Do I mean to say that alcoholic stimulants are absolute necessities of life? No; I do not, but--don’t underrate the meaning of that little word--but the majority of our voters do, and majorities rule in this country. There is altogether too much indulgence and drunkenness--too much yielding to the desire to “feel good.” The use of alcohol in large quantities has a bad effect upon the character and conduct of anyone; the temperance men will give you all the dreadful statistics you like as to the part rum plays in filling our jails, poorhouses and insane asylums, and God himself would shudder to tell us how many homes it ruins--how many widows and orphans it makes. On a division of the subject which is out of the province of statisticians, physicians will admit that more sexual immorality comes from rum than all other causes combined. There is no fear of overstating the aggregate bad effects of over-indulgence in liquor--it is beyond the power of words or figures to overstate it. Having admitted that the curse of rum in the United States is quite as great as any moralist or prohibitionist has ever asserted, it follows that some remedy is necessary, and the question naturally occurs, What shall it be? The almost unanimous reply will be, Control the demon by law. The majority of law-abiding citizens are quite willing to admit that this should be done, but the question arises and becomes more urgent year by year, What shall the law be? Shall it be in the direction of prohibition? The experience of several States, Maine no less than others, is overwhelmingly to the effect that prohibition does not prohibit. Perhaps not as much liquor is consumed in Maine as if there were open bars in every town. But anyone who is fond of a glass knows by experience that it is quite as easy to gratify his tastes in the State of Maine as it is in the city of New York. Worse still, the stranger going from another State to Maine, if he has any acquaintances at all in the prohibition State, is so importuned by hospitable souls, who wish to make him feel entirely at home, and as comfortable as he might be if he were in his native city or village, and has set before him liquors in such variety, that he generally goes to bed with a heavier head and awakes in the morning with a harder headache than if he had been in the worst rum-cursed portion of the country.