Have I heard the arguments in favor of prohibition? Well, can anyone help having heard them? No project ever placed before the public has been more earnestly and persistently advocated. But where is the sense of demanding a law against which you know the majority of the people will be arrayed? Suppose during momentary enthusiasm a State carries a prohibition law by a small majority, some drinking men themselves being constrained by their neighbors to vote for the law and against their own inclinations, how is the law to be maintained? By public opinion. Who creates public opinion? The majority. But the majority drink, and will continue to do so for some generations to come, unless all signs fail. Every State has a law against bribery and corruption of voters. Is bribery or corruption less common than before the law passed? No; it becomes worse year by year. Why? Because public opinion dare not and will not support the law. Personal interest, expressed in party feeling, winks at its violation--not all the while, but merely every time there is anything to be gained by it. Both sides of the prohibition question were well put in a recent conversation between a prominent prohibitionist and Bishop Foss, of the Methodist Church, who has worked industriously for years to decrease the rum influence, but believes restriction is the only means practical. “Bishop,” said the prohibitionist, “if you saw a rattlesnake in the street, biting people and destroying human lives, would you kill it, or try to pen it up?” The bishop replied, “If I had been chasing it up and down the street for thirty years, trying to kill it but never succeeding in doing anything but make it uglier, I would consider myself lucky if I had a chance to pen it up.” Then should law take the form of restriction? Yes; but immediately the law-makers discover in the words of some satirist of the past generation, that a great many men can be found in favor of a certain provision in law, who are against its enforcement by any method that is suggested in the form of a bill before any Legislature or Congress. A restrictive measure immediately affects a great many business interests. Moralists would like the sale of liquor restricted. Well, so would a great many liquor dealers. If a poll were taken of the wholesale dealers in liquors in the United States, regardless of section or environment, it would be overwhelmingly in favor of limiting the number of rum-shops, and compelling the sale of only the better class of goods. Perhaps the wholesale dealers are not philanthropists, but their work is in the direction of philanthrophy in the respect that they make more money on old and well-refined liquors, and consequently would prefer that nothing else should be sold.