some generals, and a few admirals. You would interfere with gentlemen in their private pleasures, instead of merely interfering with tradesmen in their pursuit of business.

I get a little tired of it, as far as I am concerned. I have seen it go on year by year, come up to a certain point, and then the next year go a little bit further, until after a while you never knew where it was going to stop; and I am ready now to vote for the whole thing. I am ready to vote for an amendment to this bill to put a fine of not less than $300 and imprisonment of not less than six months upon any man who buys or sells a drink in the District of Columbia. I want to see the thing brought to an issue, because until it is brought to an issue you will never find out how many people are going to rebel against it in a free Government.

Mr. President, in a matter affecting the daily life and habits of living of the people in their very homes there can, in my opinion, be no question at all of the political wisdom and the morality and the constitutional right of submitting a law involving these things to the people themselves thus affected. Mississippi is a prohibition State. I consider myself as a representative instructed by her will in a matter which should overbalance my will. But Mississippi never said to me that I should deprive the people of the District of Columbia of the power and the right to sit in judgment themselves upon this question, in judgment upon which the people of Mississippi sat for themselves. Mississippi would have resented a claim upon the part of a Texan or Californian or a man from Utah or a man from New Hampshire to tell her whether she should or should not be governed by certain laws with regard to this particular subject

matter.

Now, then, I think the next most important thing after providing that these people shall be consulted in a manner which comes right home to them, just as, in my opinion, I think they ought to be consulted about their schools and about a dozen other things which come right home to them, is to find the proper electorate. My quarrel is not with the bill itself, except that I do not think the bill is sufficiently drastic. I think while you are making the issue you ought to pass a prohibition bill and say so, and face it. It will be as much a personal and individual inconvenience to me as to almost

any of you, but I am willing to stand up and be honest and square and make a crime of buying intoxicants. The sin or crime is neither in the buying or the selling per se; it is in the effect of the thing bought and sold after its consumption. Put a judge on the Supreme Court, put a member of the Cabinet, put a Senator in jail for it! make it a felony, so as to evade that clause of the Constitution which says you can not arrest a Member of Congress while he is here "except for a felony or a breach of the peace," or make it a breach of the peace. Be square about it. Bring it home to you and me, and be brave about it!

Mr. President, a great deal of what I have said was rather irrelevant to the subject matter, but I do hope sure enough, and I am seriously speaking to my friend from Texas and to others for whose intelligence and character I have very high regard—I do hope that the very utmost point which gentlemen want to go to in this legislation will be at some particular moment frankly avowed and confessed, so that society can line up on one side of it or the other. I do hope that this little thing of taking 10 bites at one cherry will stop, because it is a great deal more nagging than it is to eat up the whole cherry at once and be done with it. It is a great deal less trouble to humanity generally, and it is a good deal less trouble to a man, to be soundly whipped than it is to be nibbled at for a week at a time. So I hope at some time you may put in the shape of a bill that which is your ultimate goal, the point beyond which you do not intend to go, and then let us get through with it one way or the other-getting through to a final result of fixed policy is a good thing.

I tell you it is dangerous not to do that. You remember the history of the immorality that came about as a result of the overthrow of the puritanical power in Great Britain. First from one little thing to another the Puritans went, interfering with what men rightfully or wrongfully thought were their rights-wrongfully generally, just as in this case-until they got men into a state of revolt, not against a particular wrong thing that was being done but against every legislative attempt to make them do right, and everything called by the name of religion or morals went by the

board for a while. It took a long time afterwards to get things gathered together in a common-sense way.

Now, do not begin with this and come back here next year and go a little bit further, and come back the next Congress and go to the Smoot bill, and then come back five years from now and go to the Williams amendment, making it an absolute crime to buy a drink. Do it all at one time. If you are not going to do it on this bill do it in the next Congress, anyhow, and let the people to be affected see how far you are going, so that they may make up their minds whether they want to go with you or part company with you.

I think another thing about this sort of legislation-and while I am about it I am going to get it all off my mind—I think that Abraham Lincoln was right when he said we ought not only to consult the District of Columbia about their willingness to abolish slavery, but that we ought to indemnify the slaveholders for the property loss. And I think our English cousins are right. When they make laws of this sort they calculate the loss of property to the man affected by them and pay him a reasonable price for it. That is honest, too. Why, I knew the State of Mississippi once to do this, Senators, just to show you how far this sort of legislation can go. Long years ago she passed a law to provide for a lottery, and a man paid $50,000 into the State treasury to have the privilege of that lottery. Then the next legislature that met abolished the lottery law, and Mississippi kept his $50,000.

I knew Mississippi to do this once: To pass a pint liquor lav, and after five men in my own town had paid their annual license for one year in advance, to repeal that law without returning the license money and indict each one of those five men for selling under it. They got out because they plead that they did not know the legislature had repealed the law, and the judge was easy upon them; but they had paid their licenses for a property privilege a year in advance, and the minimum one of them had gotten of enjoyment of the license was, I believe, two weeks out of it, and the maximum about two months. That sort of thing is not honest, I do not care how highly moral it is-geographically moral, quantitatively moral, this-side-or-that-side-of-the-bar moral-it is not plain, old-fashioned English honesty. If you have given a fellow a thing of value for a

price and you take the thing of value away from him, you ought to give him back the price, no matter how contemptible you think the calling may be which you by your law invited him to pursue and for which he paid you a price.

WHAT THE ENCYCLOPEDIA SAYS

Appended will be found excerpts from the articles on "Liquor" and "Temperance" in the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britan

nica.

In view of the widespread interest in the subject, the comment of this great authority is of great importance:

LIQUOR LAWS

In most western countries the sale of alcoholic liquor is regulated by law. The original and principal object is to check the evils arising from the immoderate use of such liquor, in the interest of public order, morality and health; a secondary object is to raise revenue from the traffic. The form and the stringency of the laws passed for these purposes vary very widely in different countries according to the habits of the people and the state of public opinion.

The evils which it is desired to check are much greater in some countries than in others. Generally speaking they are greater in northern countries and cold and damp climates than in southern and more sunny ones. Climate has a marked influence on diet for physiological reasons over which we have no control. The fact is attested by universal experience and is perfectly natural and inevitable, though usually ignored in those international comparisons of economic conditions and popular customs which have become so common. It holds good of both food and drink.

The inhabitants of South Europe are much less given to alcohol excess than those of central Europe, who again are more temperate than those of the north. There is even a difference between localities so near together as the east and west of Scotland. The chairman of the prison commissioners pointed out before a British