Hon. G. Washington Warren, of Charlestown, (Judge of the Police Court, and Ex-Mayor of that city.) Hon. Emory Washburn, of Cambridge, (Bussey Professor in the Law School of Harvard College; Ex-Governor of the Commonwealth; and formerly Judge of the Court of Common Pleas.) Rev. E. M. P. Wells, of Boston, (Rector of St. Stephen's Church.) Prof. James C. White, M. D., of Boston, (Assistant-Professor of Chemistry in Harvard College.) H. W. B. Wightman, Esq., of Chelmsford, (Treasurer of the Chelmsford Foundry Company.) Hon. Joseph M. Wightman, of Boston, Rev. Thomas Worcester, D. D., of Boston. In support of the petition of the College of Pharmacy, which was represented by Messrs. Thomas Hollis, President, Samuel M. Colcord, Vice-President, and Henry W. Lincoln, Recording Secretary, as a special committee of its Board of Trustees, the following gentlemen appeared as witnesses :— Charles Edward Buckingham, M. D., Isaac T. Campbell, of Boston, (Examiner of Drugs.) S. M. Colcord, of Boston, Apothecary, (Vice-President of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.) Thomas Hollis, Apothecary, Boston, (President of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.) James L. Hunt, Apothecary, (Town Liquor Agent of Hingham.) Henry W. Lincoln, Apothecary, Boston, (Recording Secretary of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.) William T. Rand, Dedham, (Formerly an apothecary.) Sampson Reed, Druggist, (Formerly an Alderman of Boston.) Frank W. Simmons, Apothecary, Boston. The opening argument for the Remonstrants was then made by Hon. Asahel Huntington, who was followed by William B. Spooner, Esq., and after the examination of their witnesses, the Rev. A. A. Miner, on Tuesday, April 2d, delivered the closing argument in their behalf. He was followed, on Wednesday, April 3, by Hon. John A. Andrew, in behalf of the Petitioners, who closed the hearing with the following ARGUMENT. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: A measure so extreme and unusual as the statute of Massachusetts-prohibiting the sale of spirituous and fermented liquors, notwithstanding that they are confessedly commercial articles-can rest only on some proposition in science or morals of corresponding sweep. And, although our legislation is not entirely consistent in its details with any theory, yet it does in fact rest on a theory which involves these two positions, viz.: The essentially poisonous character of alcoholic beverages, and The immorality of their use. It assumes that any law which permits (and regulates) their sale is "immoral and an educator of immorality."* I. The advocates of Prohibition base their argument in part upon the assumption that alcohol is a poison, in the sense in which strychnine or arsenic is poison, to be administered to the human system only * Minority Report of 1866, House Document 359, p. 33. under the restrictions applicable to the administration of fatal drugs. They affirm this of alcohol taken in whatever doses, averring, as it has been concisely expressed by another, "that whatever is true of the excessive use of alcohol is true also in proportionate degree of the moderate and occasional use." Dr. Carpenter, Registrar of the University of London, and the leading scientific authority with the advocates of prohibition, declares in set terms that "The action of Alcohol upon the animal body in health is essentially poisonous." Let us therefore at the outset investigate this assumption that alcohol is necessarily a poison, with an eye to see, (in the language of Liebig concerning tea and coffee, substances akin to, though differing somewhat from, alcohol in their working on the human frame,) "whether it depend on sensual and sinful inclinations merely that every people of the globe has appropriated some such means of acting on the nervous life."* Twenty years ago alimentary substances were classified by Liebig as Respiratory Food, and as Plastic Food, the line of distinction between them, in composition, being the absence or presence of *Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, 3d London edition, p. 456. nitrogen, and the line of distinction between them in their transformation in the human body, being according to Liebig's theory, that though both are burned by the inhaled oxygen, yet the former is burned directly by it, without previous transformation into the human tissues, while part of the latter, before final consumption, becomes human tissue. Concisely stated, Liebig's two classes of food are, therefore, I. Certain non-azotized substances, which, from their large amount of carbon, serve (as fuel,) to keep up the animal heat, and which he names the elements of respiration. II. Certain nitrogenized substances, which are adapted to the formation of blood, (out of that, muscle, and the tissues,) and which he terms the plastic elements of nutrition. Liebig's theory of combustion or oxidation, and the sharpness of his distinction between his classes, have been modified by recent scientific disputants; but his position that alcoholic beverages taken in fit combinations, and in due moderation, perform the functions of food, remains unshaken. ? |