From time to time during the past seventy-five or one hundred years waves of public sentiment antagonistic to the manufacture and sale of wine and spirits and other alcoholic beverages have passed over this country, leaving in their train State, county, and municipal legislation of a more or less drastic character—legislation entirely out of sympathy with the spirit of American institutions; legislation that was bound to fail in its purpose in practically every instance, and this because the sentiment that compelled it was a sentiment engendered by agitation, and totally unripe for its enforcement.

Prohibitory Laws Evaded.

That prohibitory laws are all evaded is clearly shown by the fact that notwithstanding the adoption of prohibition by a number of States, and by innumerable counties, until at the present time it is unlawful to sell wines or spirits in more than one-half of the geographical limits of the United States, the demand for such beverages has increased in almost the same proportion as our population, from the legitimate trade, and in an enormously greater proportion from illicit distillers and retailers.

We shall not be so uncharitable as to contend that the agitation from which this public sentiment originates owes its persistent recurrence to mercenary motives on the part of men who make merchandise of aroused emotions, because it gives a pleasurable excitement to the women who tire of the monotony of home; but, on the contrary, we shall be candid in the admission that there is good and sufficient reason for an arousing of public sentiment in this country, and we confess a feeling of sympathy with the movements for the uplifting of mankind and for the purification of society.

Favor White Ribbon Movement.

The White Ribbon movement, the Blue Ribbon movement, the Prohibition movement, and the Anti-Saloon League movement were, or are, protests upon the part of good men and women against two of the greatest evils connected with our civilization, and, unfortunately for us, connected with our trade—we refer to drunkenness and to those saloons which are conducted in a disreputable manner, or in such a way as to demoralize rather than to elevate those who patronize them—and we, the delegates to this convention of the wine and spirit trade, desire to express in no uncertain tones our entire sympathy with the efforts that have been or may be put forth to exterminate the evils, and our willingness to lend cooperation and assistance by every means in our power.

We do not desire to deceive or to mislead, nor to be misunderstood, and in all candor we declare our views to be as follows:

We believe that wines and spirits are blessings per se, intended by an All-wise Providence to bring health and happiness to mankind.

We believe that the legitimate manufacture and sale of wines and spirits is an honorable trade, and one that should be respected by society and by the laws.

We believe that the saloon and café can, and should be, so conducted that men would not hesitate to visit them accompanied by their wives and children, and that the atmosphere of such places should be beneficial to both mind and body.

Intoxication Should Be Crime.

We believe that it should be made a crime for a man to become intoxicated. We hold that no man has a right to deliberately overthrow his reason and render himself a dangerous factor in society, and, therefore, we would gladly welcome the passage of laws providing severe penalties for such offenses and a firm, rigid enforcement without regard to wealth or influence of the offender.

For the evils to which we have referred prohibitory laws have proved no remedy, and, even if they should be enforced, we believe they are dangerous to liberty, but the suggestions that we have offered are practicable, and have proven to be remedies in most of the countries of Continental Europe, where drunkenness is seldom in evidence, and furthermore, we can apply such laws without giving offense save to those who by common consent are deserving of condemnation as having done that which mankind recognizes to be wrong, and having thereby placed themselves without the pale.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both. In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost instantaneous.

What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness.

Such a system would, in twenty years, have made France as poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. Happily, the danger was averted; and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved. You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils; I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion.

Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World; and while that is the case the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity.

An Early Victorian Mother Shipton.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly settled as Old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds and thousands of artisans will sometimes be out of work.

Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators, who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million while another cannot get a full meal.

In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting; but it matters little, for here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select—of an educated class—of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order.

Restraining the Discontented Majority.

Accordingly the malcontents are gently but firmly restrained. The bad time is got over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indigent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin to flow again; work is plentiful, wages rise, and all is tranquillity