FAILURE OF THE MAINE LAW IN RHODE ISLAND.
Writing on this subject, the New York Tribune says :—“ There is no cause to doubt the perfect fairness and discretion with which the Governor strove to execute the law. He went about it simply determined to put the statute in force because it was the law. . . . The law in his hands was sure not only of fair play, but of judicious and friendly administration.” Yet as to its effect, the evidence of the Tribune is that it “has kept the State in turmoil ever since it was passed. We think no one will assert that it has even checked the sale and consumption of ardent spirits in the State.” But it is not alone that the statute has been a failure, nro even that it has kept the State in agitation and trouble, and very nearly embi'oiled it in a dangerous quarrel with the Federal Government; a still worse result is that it has spread through the community a spirit of hostility to constituted authority and of secret and banded conspiracy against the law. Drinking clubs sprang up in every direction throughout the State, and drew into them men who would seldom or never have visited the publichouse, but who adopted this mode of defeating a law which they deemed an unwarrantable interference with their liberty. The process was this : a dozen men or two formed a club, hired a room, and stood in it a keg of whisky. Each provided himself with a key, and visited the club-room whenever it suited his convenience or his thirst, and charged himself in a book kept for the purpose with whatever he drank. The existence and the purpose of these drinking clubs wore notorious, and thus the authority of the Government and the law was brought into contempt.
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New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4479, 28 July 1875, Page 3
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304FAILURE OF THE MAINE LAW IN RHODE ISLAND. New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4479, 28 July 1875, Page 3
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