PROHIBITION AND LAW-BREAKING. [TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." ]
Sia,—A few days ago I received from a gentleman holding a judicial position in the United States a. letter, the following passage from which is of general interest:— "Prohibition is something you had better look out for, as I should be very sorry to see Great Britain go through our present experience. The law is not enforced, and it cannot be, and there is nothing worse for the morals of a nation than to experience a wholesale disregard for law. . . . Drunkenness has somewhat—yea, much—decreased and the minor crimes that come from it, but anybody who has the price can always get something to drink, and that something is often real, poison, and, curiously enough, many drink now who never drank before. But the wholesale violation of what is rightly or wrongly the law is the shocking thing to me, and the worst of it is that the law is imbedded in our Constitution, and I fear it will stay there. The major crimes have not decreased —on the contrary, are more flagrant than ever: The boast and confident prediction: of the Prohibitionists that crime and poverty, &c., would disappear are daily disproved, as any sensible man. might have foreseen. People will never learn, alas! that you cannot reform society on masse by passing a law. Meanwhile, personal liberty is being -chucked-overboard. These fanatics are making their drive now against tobacco, ' Sabbath desecration.' ho. Here I am at-this moment writing to you
when I ought to be at church,' I suppose. I often wonder what the outcome of all this sad-business will be—and long to stand again super antiques vies."
I wish I could carry to the reader the conviction which know- ledge of the writer makes me feelrl am, Sir, he., H. C.
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