AN EXPERIMENT IN PROHIBITION 49 



threescore places wliere liquor is sold, and in Rutland, St. Albans, and 

 all the larger towns, a proportional number ; and in every village in 

 the State, with the exception of a few inconsiderable hamlets, there 

 is at least one such place. A large proportion of the dram-shops are 

 located upon the principal streets, and there is no concealment or at- 

 tempted concealment of the illegal traffic conducted within them. As 

 these facts and figures sufficiently indicate, the law, broadly speaking, 

 is not at all enforced. The sale of liquor, it is hardly too much to 

 say, is almost as free and open as though there were no such thing as 

 a prohibitory law. The principal exception to the general rule con- 

 sists of an occasional spasmodic attempt to enforce the law in the 

 larger places, and the fining of liquor-dealers on what are termed 

 "disclosures." In the latter case, a person arrested for intoxication 

 is compelled to "disclose" the person of whom he procured liquor, 

 and that person is then tried for the offense. Such cases are very 

 common, but as only the lowest class of liquor-dealers is concerned in 

 them, generally speaking, and as the prosecution is invariably for a 

 "first offense," no effective purpose is served in repressing the liquor- 

 traffic. In the larger towns, an effort to enforce the law is occasion- 

 ally made, but such efforts have invariably proved short-lived, and 

 in almost every instance the people have, at the earliest opportunity, 

 rejected at the polls the officers who have attempted to enforce the 

 law. These are the principal exceptions to the general rule of non- 

 enforcement. Of enforcing the law as the laws against burglary and 

 larceny are enforced, no one dreams for a moment. Such is the un- 

 satisfactory result of Vermont's thirty years' experience of the pro- 

 hibitory liquor law. One might go still further, and speak of the 

 perjury and subornation of perjury, for which the law is in a sense 

 responsible ; of the disregard and contempt for all law which the 

 operation of this law tends to foster and encourage, and of cognate 

 matters which will occur to the reflective reader ; but, perhaps, enough 

 has been saiS in showing the failure of the law to accomplish the ob- 

 ject for which it was enacted. 



The cause of the failure of the law is not far to seek. It is ob- 

 viously that the law is not sustained by public sentiment. It is that 

 the world can not be dragooned into virtue. The supporters of the 

 prohibitory law are well-meaning men and women, who are sincerely 

 desirous of benefiting their fellow-human beings and advancing God*s 

 kingdom upon earth : but not even by these will humanity suffer 

 itself to be driven to loftier heights of thought and action. The peo- 

 ple of Vermont are not singular in this matter ; and there would seem 

 to be no reason why the prohibitory system, a failure in a moral, God- 

 fearing community, should be successful anywhere in the United States. 



