only effective among the respectable middle class where, perhaps, of all it is least needed.  In the older States, at least in Massachusetts, there has been a decided tendency away from prohibition in the last twenty years, and even from local prohibition in the larger cities.  Worcester, for instance, after being the largest prohibition city in the world, ceased to be so this year by the largest vote ever cast upon the question.

Whatever may be said of the strict prohibition of liquor dealing, no one can have any objection to such laws as applied to cocaine, opium, or other poisonous drugs, and we find statutes of this sort in increasing number; while the manufacture and sale of cigarettes to minors or even in some States, their consumption, is strictly prohibited, under criminal penalty.  Laws of a similar sort were aimed at oleomargarine when invented, but this probably not so much to protect the health of the people as the prosperity of the dairymen.  The mass of such legislation has emerged from the scrutiny of the courts, State and Federal, with the general result that only such laws will be sustained as are aimed to prevent fraud; but the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine under that name cannot be prohibited.  Artificial coloring matter may be forbidden, but a New Hampshire law was not sustained which required all oleomargarine to be colored pink; so it may be guessed that the laws of those States which make criminal the sale or use of cigarettes to or by children “apparently” less than sixteen or eighteen, will hardly be sustained as a constitutional police measure; yet such laws existed in 1890, while the State of Washington in 1893 made the sale even of cigarette paper criminal.

Another important line of modern legislation consists in the subjecting of trades to a license for the purpose of examination (the tax feature has been discussed above).  Such laws are constitutional when applied to a trade really relating to the public health, but as we have found above, black-smithing is not such an one; when imposed merely for the purpose of raising revenue, such legislation is undoubtedly constitutional under our written constitutions, but opposed to historic English principles, which insisted for seven centuries of statute-making on the utmost liberty of trade.  In a South American republic you have to get a concession before going into almost any business, even maintaining a shoe-shop, or a milk farm, which concession is, of course, often obtained by bribery or withheld for corrupt reasons.  It is to be hoped that the citizens of our States will never find themselves in that predicament.  Still, certain State constitutions, as that of South Carolina, provide absolutely that all trades may be made subject to a tax, and the tendency—­particularly in the South—­to raise revenue in this way is increasing by leaps and bounds.  Among the trades already subjected to such licensing or taxing, we find doctors, of course, and properly, pharmacists,