her sad and
disgraceful experience, Massachusetts abandoned her prohibition of the
traffic and went back to license again; but the evil consequences began
to show themselves so quickly that the law was repealed in less than a
year.

Governor Claflin, in his message to the legislature in January, 1869,
thus speaks of the effect of the new license law: "The increase of
drunkenness and crime during the last six months, as compared with the
same period of 1867, is very marked and decisive as to the operation of
the law. _The State prisons, jails and houses of correction are being
rapidly filled_, and will soon require enlarged accommodation if the
commitments continue to increase as they have since the present law went
in force."

While the chaplain of the State prison in his annual report for 1868,
says: "The prison never was so full as at the present time. If the
rapidly increasing tide of intemperance, so greatly swollen by the
present wretched license law, is suffered to rush on unchecked, there
will be a fearful increase of crime, and the State must soon extend the
limits of the prison, or create another."

This law was repealed, as we have seen. A year of its bitter fruit was
enough for the people.

SUBMITTING AGAIN TO THE YOKE.

But, strange to say, after all she has suffered from license laws, the
old Bay State has again submitted to the yoke, and is once more in the
hands of the great liquor interest. In 1874, she drifted out from the
safe harbor of prohibition, and we find her, to-day, on the stormy and
storm-wrecked sea of license. A miserable attempt has been made by the
friends of this law to show that its action has been salutory in Boston,
the headquarters of the liquor power, in the diminution of dram-shops
and arrests for drunkenness. Water may run up hill in Boston; but it
obeys the law of gravitation in other places. We leave the reader to
draw his own conclusions from this extract from the report of the
License Commissioners of that city, made February 1st, 1877: "It must be
admitted that the business of liquor-selling in this city is, to a very
large extent, in the hands of _irresponsible men and women_, whose idea
of a license law ends with the simple matter of paying a certain sum,
the amount making but little difference to them, _provided they are left
to do as they please after payment_. Besides the saloons and bar-rooms,
which are open publicly, the traffic in small grocery stores, in cell