The effect of this policy of prohibition to the liquor traffic was speedily visible in our work-houses, jails and houses of corrections. The jail of Cumberland County, the most populous of the State, had been badly over-crowded, but within four months of the enactment of the law there were but five prisoners in it, three of whom were liquor-sellers, put in for violation of the law. The jails of Penobscot; Kennebec, Franklin, Oxford and York were absolutely empty. The inmates of the work-houses were greatly reduced in number, and in some of the smaller towns pauperism ceased entirely. But, during all this time, in every part of the country, reports were industriously circulated that the law was inoperative for good, and that liquors were sold in Maine as freely and in as large quantities as before the law. These false statements were industriously and persistently made everywhere by those interested in the liquor trade, and by those impelled by appetite or passion. It is sufficient for me to say here that the Maine Law, from the first, has been as faithfully executed as our other criminal laws have been, though there has been, at certain times, and in certain localities, considerable complicity with the violators of it, on the part of many officers of the law, so that the Legislature has at last provided heavy penalties for the punishment of prosecuting officers, justices of the peace and judges of municipal and police courts, in case of failure in their duty. I am glad to be able to say that the judges of our higher courts have, from the first, been true to their duty in the administration of this law, as of all others. In much the larger part of Maine, in all the rural districts, in the villages and smaller towns, the liquor traffic is absolutely unknown; no such thing as a liquor-shop exists there, either open or secret. The traffic lingers secretly only in the larger towns and cities, where it leads a precarious and troubled life--only among the lowest and vilest part of our foreign population. Nowhere in the State is there any visible sign of this horrible trade. The penalties of the law, as they now stand, are sufficient to extinguish the traffic in all the small towns, and to drive it into dens and dark corners in the larger towns. The people of Maine now regard this trade as living, where it exists at all, only on the misery and wretchedness of the community. They speak of it everywhere, in the press, on the platform, and in legislative halls, as the gigantic crime of crimes, and we mean to treat it as such by the law.