object of the law being to raise money to carry on the machinery of the general government. This law is general in its operation and takes no cognizance whatever of the restriction by way of license or otherwise imposed by the several States. Suppose a man is too poor to take out the license required by the State, county and municipal authorities within the limits of which he proposes or desires to do business? Suppose he should think that these laws are unjust, oppressive, and subversive of his personal liberty; and ignoring the right of the State, county, or city to interfere with his business by their exorbitant taxation, should take out a license from the United States government and open his saloon in defiance of State law? If the payment of this internal revenue tax gives him an absolute right, independent of the State, -county, or municipal authority, to "go on with his rat killing," then he can go on with impunity, in spite of prohibition, whether local or general, statutory or constitutional. It is not very strange or unaccountable that the United States government, will accept a man's money and issue a license if he is fool enough to risk the ability of the State and local authorities to punish him for a violation of their laws.

All the general government can do when he pays his internal revenue is, to say to him, "So far as I am concerned, you may sell enough mean whisky to destroy every home and blast every ennobling aspiration in your State, and you will not be molested by a prosecution in my courts. I have nothing whatever to do with any controversy that may arise between you and your State or your municipal government. That is none of my business, and if you get into the jail or penitentiary, it is no fault af mine, and I have no power under the Constitution or laws to relieve you from the consequences of your folly. To make the proposition more clear by way of illustration; here are two persons who have an interest, or supposed interest in some tract of land; a third party comes

along and desires the privilege of cutting off the timber which is of value. He goes to one of the part owners and purchases his interest or secures his permission to enter upon the premises. When he gets into possession, instead of taking such a proportion as is covered by his privilege, he attempts to take it all. Now it is plain to be seen that the man who had consented to the entry without regard to the consideration he receives, can have no cause of complaint and has no right to object to the trespass. But the other part owner may prosecute his action of trespass and damages, and in some cases may have a writ of injunction against him. To apply the illustration to the three parties concerned in the matter before us; the United States government claims, and we assume justly, an interest in the blood-money of the traffic in liquor, and the several State governments also set up a claim to an interest in the same unholy price of so much of the social, moral and material prosperity and happiness of their people. The saloon-keeper compromises with the general government and undertakes "to stand off" the agents of the State when they come around to demand her share of the spoils. In this whisky-selling business it must be evident that it takes three to make a bargain. Perhaps I may say four, and sometimes it takes five.

First, a man must make a bargain with the devil, and his conscience, if he has one, for the price of the excellent service he is to do in the promotion of his cause. He must, in the next place, make a bargain with Uncle Sam for the privilege of drumming for his satanic employer. Then, before he can begin his ungodly work of destruction he must settle with the State and if he lives in an incorporated city he must pay to its government a hundred or so dollars to aid in the prosecution of increased crime, to punish and maintain in the city prisons the poor, pitiful drunkards he has made in the pursuit of an occupation made lawful by the sanction of

three seperate and independent governments. And yet they say that to engage in this business is a natural and even inalienable right when it absolutely requires the combined sanction of three distinct systems of civilized government to secure to a man, covered all over with the glories of American liberty personal liberty this God-given, blood-bought, inalienable right to traffic in whisky. But for all this there is one government established before the origin of human dynasties or republican institutions from whose transcendent authority no license to make drunkards, vagabonds, and criminals can ever be issued. The penalties it inflicts upon the conscience of the dealer in the elements of death and social disorder and ruin may never be known to the public; he may crush during the whole of his worse than useless existence every compunction of the silent monitor within his casehardened breast, but there will come a time in the not far distant beyond when he will certainly appear before a court, not to answer a prosecution for a failure to pay occupation taxes and to take out license, but for a whole catalogue of murders and other high crimes and misdemeanors of which he may perhaps never have heard during life, but for which he finds when too late that he is to be held criminally responsible before a court where all secrets are made known,

CHAPTER XII.

PROHIBITION AND THE BIBLE.

Deeply and firmly implanted in the human consciousness there is found in every age and social condition of mankind an idea or realization of dependency coupled with a feeling of respectful awe and reverence for some superior being or intelligence. Man in his most barbarous and unenlightened state falls down and worships at the shrine of some sort of object which he deems superior to himself. Whatever of goodness and virtue and all else that constitutes the highest qualities he may in his crude notions conceive as belonging to the best of his race, he attributes to that superior being in the highest degree. In a state of profound heathenism, when brute force and courage are supposed to be the highest traits of character and most worthy of emulation, the mind ascribes to that being which it worships and adores, those estimable qualities in a degree beyond its own comprehension. In more advanced ages of man's civilization, when his mind becomes developed and expanded, when he learns more of wisdom and of virtue and how to read the foot-prints of God in the light of his infinite goodness and mercy, he loses sight of those sterner attributes of his maker which terrify the ignorant and the barbarous and delights to contemplate his milder majesty and to the beautiful order of his works, learns to conform the order of his life. This respect and veneration towards God and his revealed word to-day exercises, and justly so, more influence upon the human mind and affections

and upon the thoughts and actions of mankind, than all other instrumentalities combined.

So strong are the religious feelings and so deep-seated and inexorable the religious prejudices of mankind in general that if you can only engage them upon the prosecution of any work, however hazardous, or in the support of any proposition, however absurd, when properly understood, you can overcome all opposing forces and all opposing arguments, however deeply founded upon reason and experience. The reader will readily call to mind from well-authenticated history at least a hundred illustrations of the truth here asserted. To illustrate extensively is not within the scope of this work, which is intended to be brief and strictly practical. If you can convince the masses of the people that prohibition is in the least inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible, and that Christ, while on earth, was a wine-bibber and taught that intemperance was a virtue and drunkenness was no crime; if you can get them to believe that this immaculate exemplar of the truths of his own precious gospel favored the establishment and maintenance of saloons, then there is no use to go on with an effort to adopt prohibition in the State, or even in a county or a precinct. When the advocates of whisky gain this point, which they are making a desperate effort to do, they will have accomplished their work and the advocates of the measure may as well surrender at once. Nor am I disposed to say in view of the high estimate I have ever been taught to place upon the beauty of Christ's spotless character and example, that the people would not be right in voting against prohibition or against any other human institution if it should be established as a fact that he when on earth had set a precedent for their action by his great and glorious example.

And this brings me to the discussion of the question: Did Christ, by precept or otherwise, put himself on the record as