4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



indignant at being treated in so outrageous a manner, and utters 

 his protest in no measured language ; his conduct only serves 

 to convince his captors that the charge based upon the odor of 

 alcohol is well founded, and he is mulcted in forty or sixty dollars, 

 or sent to the workhouse for ninety days, as the case may be. No 

 one is safe under such a law ; it is often a very difficult matter to 

 determine whether a person is drunk or sober, and frequently it is 

 impossible even by the most minute examination. Again, some 

 people become intoxicated from a single glass of champagne, 

 while others will drink two or more bottles with impunity. It 

 is manifestly unjust to allow an individual peculiarity like this 

 to establish the guilt or innocence of an accused person. 



As I have said, why stop at making drunkenness a crime when 

 there are other vices far more immoral and more destructive to 

 the character of the perpetrator ? Why not enact a law against 

 lying ? There are laws against slander, which injures the one 

 against whom it is directed, and they are well enough, for to injure 

 another is a crime. But lying in the abstract remains unnoticed 

 by the penal statutes, though a more degrading vice in the eyes of 

 all civilized mankind than mere drunkenness. 



On the first of June of the year 1889 a statute went into effect 

 in the State of New York which prohibits, under severe penal- 

 ties, the selling of cigarettes to minors under the age of sixteen ; 

 and the State of Michigan has recently not only enacted a similar 

 law, but goes farther, and interdicts the manufacture of cigarettes 

 within the limits of the State. Is it to be supposed for one mo- 

 ment that minors under the age of sixteen in either State smoke 

 fewer cigarettes than they did before these laws were passed ? 

 How is the vender to know in many cases whether the applicant 

 for cigarettes is over sixteen or not ? And is there any difficulty 

 for any minor to get a companion who is undoubtedly over six- 

 teen, or some one else, to buy cigarettes for him ? Legislatures 

 that pass such laws, and governors that sign them, are apparently 

 ignorant of the first principles of jurisprudence. I venture to say 

 that even now, although not two weeks have elapsed since the act 

 went into effect, it is practically a dead letter in the city of New 

 York and throughout the State generally, and I am quite sure 

 that not a single conviction will ever be obtained under its pro- 

 visions. I am not certain that our society did its full duty in 

 not protesting against the statute-books being encumbered with 

 such rubbish. Cigarette-smoking by minors is an evil to be sup- 

 pressed by proper instruction and by the intervention of parents 

 and guardians. If these latter can not prevent it, it is quite cer- 

 tain that all the policemen in the State, backed by all the majesty 

 of this particular law, will have their labor for their pains. 



