790 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that crime than a statute to the same effect. How, then, can it be 

 expected that the recent adoption of a constitutional amendment in 

 Maine is going to have any effect in the prevention of the sale of 

 intoxicating liquors ? Such sale has been forbidden in that State for 

 more than thirty years. Prohibition has been the law of the State for 

 all that time just as much as it will be now, and, if it has failed in the 

 past to produce the result intended, so will it in the future. 



I have said that offenses agains tthe law are not of frequent occur- 

 rence, and of course that is to say in comparison with the ordinary 

 events of life. Not one man in a hundred, probably, has even violated 

 the provisions of the law as to the sale of intoxicating liquor. But 

 violations of the law are more frequent in some communities than in 

 others. The same law against murder prevails throughout the city of 

 New York, for instance, but in certain parts of that city murder is of 

 common occurrence when compared with other parts. The law forbids 

 murder in all the Southern States, yet certain kinds of murder, by 

 comparison with the Northern States, are of frequent occurrence there 

 and go unpunished ; and this is true to such an extent as to be an 

 occasion of reproach to the condition of public sentiment there. Duel- 

 ing was forbidden and punishable for many years before public sen- 

 timent was such as to permit the enforcement of the law. Now the 

 statutes against dueling have become of little consequence, because 

 public opinion about dueling is a sufficient law. Laws do not make 

 people virtuous, honest, or temperate, by their mere passage. When 

 laws punishing crime, fraud, and intemperance are enforced, they do 

 have an influence in their prevention. But for the enforcement of the 

 law we need not only persons ready to set prosecutions on foot and 

 officers ready to serve warrants of arrest, but we need also courts and 

 juries ready to convict on sufficient evidence, and witnesses willing to 

 testify. For all these we must have an overwhelming public senti- 

 ment in favor of the law, and this is true not only of large communi- 

 ties like States and counties, but of small communities like villages 

 and hamlets. Neither murder nor any other crime can be punished if 

 those who have knowledge of the facts connected with it will not tell 

 what they know. This is especially true of any class of crimes in 

 which all the participants are held equally guilty ; in illustration of 

 which is the notorious difficulty of obtaining convictions for offenses 

 against the laws as to the relations of the sexes. It is also true of 

 offenses against the laws now under consideration, not because both 

 parties to a sale of intoxicating liquor are held equally guilty, but 

 because both are participants in the act which constitutes the offense, 

 and all manly feeling, of which even drunkards have a little, revolts 

 at testifying in such a case. 



But even with public sentiment in favor of the enforcement of pro- 

 hibitory laws, they have no such influence as persuasion and education. 

 Another mistake made by temperance agitators, and one which follows 



