cavils, but to prevent honest misconceptions in the public mind, which has been so belabored and bewildered these forty years by the pestilent sophistries of the prohibitionists. Cleared of this incumbrance, the law would stand forth unimpeachable as a salutary police measure for the protection of society from the abuses of the liquor traffic.

nue.

The license law thus amended would not only commend itself to good citizens when the question was on its adoption; it would have a far better security for good administration. The licensing board would not, as now, be divided in mind between the question of public order and morals and the question of reveIts regard for the interests of the treasury would never have a chance, as now, to conflict with its duty to the interests of society. In every application for license it could render its decision solely with reference to the question, Is the candidate a man of such discretion and fidelity that he is worthy to be trusted, for the public advantage, with a necessary but very dangerous business, from the abuse of which, in unfit hands, enormous mischiefs continually result to society and the state?

But is it, then, proposed that this business, which inflicts upon the state so large a part of its burdens, shall be exempt from paying its share of the public expenses? Not in the least. Let it pay its due and equitable share into the treasury. But let the taxing be kept completely separate from the licensing, so that the public, official and unofficial, may learn by and by that they are not the same thing, but entirely different things; that "a business may be licensed, and yet not taxed; or it may be taxed, and yet not licensed."* Let the license law provide for the issue of licenses on the sole ground of character and fitness. And then let the tax law provide for the collection of taxes from all liquor shops, whether licensed or unlicensed. And be very sure that the tax-collector will be able to discover and levy upon many an illicit tippling house which the prosecuting attorney has been totally unable to find; † and that the prosecuting officer “Taxation,” 404–407, note, and other references in the FORUM, Vol. II., page 404, note. (No. for December, 1886.)

* See Cooley on

This used to have a striking illustration in Maine. In Portland and other towns the United States revenue officers used to collect the special tax, from

and the tax-collector will be, if they are honest and faithful offi. cers, mutually helpful in their respective duties. Every illicit trader whom the revenue officer has compelled to pay his tax will at once be called upon to pay his fine and suffer his penalty; and, vice versâ, every one whom the public prosecutor has convicted of illegal selling will be liable to a call from the tax-collector to make good his debt to the revenue. Thus, by a proper and obvious discrimination in the exercise of its functions, the state will keep, not one eye, but both its eyes, wide open to watch a business that can never be watched too sharply and constantly.

Now, the objections to selling liquor licenses at any price are à fortiori objections to selling them at a high price. Fix the license fee at a thousand dollars, and you do more to countenance the mischievous and demoralizing pretense of rumsellers and prohibitionists, that a license law is simply a device for extracting blood money from criminals for the public treasury, than you can do by any other method, unless it is by fixing the fee at two thousand. The wise and stable enactment, and the righteous execution, of license laws depend on resolutely, persistently, refusing to tolerate this falsehood.*

It does not require argument to show that the higher the license fee, the more liable is the licensing board to be affected, in the issuing of licenses, by the money consideration, which ought not to enter into the case as it lies before them, but which ordinarily does enter into it, and always to the detriment of the public interests. In States in which the immensely important

year to year, from scores of professional dealers in liquors whom the prosecuting officer never dreamed of suspecting, although their names were recorded, with street and number of their places of business, in the United States Revenue Office, and printed in the "Liquor Dealers' Trade-list." And all the time that happy old optimist, General Neal Dow, was assuring us that the liquor trade was hiding away in undiscoverable holes and corners.

* How ingrained this notion is in some men's minds is illustrated by the language of the new Pennsylvania "Wholesale Dealers' License Act," which prescribes that "all wholesale dealers . . . shall pay ... an annual license, in cities of the first, second, and third classes, of five hundred dollars." Paying a license! The absurd phrase is heard often enough in the loose talk of inexact people, and has grown up from the fact that the form of licensing is sometimes used merely as a convenient way of collecting a tax. But here we have the phrase inserted in a statute.

and difficult business of conferring liquor licenses is intrusted to functionaries of a low grade, without judicial experience or capacity, representing the treasury which is to be benefited by the license revenue, and depending for their own pay, not on the licenses they refuse, but on the licenses they grant, it is easy to see that their office will soon be nothing better than an open shop where the most important and dangerous trusts in the gift of the state are shamelessly bought and sold at a fixed price, especially if it is a high price. It does not help the matter much that the commissioners charged with this business are "good men," very good men, indeed, in the conventional sense of the word. There is no creature alive so dangerous to society, when there is grave work like this to be done, as your average "good man." This would be a very good world to live and fight in, if it were not for the "good men" in it. The most scoundrelly deeds I have ever known in the administration of a license law were done by "good men," with that semblance of an artless, unsuspecting ignorance of men's wicked ways which is characteristic of the rural diaconate when it gets into politics.

But does not the principle of high license prove itself to be practically useful in reducing the number of saloons, and, to begin with, in reducing the number of applications for license? Look at Philadelphia, where the new law has at once thinned out one-half of the customary number of applicants, leaving the remaining number to be still further thinned by the examination of the license court. And look at other experiments that have resulted in a large diminution in the number of saloons, with no loss, but a substantial gain to the public revenue.

I gladly acknowledge whatever good has been thus accomplished, and freely concede that this sort of test is the right sort of test to apply. The law that we want is the law that, in the long run, does the most good. But we must remember, first, that these experiments have not yet had a long run; and, secondly, that to have done more good than a very bad and badly administered law that went before, does not prove that the highlicense law is the best law, but only that it is not the worst. It will not do to be too confident of the public advantage gained by thinning out the saloons by the high-license expedient. It

does not seem the best kind of reduction. It keeps in the business the men whom it is most desirable to exclude from it, the men who can best afford to pay a high price for a license; that is, the men who can make the most money out of their trade; that is, the men who can most effectively push the sale of liquor. These are the very men we do not want. The public has no use whatever for their talents in this direction. We do not want the liquor business pushed at all. It will go of itself quite fast enough and far enough. But these men, distinguished in their business by superior ability in persuading many people to drink, and to drink a great deal, are the men whom, under the high-license law, we shall select to be rewarded and splendidly enriched by a monopoly of this very lucrative trade. By an exorbitant tax at the outset, we signify to them that they are expected to do a big business and make a great deal of money. In fact, we require them, from the start, to undertake the business in this way; and we need have little doubt but that they will "better the instruction."

When I go on, now, to name some of the points which a good license law, and a good administration of it, ought to include, I beg not to be understood as claiming originality for the suggestions. I am merely going back to the proper conception of a license law, as it has been exemplified through many generations of salutary English and American jurisprudence, down to the time, within our memory, when somebody in the State of Maine made the sudden discovery that all license laws are essentially sinful.

1. The filing of an application for license ought to be accompanied by the payment of a fee sufficient to pay, with a good margin, all the expenses of the license court, or licensing board. Certainly, if any candidates are to be exempted from the costs of the necessary inquiry, it should not be the worthless criminals who take up the time of the board by trying to prevent the board from finding out that they never ought to have made application at all. A good round ten-dollar or twenty-dollar fee, paid with the filing of the application, would be quite as effective as the requirement of a high-license fee in thinning out the inconvenient crowd of applicants.

2. The board for conferring licenses should be constituted of as able and upright men as those who make up the License Court now sitting in Philadelphia under the provisions of the new Pennsylvania license law. More than this it would be impossible to ask. Four of the best judges of the county, men of the very highest personal and judicial character, are intrusted with this momentous business, and are giving to it their faithful, untiring attention, to the dismay of the horde of criminals that haunt the court, and of all those who have vested interests in the promotion of crime.

3. But while there are no persons so well qualified for this task as experienced judges, their very experience will be a disqualification, if it results in their bringing into the license court too much of the procedure of a court of justice. Before the license court there is no question of justice whatever, whether distributive or vindictive. It is unfortunate that it should be called a court, and that its members should be called judges. It is partly as a result of this misnomer, favored, of course, to the utmost by the attorneys for the applicants, that the assumption is tacitly made and conceded that these applicants are on trial, and entitled to a favorable verdict unless some disqualification is proved against them. On the contrary, it ought to be understood and felt on all hands that the applicant is not demanding justice; that he is petitioning to be invested with a privilege that shall distinguish him from the mass of his fellow citizens as a person of such exceptional discretion and fidelity that he may safely be trusted with a necessary but dangerous business, which is not to be committed to ordinary hands. The first question to be raised is not to other citizens, Have you anything against this man? but to the applicant himself, What are the qualifications which you consider yourself to possess for this trust for which you apply? Give an account of yourself. What are your antecedents? Have you had experience in this business before? If so, who were your neighbors, and who were your customers? Can you bring a recommendation from the policemen and from the local magistrate to the effect that a license issued to you would be a blessing to the neighborhood? This is the line of inquiry that should be taken up, and, adequately prosecuted by