The Cecil Whig., 1886-07-10

a convict camp, that these very gentle
men, if they would combine their intiu-
ence and their personal effort on the side
of law and order, could close up the pest
and infect the atmosphere in which
they live.
1t is a question for the very serious
of these gentlemen, whether
they can with honor and credit continue
their Indifference to this state of things.
They can remedy it if they will.
We commend to our readers the
common sense of the above comments
taken from our contemporary, the Belalr
Times, a ju1icious and dispassionate
advocate of Prohibition. Its remarks
apply with equal force to every COM
munity in Cecil county in which the
violations of our present inefficient
Local Option law are open and fragrant.
Even with this defective law, we insist,
that if our citizens of influence every
where throughout the county would
combine, that it would require very lit
tie personal effort to secure compara-
lively thorough enforcement OF it, deh-
cient as it is in its penal features. We
have, it is true, suffered in Cecil to
some extent from the want of concerted
sentiment to back up the present law.
While public opinion was largely in its
favor, and was sufficiently declared to
pass it by an emphatic majority, yet the
organized moral force to sustain ii
seems in a measure to have been want
ing. Reputable citizens in every cen
tire of population in the county have
witnessed with modification and indig-
nation the open and defiant disregard
of it. While their opinions have been
pronounced upon these violations, and
have undergone no change as to the
necessity of such law, the knowledge
alone of its detective provisions have
in many instances, to our personal
knowledge, restrained them from taking
any step towards the prosecution OF
those who are SO openly violating it.
Their failure, however, to take such
steps is not to be mistaken by its oppo-
nents as indicative of indifference on
their part, or of doubt as to the neceS-
Sitv of such a law. They have thought
it best to allow these offenders of pub
lie peace and order plenty of rope.
This indulgence of public sentiment
for it can be called by no other
name-has, of course, been seized upon
by the enemies of prohibition to point
their argument as to the unwisdom OF
it. The number of unsuccessful prose-
cutions in this county, and the immu-
nifty from punishment which well known
and habitual vendors of illicit whiskey
in many localities have enjoyed, have
been persistently cited as evidences of
he-assumed-impossibility to secure
the enforcement of any prohibition law,
no matter how well fortified in the Ian
guage of its provisions, or however well
protected in the severity of its penal
ties.
Look around you !" they cry.
"Don't you see?" prohibition
doesn't prohibit !"
Without stopping to question the
sincerity of these gentlemen who raise
this cry. and who claim for themselves
especial consideration for the honesty
of their expressed desire to see intem-
perance abated in Cecil county, we as
sert that they are deslgnedly and delib-
erately attempting to mislead public
opinion as to the measure of the fail
ure of the present law.
They purposely exaggerate its viola
tions.
They magnify them threefold and
fourfold by verbose and dreary plati-
tudes, which at least weary, if they do
not disgust, their afflicted readers.
We may welcome the torrid temper
ature of midsummer, as possibly pur-
chasing for us surcease of this vapid
and improbable local literature.
In sustaining the assertion that the
opponents of prohibition deslgnedly
magnify and exaggerate the extent of
its violation in Cecil county, we appeal
to the intelligent sentiment of any To-
cality in it. The actual extent of vio-
lation is greater, we are ready to admit,
than any well -wisher of his community
wants to see. But, with possibly one
excepted locality in the county where
the offenders of the present law are
noticeably defiant, there is to-day, not
withstanding the oft-repeated cry that
Prohibition doesn't prohibit" and with
public attention studiously and indus
triously directed to every open offender
and every drunken man on our streets,
an improved condition as to peace and
good order in every section of Cecil
county over that which prevailed under
the old license system.
There is one respect particularly in
which this improved condition is no.
ticeable. The corner groggery, or "dog-
gery," no longer disgraces the Cross
roads of the county. A few years ago,
under the old license system, they
dotted its fair face, these moral pest
houses, and breeders of demoralzation
and disease. They were to the farmers
of the county an endless source of dis