THE LIQUOR POWER IN THE ASCENDANT AGAIN.

But in 1868, adverse influences prevailed, and after all her sad and disgraceful experience, Massachusetts abandoned her prohibition of the traffic and went back to license again; but the evil consequences began to show themselves so quickly that the law was repealed in less than a year.

Governor Claflin, in his message to the legislature in January, 1869, thus speaks of the effect of the new license law:  “The increase of drunkenness and crime during the last six months, as compared with the same period of 1867, is very marked and decisive as to the operation of the law. The State prisons, jails and houses of correction are being rapidly filled, and will soon require enlarged accommodation if the commitments continue to increase as they have since the present law went in force.”

While the chaplain of the State prison in his annual report for 1868, says:  “The prison never was so full as at the present time.  If the rapidly increasing tide of intemperance, so greatly swollen by the present wretched license law, is suffered to rush on unchecked, there will be a fearful increase of crime, and the State must soon extend the limits of the prison, or create another.”

This law was repealed, as we have seen.  A year of its bitter fruit was enough for the people.

SUBMITTING AGAIN TO THE YOKE.

But, strange to say, after all she has suffered from license laws, the old Bay State has again submitted to the yoke, and is once more in the hands of the great liquor interest.  In 1874, she drifted out from the safe harbor of prohibition, and we find her, to-day, on the stormy and storm-wrecked sea of license.  A miserable attempt has been made by the friends of this law to show that its action has been salutory in Boston, the headquarters of the liquor power, in the diminution of dram-shops and arrests for drunkenness.  Water may run up hill in Boston; but it obeys the law of gravitation in other places.  We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this extract from the report of the License Commissioners of that city, made February 1st, 1877:  “It must be admitted that the business of liquor-selling in this city is, to a very large extent, in the hands of irresponsible men and women, whose idea of a license law ends with the simple matter of paying a certain sum, the amount making but little difference to them, provided they are left to do as they please after payment.  Besides the saloons and bar-rooms, which are open publicly, the traffic in small grocery stores, in cellars and in dwelling-houses, in some parts of the city, is almost astounding.  The Sunday trade is enormous, and it seems as if there were not hours enough in the whole round of twenty-four, or days enough in the entire week to satisfy the dealers.”