Smyrna times., 1873-11-26
NO. 800
Prohibition in Massachusetts.

There seems to be a good deal of doubt
whether the next Massachusetts Legislature
will be Prohibitory oraAnti- Prohibitory. 1t is
always difficult to classify Representatives who
have no fixed opinions, and VIM shift from this
side to that OF question. just :asthe popular
feeling may happen to inauencsi them. This
has usually been the opprObrium of temperance
legislation. Laws have been enacted, hot be-
cause those who made them believed either In
their principle, their necessity, or their proba-
bic efficacy, but simply because it was supposed
that majority, or rather a minority equivalent
to a majority, desired their enactment. 1t an.
pears to be the general opinion that the Mas
sachusettg law will be modified, but nobody
seems to comprehend exactly the form which
the modification will take. 1t is to be regretted
that this great question should be dealt with
much as men deal with a game at cards,
Temperance has its moral as well as its econ
omlcal and physiological side, and il is always
| OF bad augury when men in power undertake
| to handle moral questions in a selfish and venal
spirit. One thing is certain, and that is the
inefhcacy of the Massachusetts statute as at
present administered. 1t may stop the sale of
spirits in the smaller country villages, but that
sale goes on in the large towns and the cities
in open and exaspersting defiance of law. The
statute remains as a sort of public protest
against the trade. That is all, and that is not
much
| Those who oppose the law have right to
| q hearing and to fair consideration of their OBJ
jections and criticisms. What they mainly
complain of is partial enforcement In some
places the seizures are considerable; in others
there are no seizures at all Occasionally there
has been one of those invasions of private dom
iciles which to free people are peculiarly dis
tasteful, and We may say odious. In Boston,
and probably in other cities. great partiality
has been shown by the State constabulary, the
shops kept by the poor being ransacked while
the large hotels and the stores of the whole.
sale dealers have been passed by. 1t is openly
charged, and with some show Of truth, that in
many cases the State constables have been
bribed to overlook illicit sales, or to make COM
plants for first offense, with the smallest
penalty. although they had knowledge of pre-
vious offences and convictions Ii rs further
charged that the law has been used as the in
! strument of private malice. Nor is there any.
thing essentially improbable in the assertion.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, as in most
other States, the evil OF intemperauce contin-
, ues, entailing manifold miseries-pauperism
! domestic misery, the estrangement of husband
and wife, the unhappiness of children, disease
: and death. 10 comparison with moral persua-
sion, the law which was expected to do so much
: has done nothing. Men here and there are
3 reformed, not by telling them shat they shall
. not drink, but by convincing them that ins-
briefly Is fatal folly which In the end must
t render their lives miserable and useless. It il
D curious fact that reformed man rarely cares
e anything about the Law, or is able to main
$ tain any great interest ia Prohibition He
n knows well enough that be must be a law unto
J, himself, and that in his days of insanity, Law
e or no law, he had no difficulty in finding the
4 poison if he only had the money to pay for it.
e To the young, if the traffic could be entirely
e abolished, :he way of sobriety would be easier;
hut no legislation will reform the hardened
drinker. He must be reached by methods un
e known to politicians but known, thank God.
= TO small band Of earnest and devoted philan
e thropists N y Tribune. -