hardy _as to presume to sell and
retail_ strong beer, ale, cider, sherry wine, rum or other strong
liquors or mixed drinks, and _to keep common tippling-houses_, thereby
harboring and entertaining apprentices, Indians, negroes and other idle
and dissolute persons, tending to the ruin and impoverishment of
families, and all impieties and debaucheries, and _if detected are
unable to pay their fine_." All such were sentenced to the
whipping-post.

Three years later, the curse of the licensed traffic had so augmented
that another effort was made for its regulation by the enactment of a
new and more comprehensive law entitled, "An Act for the Inspecting and
_Suppressing of Disorders_ in Licensed Houses."

WORSE AND WORSE.

How successful the good people of Massachusetts were in holding in check
and regulating the evil which they had clothed with power by license,
appears in the preamble to a new Act passed in 1711, "For reclaiming the
over great number of licensed houses, many of which are chiefly used for
revelling and tippling, and become _nurseries of intemperance and
debauchery_, indulged by the masters and keepers of the same for the
sake of gain."

So it went on, from bad to worse, under the Colonial Government, until
1787, when the State constitution was adopted. To what a frightful
magnitude the evil of drunkenness, provided for and fostered by license,
had grown, appears from an entry in the diary of John Adams, under date
of February 29th, 1760, in which he says that few things were "so
fruitful of destructive evils" as "licensed houses." They had become, he
declares, "the eternal haunts of loose, disorderly people of the town,
which renders them offensive and unfit for the entertainment of any
traveler of the least delicacy." * * * "Young people are tempted to
waste their time and money, and to acquire habits of intemperance and
idleness, that we often see reduce many to beggary and vice, and lead
some of them, at least, to prison and the gallows."

In entering upon her career as a State, Massachusetts continued the
license system, laying upon it many prudent restrictions, all of which
were of no avail, for the testimony is complete as to the steady
increase of drunkenness, crime and debauchery.

TESTIMONY OF JOHN ADAMS.

Writing to Mr. Rush, in 1811, John Adams says: "Fifty-three years ago I
was fired with a zeal, amounting to enthusiasm, against ardent spirits,
the multiplication of taverns, retail