Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1903-01-23

it has been tried, and has therefore
lessened taxation and increased the
material prosperity of the people. 1t
would have done more If 1t had been
better enforced.
Recently, however, an opinion has
been growing that law which takes
away personal liberty is unnatural and
unwise and that it involves evils, such
as hypocrisy and perjury, which are
greater than the drink evil. With
out attempting to deny these evils or
to estimate their relative badness,
call attention to the fact that they
exist under license, especially when
coupled with local option, to the same
extent, and license brings other evils
which are greater. The present gen.
Grafton in Vermont has not seen
them, except dimly at distance, and,
chatting under the evils charged to
prohibition, it has inclined to fly from
the ills it has to others that it knows
not of. But | think that if all the
people of Vermont could look into the
saloon sections of any of our license
cities and towns almost any evening,
and go into the municipal courts, es-
pecially on Monday morning, or see
how the hospitals, the houses of cor
rection, the penitentiary and the aims
houses are thronged with people who
were carried there by the curse of
drink, they would speedily come to a
firm conclusion not to risk such re-
suits in their state. If they could
also see the corruption of the police,
the blindness of witnesses, the black
mail levied upon various classes of
misdemeanants and the degradation
of politics by the free use of liquor,
they would conclude that when the
fine house of some thrifty" states
attorney in Vermont has been pointed
to as proof of the failure of prohibit
ton, the whole story has not been
told, for there are others.
! Now if there are people who feel
that this is not a free country unless
they can buy liquor as easily as they
can buy cigars; if there are people
who believe that the population and
business of Vermont will increase if
liquor is obtainable as easily there
as in Massachusetts and New York;
if existing law cannot be executed be-
cause public opinion is not equal to
it; if there is general unrest and a
determination to make some kind of
a change, why not try to take a step
forward instead of a step backward
Everybody comedies that liquor is
dangerous if taken to excess. This
being so, why license men who are
not generally the best in the commu-
nifty to sell it? Why increase the
danger of adulteration and excessive
use by exacting a license so high that
it must be made up by extraordinary
means? Why leave an admitted
danger to be regulated by human
greed? Why expose the weaker
members of society, after they have
parted with some of their money
and some of their self-control as the
result of one drink, to the influence OF
convivial companions and the encour
agement or the bland willingness OF
the man who is in the business tc
make it pay? | have not seen the
Battell bill, and l have no very de
finite knowledge Of the South Caro-
lima dispensary law, but l understand
them to provide for the sale of liquor
by public officials only, thus eliminat
ing the element of greed and intro
ducing the element of watchfulness
and restraint. If something besides
prohibition must be tried, why not try
something like this? If l lived il
Vermont l should vote against the
license law in order to get an oppor
tunity either to strip the present law
of its barnacles or to enact a wise
measure of public control.
ALBERT CLARKE.
Boston, Jan. 10, 1903.