to the loathsome service of the liquor traffic. Whatever bright aspirations you may have, whatever prospects and deserts, I tell you that they will be forever engulphed in disappointment and despair and speedily at that, if you stake them upon the liquor traffic in this, the struggle which is now going on between order and disorder, constitutional government and murderous anarchy. Plant yourselves upon your honest convictions of right, and whatever may be the result, however much you may be sneered at by demagogues and timeservers, you will succeed at last, and you need not doubt it in the least althogh overpowered and repulsed at the first onset. But whether you should succeed in the object of your ambition or not, it is better by far that you should be disappointed than to accept transitory honors from the corrupting hands of the whisky influence.*

*Hon. Jno. H. Reagan, U. S. Senator elect from Texas, and a Democrat of the old school, in reply to an invitation from a number of anti-prohibition leaders to join their side of the question, writes as follows:

"If I had liesure to engage in this discussion, with all respect for opinions of the meeting you represent, I could not concur with the views expressed in your letter. While I have heretofore felt constrained to oppose prohibition because its friends sought to make it a political issue and to antagonize and overthrow the Democratic party, that reason does not now exist; and I am not inclined, by speech or vote, to countenance the evils flowing from the selling and drinking of intoxicating liquors as now practiced, or to give to them the moral support of public opinion or the protection of the state government.

In every community we find men, once honored and respected, reduced to poverty, wretchedness and dishonor by spending their money and time in drinking-saloons; wives weighed down with grief and sorrow and want, and heart-broken, and helpless children growing up in ignorance, beggary and vice, because husbands and fathers have been made drunkards and vagabonds by patronizing the drinking saloons. Millions of dollars are invested in this business of making men drunkards and in producing the desolation and ruin of women and children, which if employed in agriculture, manufacturing or commercial pursuits, and directed by the talents and time wasted in these drinking houses, would add untold millions to the aggregated wealth of the state, and make as many thousands of happy families as are now made miserable because this money and time are given to the selling and drinking of intoxicating liquors.

The framers of our State Constitution, having reference to these evils,

A favorite and often effectual argument against prohibitory laws of any character is, that they deprive the State of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually contributed by saloonkeepers and whisky-sellers to the support of the government in the way of taxation or license. It is further claimed that thousands of men are thereby thrown out of business, and left with their families to suffer and die for the want of legitimate employment. The great loss resulting to the State from the enactment and enforcement of such laws is piled up and exaggerated until it transcends the bounds of possible computation. This argument is intended to reach the mercenary impulses of selfish human nature, and is often stronger than the powers of reason and moral suasion in influencing mankind in their action upon matters of the greatest Convince a man whose avarice predominates over

concern.

provided that "the legislature shall, at its first session, enact a law whereby the qualified voters of any county, justice's precinct, town or city, by a majority vote, from time to time, may determine whether the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be prohibited within the prescribed limits." It would be no great innovation upon this principel for the people of this state to adopt a constitutional provision declaring that the manufacture, sale and exchange of intoxicating liquors, except for medical, mechanical and scientific purposes, is hereby prohibited in the State of Texas." The State Democratic convention, which met at Galveston last summer, inserted in its platform of principles a declaration, in substance, that a citizen might be a local optionist or a prohibitionist, and at the same time be a Democrat.

The present legislature wisely determined, in submitting the question of the adoption of the prohibition amendment by a vote of the people, that the election should be held at a time when no other election was to be held, in order that the people might pass upon that question unembarassed by any other political questions or elections, so that the election should be nonpartisan. In view of these facts, with all respect for the meeting at Austin, and its committee, I must express my regret that any effort has been made to make a party question of it; and especially do I regret that Democrats should seek to identify that great and grand historic party with the fortunes and fate of whisky shops, drunkards and criminals.

There is a broad difference between laws which interfere with legitimate trade and with such as would interfere with the purchase and sale of necessary food, drink and raiment, called sumptuary laws, and laws which have for their object the prevention and punishment of crime and the preservation of public morals and decency. And I think it hardly just to the mem

the moral sensibilities of his nature, that a certain line of conduct is conducive to the promotion of his own interest, and he will pursue it in spite of every consideration of morality and justice that can possibly be brought to bear on his mind. He can not be made to consider any corresponding evil or dis aster that may result to his neighbor. Rather than pay a few cents more in the way of increased taxation, he would see the complete destruction of social order, and especially if he felt assured that his pecuniary interest would not be involved in the disaster. He would be perfectly willing to submit to every other evil that might result from the act, provided his accumulated store of filthy lucre did not suffer. And all for what?"Gold, the admiration of fools and knaves."

But do not understand me by this slight digression from the main question to admit that the adoption of prohibitory

ory of Mr. Jefferson to assume that he would not have recognized this distinction.

I have, during all the years of my manhood, been a Democrat of the straightest sect, and an earnest and enthusiastic disciple of Thomas Jefferson, whom I regord as the greatest political philosopher and statesman this country has ever produced. And I would be as far from desiring to see laws passed which would interfere with the freedom of legitimate commerce or which would undertake to control the purchase, sale and use of necessary food, drink or apparel as any one could be. But I believe it to be the duty of the people, in a lawful manner, to protect themselves and society against the evils of the improper sale and use of intoxicating liquors. If I have not always so felt, it has been in a great degree because I was unwilling to allow any outside issue to subvert or cause the overthrow of the Democratic party whose principles I believe necessary to the preservation of our free constitutional system of government. We now have the opportunity to promote sobriety, thrift and happiness without endangering the success and perpetuation of the principles of the Demacratic party, and I am in favor of doing so; and I shall at the coming election so vote, not because I believe prohibition the most efficient remedy which could be adopted for these evils, but because in my judgment it favors a policy which will do much for the improvement of the condition of our people pecunarily, socially and morally, and to-ward placing them on a higher and better plane of civilization. I hope you will not consider it a breach of propriety for me to make this answer through an open letter, as I may have no other opportunity to state the reason for the vote I shall give on this question. And I beg to assure you, gentlemen, of my great respect for you individually and collectively

laws, however widespreading and stringent in their operation, results in financial loss to the State or to the people. In the first place, the whole license system is wrong, but that branch of the question will be pretermitted in this connection, to be taken up and thoroughly discussed in a future chapter of this work. We will suppose that in a county of twenty-thousand people we have as many as ten saloons, each paying to the State the sum of three hundred dollars, and to the county and city together, three hundred dollars more each, making the Sum of $600, and the tax upon all aggregating the sum of $6000; half of this goes into the coffers of the State government, one-fourth, or $1500, to the county, and when the business is carried on in incorporated cities, the remaining fourth

and of how much I regret that I have to differ from you in your opinion on this question.'

Dr. B. H. Carroll of Waco, Texas, in his celebrated sermon in reply to U. S. Senator Coke's speech in opposition to prohibitory laws has the following to say:

"But to return to the first point. Constitutions are not political platforms-voting for the local option clause in the Constitution does not stop us from taking position against it in our county. Granted. But should it stop you from denouncing it as anti-Democratic. Our position is just this, as repeatedly expressed. There is no nccessity for the Democratic party to put in its platform a plank pro or con on this subject. Just relegate it to the people as a side issue. Then there will be no split in the party here in Texas.

Let men vote as they please on this subject and quit cracking the party whip. Allow ministars of God to preach against what they regard as a great moral evil without calling upon the people to "scourge them back and stop their rations." The Senator proceeds to ridicule the idea that Prohibition proposes to step only the sale of whisky.

To our minds there is no just ground for ridicule here. The law does not seek to prevent men from injuring themselves, provided they do not thereby injure society. The distinction is obvious: Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas, (so use your own as not to injure another,) is a proverb applicable to both Common and Divine law.

Prohibition is a war against the business of selling liquor; against the saloon as a public educator of the young, against a licensed wrong operating under the sanction of law. But he objects that this is "class legislation, in favor of the rich, and against the poor, in that a rich man can send off and get his whisky, while a poor man must take a drink out of the Brazos."

Without classing this as demagogism, let us put the shoe on the other

contributes to the municipal government. If there is no such incorporation, the last named amount remains in the tills of the whisky sellers. Now, I am not going to take time to dig up statistics gathered from the records of the different courts of the county and city, (if there be one), to show the large amount of money that is annually paid out and worse than wasted in the prosecution and punishment of crime and misdemeanors, traceable directly to the infamous traffic in liquors. It is wholly unnecessary to do so, as the appalling fact stands out in bold relief before the experience and observation of every intelligent reader, that the amount realized from the licenses will scarcely be a drop in the bucket compared with the necessary expenditure in keeping open the

foot.

What about high license as class legislation? It would only take a small sum to send off for a gallon of whisky, but where is the poor man's chance to engage in this good business of selling liquor? How many of them have the $500 necessary to make them equal before the law? But the Senator at last comes to the true position for an anti-Prohibitionist. He plants himself on it squarely. If he sustains himself here, there was no need to introduce fany other argument. Hear him: "The greatest people that have ever lived have had the strongest whisky. When the Romans overran Great Britain, the early Britons had only a drink made of honey and water; hence they were easily conquered. But since they have consumed more ardent spirits in England than any other country, you see they control the finances of the world, and theirs is the greatest maritime power in the world. We have descended from those people, but we have improved in drinking whisky, but we sell some of the best that ever was put in a man's face." There we have it at last. I give you his exact words. Here we have the reason why Persia, Greece, Rome, and Switzerland conquered while they were abstemious and temperate, and the secret of their downfall when they became civilized wine-bibers and liquor guzzlers. Shades of Sallust and Juvenal! Here we have the secret of Moslem conquest, their superiority in art, science, and literature, while they obeyed their prophet and drank no wine, and the secret of their downfall when they lapsed from original simplicity and temperance. Here is an explanation why ours is no maritime power. Oh. Roach, Roach, persecuted martyr! why didn't you razee Secretary Whitney by showing that it was a lack of strong whisky that kept that ship from going faster? Why didn't you employ our senator to show that it was the temperance society that ruined our navy? O, lapsing civilization that now refuses to issue daily rations of grog to soldiers and sailors, thus destroying their martial spirits and undermining their fighting powers.