are too often lost sight
of, where large sums of money are held
up as tempting prize to be obtained by
disregarding them.
In our aspect, our prohibitory law has
tendency to make the sale of intoxi-
eating liquors, in this State, exceeding
ly profitable to a man of means and
standing, who wants short business,
very lucrative in its income, with an adj
vantage over small dealers who might
interfere, were not the stringent provis-
ions of the law such as to give mo-
nopoly to a wealthy and Influential class.
The profits of trade will generally regu-
late themselves in accordance with the
laws of supply and demand, and when
the avenues to any business are open
and free, its emoluments are kept with
in bounds by the competitions of trade;
but under the law of this State the sale
of liquor is prohibited and no one can
engage in it unless he has not only the
requisite capital to do his business, but
also financial standing, by means of
which he can keep the officers of the
law at distance, until he can make his
pile and retire.
The common mode of conducting this
business is, to open drinking saloon on
some principal thoroughfare, fit it up in
tasteful and elegant style, buy the nee
essary goods, which are kept principally
in some other place, and add to the cost
thereof profit of from three to five
hundred per cent. The law officers are
supposed to be Vigilant; smaller dealers
are crushed out, and customers flock to
the bar and pay exorbitant prices, feel
ing that they must pay for the goods
and the risk taken in the business, and
the fifty or hundred dollars per diem
rapidly increase the dealers substance.
But the law is outraged, the authority
of the State is brought into contempt,
and prosecutions are commenced against
the dealer, and convictions rapidly fol-
low in Justice Court, and he appeals
in every case. Six months roll around
and the County Court approves the con-
victions and the respondent pays his five
hundred or a thousand dollars for what
he calls his license in a monopoly that
has netted him more than ten fold gain
on the ordinary profits of trade. The
officers of justice feel that they are max
ing progress, and they make complaints
for a second conviction, and, as before,
the dealer appeals in every case, and an
other six months of lucrative trade in
the County Court, and second convic-
tions are perfected, and from one to two
thousand dollars more are paid to the
State for licensees and from increased
business, the net gains to the dealer are
larger than before.
But this year of unparalleled prosper
ity must bring a change, for no dealer of
acuteness runs the risk OF a third con-
viction, and he sells out his business to
his clerk, relative or friend, and it goes
through the same routine of trade, APP
peals, fines and immense profits under
another name for another year, and so
it may continue indefinitely.
Now this method of doing business
demonstrates that law cannot solve this
temperance problem. 1t is a moral ques-
ton, and must be solved through moral
agencies, and we can hope for practical
reform only as we advance the moral
tone of the community. The church,
the Sabbath school and the precepts and
teachings of a correct public sentiment,
must be the great instrumentalities
through which public morals are to be
raised, and vice, crime, and intemper-
ance overcome and demolished. The
criminal laws can only be made avail
able in the grand result as they reflect
the public sentiment and supplement the
action of moral reform.
Another result which we have occa-
sionaly referred to heretofore, is the
power of this public disregard of law in
educating the people into a contempt of
all law and restraint. We have often
seen that when men became accustomed
to square their actions by their own
notions of expediency when opposed to
the law of the land, their is weaken
ing of public respect for authority, and
so long as questions of moral reform are
left to the care of legislatures and courts
we must expect felonies to be compound
ed and laws to be disregarded.