Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/241

Rh Puritans for over a hundred years were struggling to prohibit the sale of liquor under certain conditions, and colonial and later laws regulating who should sell spirits, and when, and to whom, and under what conditions, would fill a volume. Volumes of sermons preached during this time will show that prohibition was a very serious topic; one of the reasons held was that intoxication was due to direct Satanic influence.

The reiteration that the various statutes against the selling of liquor are not for the general good, and do not come from a demand for protection or public peace, or from cause of necessity, or expediency, or in a community where the evil of the sales is apparent or experienced, and that not a single proposition for the policy of prohibition arises from demand for relief, sound like Rev. Jasper's declarations: "The Sun he do move; the Earth he do stand still."

The admission that "if laws preventing the sale of liquors should be demanded by the users, and purchasers who desired to be relieved of the temptation of buying it, a wise policy might decree the prevailing of the petition," is followed by a statement that "the non-users and non-purchasers who are in the majority, and those who have never suffered, need protection for which they have not asked." Any careful study will show that a large proportion of the most enthusiastic supporters of prohibitory laws are persons who have either suffered personally or in their families, or socially or financially, from the evils of spirits. Very few persons urge an unpopular cause unless from some strong conviction based on an experience that has a personal bearing. While any new movement always attracts a certain class of irregulars and camp followers, they soon drop out, and seldom continue attached to it very long. The rank and file who are honest in their theories and proposals for relief keep on until their ideals are realized, or some new way gives new form and direction to their efforts.

The earliest liquor law Mr. Morgan could find grew out of some letters appearing in a paper in 1832. At that time there were twenty States in the Union, with a great number and variety of prohibitory laws on their statute books. Many of these States had laws enacted half a century before; even some of the Territories had very stringent laws regulating the liquor traffic. The colony of Georgia for nine years was under a strong prohibitory law passed by the English Parliament in 3 735. The early laws prohibiting and restricting the sale of spirits in this country would fill a small-sized volume, even before 1832, and from that time on several volumes would be required to contain them.

The statement that the State of Maine before 1832 was almost