states to be that the tendency to intoxication is greatest above the isothermal line of 50° average temperature. Like most theorists, Dr. Bowditch exaggerates the importance of the tendencies which he calls "laws," and which even he has to admit are often "overridden" by other circumstances. But whatever may be estimated as the degree to which the appetite for alcoholics is "overloaded" under northern climates and in the veins of the Anglo-Saxon race, I should differ totally in the practical conclusions I should draw. For such a people, I should say the path of total abstinence was peculiarly the path of safety, and the only path. To attempt to appease such an appetite by indulgence, seems to me the height of folly. If the allopathic doctor believes in the homeopathic theory, "similia similibus curantur," I must at least insist that he follow the other part of Hanneman's doctrine, of infinitesimal doses. And I think the lesson of abstinence is still more strongly enforced by that peculiarity of American climate, "at least that found along the Atlantic slope," which Dr. Bowditch recognizes when he says:

"The peculiarly stimulating nature of our climate excites the nervous system so much, that we should endeavor to be more temperate in this country than

the nations living in Europe between the sarne isothermal lines need to be."*

It is not light wines and lager-bier that can operate as a prophylactic to save such a race from drunkenness, but a law of strict prohibition, the outgrowth and bulwark of moral convictions. We can point Dr. Bowditch to the northernmost State of New England, of almost pure Anglo-Saxon race, under the regimen of what he would call bad laws, and challenge him among the lager-bier States of the Union, or the lager or light wine countries of Europe, to find a country so free from drunkenness and its sequences as the State of Maine. He will there see "isothermal lines," climatic tendencies, race appetences, and war demoralizations all overridden by moral influences, supplemented and sustained by what the "inexorable logic of facts" demonstrates to be good laws.

The census of 1870 gives the population of Maine as 626,915, and that of California as 560,247.

The Report of the Commissioner of Internal

* In this connection he tells us of two Englishmen who, while traveling through New England, "continued the same amount of stimulants they had always used. They were quite astonished when, after a three months' trip, they were both about the same time seized with an attack of delirium tremens, which had never afflicted them in England.”

Revenue for the year ending June 30, 1874, shows these facts:

Maine operates 3 breweries and 1 distillery.* California operates 195 breweries and 177 distilleries.

Maine contributes as gross receipts to the United States Revenue from distilled spirits alone, $34,901.83.

California, $1,373,374.76.

Maine furnishes only .1540 of one per cent. of the national revenue from fermented liquors. California, 2.8739 per cent.

Maine contributes to the revenue from distilled spirits .0752; that is, seven and a half one-hundredths of one per cent. of the whole national revenue from this source.

California, from the same, 2.7844 per cent., or thirty-eight times as much as Maine.

The people of Maine are not in a condition to need Dr. Bowditch's prescriptions at present.

* Now (1877) none.

CHAPTER XX.

THE HISTORY OF PROHIBITION.

IN the chapter on License Laws we have shown that the people of Massachusetts, after the repeal of what was known as the "FifteenGallon Law," by action in their several counties, proceeded to refuse licenses. The first effort in the Legislature for a general law of prohibition was next made in 1848. Upon the petition of the venerable Moses Stuart, of Andover, and 5,000 others, a report was made by a committee, who unanimously agreed that "the present license law, in our judgment, has done, and is doing, incalculable mischief." They add: "Public opinion, we are happy to know, is in advance of this law, which appears from the fact that during the last year no licenses have been granted under it in thirteen out of the fourteen counties in this Commonwealth." (1848, House Doc. No. 52). They reported a bill providing for the appointment of agents in the several municipalities to sell liquors for "use in the arts and for medicinal

and sacramental purposes," and forbade, under penalties, all other sales.

Machinery for the enforcement of the law was also provided. It was made penal to keep with intent to sell. Provisions were made for search and seizure upon legal process, and for judicial forfeiture of liquors kept contrary to law. There was also a section making it penal to let a building for illegal sales.* But the bill, though meeting with large favor, failed to become a law, and Maine was the first State to embody these principles and measures in a statute which has become so widely and justly known by her name.

In his testimony before the Canadian Parliamentary Commission in 1874, Governor Dingley gives this account of its enactment. (It may here be noted that so far as the mere prohibition of sales, as a beverage, Maine had taken this step as to spirituous liquors in 1846, and extended it to all intoxicating liquors in 1848):

"What is popularly known as the Maine Law,' but which bears on the Statute Book of this State

The bill was reported and ably advocated by Francis W. Emmons, of Sturbridge. Mr. Bishop says: "Whatever credit or disgrace attends the devising of this peculiar form of legislation, belongs, so far as it attaches to any person in modern times, not to any inhabitant of Maine, but of Massachusetts." ("Statutory Crime," § 988).