" We have more
law now than we execute. In what city is there a mayoralty that dare
do it? There is no advantage in having the law higher than public
opinion. What would be the use of the Maine Law in New York? Neal Dow,
the Mayor of Portland, came out with a _posse_ and threw the rum of
the city into the street. From the alms-house a woman came out and
said, "Oh! if this had only been done ten years ago, my husband would
not have died a drunkard, and I would not have been a widow in the
almshouse."
But there are not enough police in the city of New York to stand by
its Mayor in such an undertaking; public opinion is not educated.
I do not know but that God is determined to let drunkards triumph; and
the husbands and sons of thousands of our best families be destroyed
by this vice, in order that our people, amazed and indignant, may rise
up and demand the extermination of this municipal crime.
There is a way of driving down the hoops of a barrel until the hoops
break.
We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate this evil
by a tax on whiskey.
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