“In supporting this measure, I wish to distinctly define my position. I am a practical temperance man; a total abstainer. I have belonged, and do now belong, to every temperance organization in the state of Maine, except the Reform Club. I have had much experience in endeavoring to ‘reclaim the fallen and save others from falling,’ and I therefore claim to be as conversant with the practical workings of our prohibitory law as any man in this hall, and I declare, from my experience, that that law, so far as it contributes to lessening the evils of intemperance, is a complete failure, and a costly one to the people of this state. * * * In Cumberland county there are four deputy sheriffs, whose business it is to enforce the liquor law. These men get from $7,000 to $9,000 per year for their services. Of course they never reform a drunkard, but they can afford to contribute $3,000 a year towards the campaign fund—and they do—and the people furnish the money. Every liquor-seller thrown into jail for sixty days pays the high sheriff a profit of $1.50 per week. When there is an average of say fifty of these cases his profits will be $4,000 per year, from this source alone. The people furnish the money, and the sheriff ‘comes down handsomely’ for the campaign fund. True, there are no men reformed, but the party gets the ‘sinews of war.’ And so it is all over the state. “The cost of the execution of the prohibitory law is a burden upon our over-taxed people. The report of the temperance committee of our last Legislature showed that although the ‘law was enforced with all the power of the state,’ court records prove that the number of prosecutions is annually increasing, at great expense to the tax payers. From June 1, 1877, to June 1, 1878, the cost of enforcing the prohibitory law, in Cumberland county alone, reached $28,000. In the same ratio, applied to the population of the whole state, the cost reaches the enormous sum of $220,000, annually. But we would not complain of the expenditure even of this vast sum if the results were, in any degree satisfactory. But they are not. The advocates of the Maine law make bold claims, but their claims are not substantiated by the facts. Outside of Maine, and even in the back towns of this state, remote from the cities, people are given to understand that liquor is not sold in Maine, and therefore there is less crime here than formerly. Neal Dow says, ‘We have little crime here because we have banished its cause.’ Let us look at the facts. In 1851, there were 87 convicts in the state prison. We had then a population of 584,000, while to-day it is probably 625,000. Last year’s state prison report shows the number of convicts to be 206, while 69 more were serving in jail work-shops. So the number of convicts has increased, _under the prohibitory law_, over threefold, while our population has remained comparatively the same. Does that speak well for prohibition? Now, take the city of Portland.