LIQUOR LAWS NOT SUMPTUARY. 77S 



sale, give away, exchange, barter, or dispense any intoxicating 

 liquor for any purpose whatever, otherwise than as provided in 

 this act. Persons holding permits as herein provided shall be 

 authorized to sell and dispense intoxicating liquors for pharma- 

 ceutical and medicinal purposes, and wine for sacramental pur- 

 poses, but for no other purposes whatever." 



I hope the terms of this statute make it sufficiently evident 

 that the men who made and passed it were absolutely in down- 

 right earnest to suppress the wretched traffic in drunkard-making 

 beverages, and I have not a word of apology to offer for them. 

 This measure, to use Cromwellian phraseology, is one of " root- 

 and-branch " extermination of a sore and fearful evil. But along 

 with it should go the statement that this is but half of their legis- 

 lation on the subject, the other half — known as the " Pharmacy 

 Act " — being permissive of the sale of the same intoxicants, for the 

 lawful purposes above named, by pharmacists, under restrictions. 

 Some of these were by the last General Assembly relaxed, with 

 no effect, however, upon the other half of the law, prohibiting 

 sales of beverages by other persons. Step by step that has been 

 allowed by law and that forbidden which long and disastrous ex- 

 perience showed might or must be. I am authorized to declare 

 that neither this nor any other statute of Iowa is " sumptuary " in 

 character or intent. I do not claim that all of them are perfect 

 for their ends, but only that — a simple fact — this is in no instance 

 among their ends. The giving away of means of intoxication in- 

 cluded in the last recited statute (22 Gen. Assembly, chap. 71, § 1) 

 is forbidden simply and solely to prevent evasions. Doubtless it 

 will be condemned by those who are willing the risk of promoting 

 drunkenness should be incurred by a liquor traffic more or less 

 free ; but, after this patient exhibition of authoritative facts, it 

 should be forever impossible for any intelligent and candid man 

 to stigmatize it as " sumptuary." * 



After this refutation of its main contention, minor points, made 

 in the same spirit in the article here criticised, hardly require no- 

 tice. That "no one is safe under such a law "as that of Minne- 

 sota from arrest and penalty on the charge of his being drunk, 

 will call out a smile among the sober people of that good State. 

 That every law of this tenor is quite or " almost a dead letter " is 

 — within the ordinary and daily observation of citizens in States 

 where they are in force — absolutely contrary to fact. At the time 

 of this writing the retail of drinks manufactured in other States 

 is suddenly and notoriously increasing under the " original pack- 

 ages " decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. This 



* No laws against the evasion of a statute can possibly be " sumptuary," unless the 

 original statute is such, which in this case is not, as we have shown at large. 



