Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1904-03-11
The Lesson of The Recent Vote
Upon License Throughout
The State.

1t is very evident from the vote in the
different towns on license at the town
elections on March list, that the people
of Vermont are not at all satisfied with
the present liquor law.
The vote was so overwhelmingly in
one direction that there can be no
question in regard to the verdict. There
remains nothing to be done but to sub
stitute in the place of this law, which
has thus been weighed in the balances
and found wanting, another better de-
vised, which will be satisfactory to the
State.
OF course those who rems in friendly
to the present law will have different
excuses for its very unsatisfactory results
but these excuses will deceive few, if
any. The trouble is with the system,
which naturally means free rum, and
Vermont doesn't want free rum. AS the
Montpelier Argus well said in a recent
editorial, which we have had occasion
to refer to before, Vermont is temper
ance State. They were induced to try
a change in their liquor law, because the
old law in many places was not working
well. But they were evidently afraid
when the vote came that they were
making the wrong change, as is shown
by the very small majority with which
the present law was passed, and the very
large number of voters who did not vote,
nearly, or quite, 900. They are more
than satisfied now that their suspicious
were correct, and they have no further
use for the law.
Were there no other reasons for a
change the use of money and other
means of bribery by the liquor interest to
defeat the local option clause. would
alone be sufficient reason to repeal the
law. For, as is universally known, the
only feature of the law that was at all
generally. popular was the local option
clause. And it would have been abso-
lutely impossible to have got the people
of Vermont seriously to have considered
any license law without this feature. But
this feature has been very largely multi
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nullify it by those who wish to make
money from the sale of liquors, utterly
regardless of whether the communities
in which they live do or do not want its
sale. This alone should and we believe
will assure the repeal of the law.
And here comes in the soundness of
the principal of the elimination of private
gain in the sale of liquors. The voters
of Vermont can see, and we believe do
see, as Gladstone, the great English
premier, said, that this is an absolutely
essential condition to any law by which
the sale of liquors can be wisely regu-
lated.
And therefore we feel certain that the
people of Vermont are going to pass a
law founded upon this basis and which
in other respects will be as wisely drafted
as possible for just and sound regula-
ton of this traffic.
We are all interested alike to have
good laws and the Register believes thai
all, or very nearly all when appealed to
will strive alike to get them AnG
therefore it believes that Vermont with
substantial unanimity will adopt q
system for the control of the liquor
traffic which may fairly be called Yer
mont system, in which the principle OF
local option will be genuine, and which
SO far as possible in all respects will bt
made to conform to the higher interests
of morality and be acceptable to thu
great majority of our people.