LIQUOR LEGISLATION. 789 



ment was framed. It proceeds upon the claim that any use of intoxi- 

 cating liquors as a beverage is injurious to the user, a claim not yet 

 proved, and certainly not yet by any means admitted, and that what- 

 ever is injurious to an individual, if it in any way affects the public 

 injuriously, may be prevented, not by direct punishment of the offend- 

 er, but indirectly by a sweeping prohibition forbidding all persons to 

 furnish the means of committing the offense. If such law-making can 

 be defended at all, it can be only as the making of police regulations, 

 for which the frame of government of a federation of States seems a 

 very curious place. Amendments or provisions of the Constitutions of 

 the several States are equally objectionable on considerations of sound 

 legislation. The great mistake made by temperance agitators who 

 favor prohibition is that they expect too much from the mere passage 

 of laws. They know that in our highly civilized, orderly, and law- 

 abiding communities there are laws for the punishment of all the 

 grave offenses, such as murder, arson, burglary, and the like, and 

 against almost innumerable misdemeanors and petty offenses ; they 

 see that offenses against such laws are not of frequent occurrence, and 

 by hasty generalization, and usually without experience in the work- 

 ings of the law, they draw the conclusion that the passage of a law 

 making a certain act an offense and forbidding it has a potent effect in 

 preventing it. In spite, however, of all the experiments that have 

 been tried in legislating on the sale of intoxicating liquors, and varied 

 and numerous statutes on the subject, the evil aimed at still exists. 

 Hasty reasoning from this state of facts leads to the conclusion that it 

 is not the law that is in fault, but the method of its enactment. Our 

 prohibitionist friends know that there are no departures to a notice- 

 able extent from the provisions of the Constitution of the United 

 States and of the several States, and conclude that if they can get the 

 enactment they desire into the Constitution it will have an effect that 

 it can not have while only existing in the form of a statute. The real 

 reason that there are violations of statutes and not of the provisions 

 of Constitutions is that statutes and Constitutions deal with, and are 

 intended to deal with, different kinds of law. The Constitution in 

 general terms provides the frame of government for the State, dis- 

 tributes the legislative, judicial, and executive functions, and sets forth 

 the powers of the Legislature, the courts, the Governor, and his asso- 

 ciates ; while statutes are enacted to fill in the details not covered by 

 the Constitution, to erect and prescribe the powers of municipal, re- 

 ligious, charitable and other corporations, to regulate the relations of 

 individuals to one another, the making of contracts, the settlement of 

 estates, and the like, and to provide for the punishment of offenses 

 against the community. A statute has the same force and effect while 

 it exists that a provision of the Constitution has. It is easy to be un- 

 derstood that a constitutional provision for the punishment of murder 

 would not be in the least more likely to prevent the commission of 



