LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 773 



ately stigmatized as "the height of human folly." One would 

 think from his description — "it is -made a penal offense for one 

 person to ask another to take a drink "• — that even in the "castle" 

 of one's own home one can not do this in any circumstances — so 

 eager are the low a law-makers to forbid the people " to wear, to 

 eat, and to drink what they please." Passing the flippant tone in 

 which it is asserted that a man who, " in the sanctity of his own 

 house, gets quietly drunk and goes to bed," " has injured no living 

 being but himself," it is to be said that there is nothing whatever 

 in the penal features of the prohibitory statutes of Iowa that has 

 anything to do with the " sideboard " in a private house. 



It strikes one rather oddly, on the score of logical concinnity, 

 that the prevention of a man's being " treated " to liquors, without 

 any expense to himself, should be argued against as a " sumptu- 

 ary " measure, whether the giving away of the liquors is done in 

 a saloon or a parlor. A prejudice in favor of the free use and 

 sale of intoxicants may indeed prevent one from seeing a ludi- 

 crous fallacy here. 



A prohibition of giving away liquors to Indians, minors, and 

 persons who are already intoxicated is quite an old affair in the 

 Code of Iowa. It stands under the title " Offenses against Pub- 

 lic Policy." To persons who have lived in States or Territories 

 where Indians still linger it will be very clear at once what " pub- 

 lic policy " has to do with it, and that the sumptuary question 

 has nothing. A general provision years since against evasions 

 required courts and juries to construe the whole chapter concern- 

 ing intoxicating liquors " so as to cover the act of giving as well 

 as selling by persons not authorized." Is not this according to 

 public policy, anyway ? Artful sales by pharmacists for other 

 purposes than medicine were carefully provided against. Selling 

 to voters within a mile of the polls during an election was forbid- 

 den, and the purity of elections further protected by forbidding 

 to give them any intoxicants, including ale, wine, and beer. Is 

 this any more sumptuary than making the sale unlawful within 

 three miles of the State Agricultural College (save for sacrament- 

 al, mechanical, medical, or culinary purposes), or within a hun- 

 dred and sixty rods of any agricultural fair ? On the other hand, 

 all this was so far from interfering with the right of the people 

 to drink what they please that the Iowa Supreme Court had de- 

 cided that the act of giving is not in itself unlawful, that the 

 keeping of liquors without intent to sell unlawfully is not affected, 

 nor the character of liquors as property. " The statute," said 

 Judge Beck, of the Supreme Court, in one case, " does not forbid 

 the simple act of giving when no consideration, reward, or pay- 

 ment was given or promised, and none expected, and which was 

 not intended as a subterfuge to conceal unlawful sales and evade 



