New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-11-13
PROHIBITION IN MASSACHUSETTS.

There seems 10 Do go0d deal Oh uouD1
whether the next Massachusetts Legislature
will be Prohibitory or Anti-Prohibitory. 1t is
always difficult to classify representatives who
have no fixod opinions, and who shift from
this side to that Of a question, just as the
popular feeling may happen to influence them.
This has usually been the Opprobrium OF tenn
perance legislation. Laws have been enacted,
not because those who made them believed
either in their principle, their necessity, OF
their probable efficacy, but simply because 1t
was supposed that majority. or rather
minority equivalent to o majority, desired
their enactment. 1t appears to be tho
general opinion that the Massachusetts
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 game at
cards Temperance has its moral as well az
its economical and physiological side, and 1t Is
always of bad augury when men IN power
undertake to handle moral questions In self
ish and venal spirit. One thing Is certain,
and that is the incficacy Of the Massachusetts
statute rs 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 III open and exasperating
defiance of law. The statute remains as
sort of public protest against the trade. That
is all. and that is not much.
Those who oppose the law have right to
a hearing and to fair consideration Of their
objections 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
domiciles which TO free people are peculiarly
distastefrll, and we may say odious. In Bos-
ton, and probably in other cities, great par
TALLY has been shown by the State constabu-
larry, the shops kept by the poor being ran
sacked while the large hotels and the stores
of the wholesale dealers have been passed by.
II is openly charged, and with some show of
truth, that in many cases the State cOnsta5les
have been bribed to overlook illicit sales, or
to make complaints for "a first Olfense, with
the smallest penalty, although they had
knowledge of previous offenses and convic-
tons. II is further charged that the law has
been used as the instrument of private malice.
Nor is there anything essentially Improbable
in the assertion.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, as in most
other States the evil of intemperance con
tinues, entaing manifold neutrality-suspicious.,
domestic misery. the estrangement of husband
and wife. the unhappness of children, disease
and death. In comparison with moral per
suasion the law which was expected to do SO
much has done nothing. Men here and there
are reformed, not by telling them that they
shall not drink, but by convincing them that
inebriety is a fatal folly which in the end
must render their lives miserable and useless.
1t ia a curious fact that q reformed man rarely
cares anything about the Law, or is able TO
maintain any great interest in Prohibition.
He knows well enough that he must be a law
unto himself, and that in his days of insanity,
law or no law. he had no difficulty in finding
the poison if he only had the money to pay
for it. To the young, if the traffic could be
entirely abolished, the way Of sobriety would
be easier; but no legislation will reform the
hardened drnker. He must be reached by
methods unknown to politicians; but known,
thank God to a small band Of earnest and
devoted philanthropists