The constitution of Norway is liberal and the government highly democratic. In these respects the people of Norway are now perhaps as favorably circumstanced as we in America. The Norwegian readily enters into the spirit of American laws and institutions, for their laws are not essentially different from his own. Being accustomed to a high degree of freedom, he has been trained to a high conception of the responsibilities that that freedom entails. He has long been accustomed to representation and sharing in the rights of franchise, and he exercises that right as a privilege and a solemn duty. It may be said, I believe, that no people has a higher sense of right and wrong and a stronger moral incentive to right. Frauds in elections and graft in official life are yet unheard-of among our Norwegian-American citizens. Norway is, next to Finland, the most temperate of European countries. The sale of liquor is permitted only in incorporated cities and towns, and only by an association that is organized under government supervision. It is the so-called Gothenburg system that is in use. Of the earnings of such organization the government takes five per cent, the county ten per cent and the municipality fifteen per cent, while the net profit of the association must not exceed five per cent on the investment in any one year. The hours of sale are very much restricted. Not only is there no sale of liquor on Sundays, but places of such business must close at one o'clock on Saturday and on days preceding holidays. Norway is essentially a temperate country. Statistics show that out of every thousand deaths, only one is due to drink. The Norwegian people have educated themselves to abstinence, and the temperance movement found wide support earlier in Norway than anywhere else. _Det norske Totalafholds Selskab_[7] was organized in 1859; ten years ago it had ten hundred and twenty branches and a hundred and thirty thousand members, while other temperance associations also have a considerable membership. Here in America, the Norwegian immigrant has taken a prominent part in legislation looking toward the restriction of the sale of intoxicating liquors,[8] and the Prohibition party finds its strongest support among the Norwegians, as it finds a relatively large number of its candidates for state and county offices from among them. [7] The Norwegian Total Abstinence Society. [8] When the Sunday closing order was instituted in Minneapolis in December, 1905, the _Minneapolis Journal_ commented upon the fact that the Norwegian citizens made no complaint, as it appears others did.