I have now answered very fully all of the inquiries in your letter save, perhaps, the last, and that is as to the relation and effect of the present suit to the cause of prohibition in Iowa. Permit me to say to you, and through you to the true friends of prohibition in this state, that we have now upon our statute books a most excellent law, that is every day gaining favor with the people, and that has survived all open warfare upon it. In my humble judgment the most we now have to fear is not the open opposition of its enemies, but the follies and indiscretions of its friends. As I have already conclusively shown in this communication, we procured the enactment of this law by assuring the people of this state that we did not intend to interfere with the manufacture of alcohol or intoxicating liquors for medicinal or mechanical purposes, nor as an article of commerce for export. The question is, have we anything to gain by duplicity and insincerity, and by now claiming for this law what we did not claim for it when we procured its enactment by the general assembly? Above all things, have we, as prohibitionists, anything to gain by entering into an alliance with the distillers of other states who are making war upon a productive industry in our own state, for the sole purpose of promoting their own pecuniary interests in destroying competition in their business? Have we anything to gain by turning aside from the great work that we have undertaken of destroying the saloon as a place of resort where our young men are taught the habit of intoxication, and engaging in the Utopian scheme of regulating the supply of alcohol in the markets of the world, the use of which it is impossible for us to control after it passes beyond the jurisdiction of our laws? There is another very grave and important question that the true friends of prohibition in Iowa should stop to consider. The courts of the United States have more than intimated that if the prohibitory law of Iowa does in fact destroy the value of property built for a use which was lawful at the time of its erection, that such a law is a violation of the constitution of the United States, unless it also makes provision for compensation to the owner.