“It is not denied that Massachusetts has to-day upon her statute-books other laws involving the same violation of personal liberty as prohibition; but every law interfering with personal habits and propensities has no practical vitality. “For example, prostitution is an enormous evil; and we have a severe statute against it; but, as a matter of fact, if a house of prostitution be conducted in a quiet, unobtrusive way, the authorities cannot break it up. If any prohibitionist can devise a method by which the authorities can break up such a house, it would be easy to sell his discovery to property holders of New York City for a hundred million of dollars. “Scattered throughout this city (Boston) there are unnumbered rooms over stores, and other places of business, and in private houses, occupied by persons who are living in the relation of husband and wife without legal marriage. There are not two punishments for every hundred thousand violations of the statutes against such intimacies. “Gambling is very common in our city. There is a great number of rooms, or suites of rooms, devoted to this practice. In club houses and many hotels, gambling may be found every night, and often lasting all night. Not a fiftieth part of the gambling done in this city takes place in gambling rooms. Why does it never occur to anybody to attempt to enforce the law against gambling in our clubs and other private houses; should they attempt it they would signally fail.” Although this was said of New England, it is representative of the United States and the civilized world. A like picture might be drawn of every city in our land and throughout Europe. Every candid and intelligent magistrate, or police official, in the country will admit that the law never has, and never can, prevent gaming, intemperance or prostitution. This has been publicly acknowledged by the most eminent men of affairs in Europe. That it is impossible to suppress or exterminate the “social evil” has been demonstrated by Acton, Tait, Parent and Du Chatelet. The latter avows that “licensed houses are the most judicious and the most consistent with good morals.” The police establishments of the continent, finding it impossible to prevent the existence of houses of ill-fame, realized the necessity, not of authorizing, but of licensing them. The vice is now subject to police supervision in Paris, Toulon, Lyons, Strasburg, Brest, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Naples, Brussels, Rheims, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Copenhagen, Madrid, Malta, Lisbon, Amsterdam and St. Petersburg. A like policy obtains in Bombay, Hong Kong, Japan, New South Wales and Cape Colony.