icines and enough bottles labeled all over with the technical names known to the intricate nomenclature of materia medica, the meaning of not one of which he could even give a respectable guess at, he started out to make his long deferred fortune by selling liquor in violation of the law. When it came to paying his license taxes to the State, county and city, he maintained that local option was in force. When indicted for selling whisky in violation of its provisions he stultified himself by insisting that it had never been legally adopted. The author in connection with his partner, Mr. Montrose, was employed by a large number of good citizens of the county to aid in the prosecution. There was no trouble whatever in convicting in every case, and in each one that was tried the highest penalty was assessed by the jury. One of the parties resorted to a trial on habeas corpus, and had the privelege of lying in jail for several weeks. He is "at the present writing" languishing in jail awaiting the decision of the Court of Appeals upon the question of the solidity of the law, or rather the alleged irregularity of the proceedings of county commissioner's court in its adoption by the people. Before this book is completed and published, the case* will be decided; but whatever the opinion of the Appellate Court may be upon the question, the people of Rockwall county are firmly established in their determination to suppress whisky, and they will give it another trial besides casting nearly a solid vote for the proposed Constitutional Amendment. Let other counties follow the example.

*Ex-Parte Sublett, Austin Term, 1887. Reversed and dismissed because of irregularities in the adoption of the law.

CHAPTER VIII.

PROHIBITORY LEGISLATION.

STATE PROHIBITION-GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT.

I come now to discuss the living, tangible issue which is now before the people of Texas. It is with much diffidence and distrust that I undertake so weighty and difficult a task. It is heavily fraught with responsibility, because upon the decision of this vital question by our people at the ensuing election perhaps depends the eternal destiny of thousands of immortal souls. On that day ever to be remembered with blessings or curses, we are to cast the horoscope of the lives, and decide the fate of multiplied thousands of our own generation and of the generations to come after us. There are some who treat this momentous question with the utmost indifference. There are those who look upon it as a huge joke gotten up for the gratification of a few cranks, hypochondriacs and hysterical women. There are certain prominent newspapers in the country that indulge in all sorts of ridicule and puerile flippancy, when they take occasion to refer to the undemocratic action of a Democratic Legislature in allowing the people the pitiful privilege of governing themselves long enough to engraft upon the organic law of the State by a popular vote a principle for which they have so long pleaded and petitioned in vain. As often as they have heretofore besought their supposed servants, but real masters, at the State capital to grant them this modest request, they have been rebuked for their impertinence. Petitions almost a mile long,

signed by the very best of men of the State, and Democrats at that, have been insultingly thrown in the waste-basket of the solons, or summarily thrown aside in the deference to the clamors of corrupt schemers and unscrupulous political jobbers; and the wily and insiduous power of ruin has generally found a medium through which to lay its blighting hand and withering clutches upon every embryo movement having in view the relief of the people from the ravages of the red-eyed demon of intemperance. It is well remembered that during the last days of the Nineteenth Legislature, a bill was passed by both houses of that body amending the local option law, making it possible to punish by adequate fine and imprisonment that loathsome class of physicians who so often have been known to issue prescriptions by the wholesale for the benefit of whisky dealers sailing under the colors of an honorable calling. The amendment failed to materialize. The committee whose duty it was to look after the disposition of the bill after passage, charged the clerks with spiriting it away, which is but another name for stealing. The clerks claimed to be innocent of the charge, the matter was hushed up, and what became of the bill is to-day an unsolved mystery, so far as I have ever been informed. That it was suppressed through the criminal agency of the whisky element there can not be the least question. That it was done for the purpose of preventing local option from prohibiting, is not doubted.

But whatever may be the sins of the Nineteenth legislature and its officers, whatever complaints may have been justly made by the people against its predecessors, some of whom were, indeed, "a motley crew," living, breathing masses of political corruption, the Twentieth ought to be held in the highest esteem for the resolution and courage displayed by its members in submitting to the people the proposed constitutional amendment, which is, according to the opinion of the

senator from Guadalupe "as innocent of democracy as the devil is of pure and unadulterated religion." In that act they have acknowledged the right of the people to petition their representatives and have construed that right as embracing a corresponding duty on the part of the representatives to respect the petition when presented.

Their predecessors never conceived that there was an inseparable relationship existing between the right of the people and the duty of the representatives. But, to pass on to the merits of the question before us, that of the adoption or rejection of State prohibition.

By the passage of the resolution submitting the amendment, the qualified voters of Texas are given the right to decide whether or not the legislature shall be given the power and that it shall be made its special duty at its next session thereafter to pass a law declaring unlawful the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors with some necessary exceptions, and to provide adequate penalties for the violation of such law.

As the constitution now stands, no such law can be passed by the Legislature, and any attempt to do so would be obnoxious to that provision in the Constitution which provides for local prohibition by votes of the people and perhaps other clauses not necessary to discuss.

If a majority voting at the election in August next shall cast their ballots in favor of the amendment, a State prohibitory law will be enacted in the spring of 1889 and possibly earlier, should the Governor call a special session, which is not probable, and the saloons will all have to go hence about the first of July following, perhaps a little earlier, and may be a month or so later. All those who are engaged in the sale of liquors as a beverage and all who have money or property invested or tied up in the business will have fair warning and ample time to drink up or dispose of all of their whisky and

kill off the greater number of their best customers and themselves if they conclude that they are unfit for any kind of respectable business, before the law can be put into operation. In that regard State prohibition is a decided improvement on local option. It is preferable in this, that when the State passes a general law upon the subject, there is no chance. "to get behind the returns," as is permitted in cases of prosecutions for violation of the local option law.

In a prosecution under the latter the State assumes the burden of proving that the law was properly adopted; that is, that a petition in due form of law was presented; that it was signed by the requisite number of qualified voters; that the prescribed notice was given by publication or by posting; that presiding officers of the election precincts were duly appointed and commissioned; that the election was actually held; that the returns were properly made out and filed; that the Commissioners' Court counted the vote and entered an order declaring the result, and the passage of the law; and if a majority are found to be in favor of the law, and that legal notice was given informing the saloon keepers and all other persons that the law had been passed and that they must desist from the further exercise of their personal liberty to scatter death and damnation in the section of country embraced by the order, unless it is done on the prescription of a practicing physician certifying upon honor that it is necessary as a medicine in cases of actual sickness. In almost every case irregularities are found to exist and in a great many instances they have been held of such a character as to invalidate the law. In that case the prisoner goes free, and by paying up his State and county license, he may like the dog "return to his vomit," if he desires to do so.

The first great question which presents itself to our consideration in the discussion before us is, is it right for a majority of the people of a State to engraft upon the organic law of