The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-10-10
The pispensary Decision.

/ supreme court, that the dispensary Law
/ of 1898 is constitutional, viii surprise
| nobody. That it will not is unfortunate
I for the reputation of the young lawyer
/ who some three months ago, became a
member Of the court. It will be regarded
as a purely political decision; and there
! appears to be some reason for regarding
it in that light
When the supreme court some months
ago, before its reorganization. in a very
strong opinion. declared unconstitutional
the law of 1892, Gov. Tnlman closed the
dispensaries and said the dispensary bus
mess was temporarily paralyzed. Elk
planning his action. he said he had taken
the law of 1898 and run into the bushes
with it." in order to save it from being
passed upon till Mr.. Gary, who had been
elected a justice of the supreme court by
the Tillmanite legislature. had taken his
seat on the bench. The laws of 1892 and of
1898 are in principle identical, and as the
former had been declared unconstitution-
al the governor had reason to think the
latter would have suffered the fate of the
law of 1892 had it come before the court
prior to the change in the courts person
mel. There seems, however, to have been
no doubt in the mind of Gov. Tillman or of
any of the South Carolina papers as to
what the decision would be when Mr..
Justice Gary took his seat
1t appears, according to the press dis
patches, that the majority opinion declar-
ing the law of 1893 to be constitutional is
based on the states right to regulate or
within its limits; that is. the states right
to institute prohibition. That prohibition
is constitutional has been determined for
some years, and if the question was in
volved in the South Carolina case, it was
an unnecessary threshing over of old
straw.
The chief ground ON which the law of
1892 was declared unconstitutional was
that, while the state had the right to reg
ulate the liquor traffic, it had no right to
engage in the business itself; that it had
no right to become a trader for profit in a
commodity; that its proper function
ceased when it regulated by law the trad
ms by private persons or corporations
within its borders, or prohibited such trad
ing. If the decision written by Mr.. Jus
tice Gary and rendered on Monday touches
upon this important point, it does not
appear in the Associated Press dis
patches.
AS to the future course of the law, it
will probably be taken soon to the Uni
ted States supreme court. In the mean
time, there is danger of a renewal of the
conflict between the dispensary constab-
ulary and the anti-dispensary element,
which recently caused a riot and plunged
part of the state into a short period of
martial law. Our dispatches of yesterday
announced that the constabulary would
at once resume operations against vio-
lators of the law, and again, that a
trunk coming from a private residence
had been seized and the residence or
dered searched. Raids on private resi-
dences caused most of the trouble before
the law of 1892 was set aside, and a repeti-
ton of such acts would be no more
favorabIy looked upon now than they
were then.
The dispensary system might be a very
good thing II it could be enforced as
other laws are, with the ordinary ma
chinery of the courts and without viola
ting the sanctity of the private residence
But a specially formed constabulary,
made up for the greater part of men
wholly wanting in the finer sensibil-
tiles that go to make a gentleman and
vested with the most extraordinary pow
ers of search and arrest, are capable of
making themselves extremely obnoxious,
and causing endless trouble.