The new measure came into force on 1st July, 1893. For many weeks previously there had been great excitement in the State, and as June drew to an end the saloon keepers put forth strenuous efforts to do the utmost possible business in the short time that was left to them. "The situation all over South Carolina to-night," said a despatch from Charleston on 30th June, "is peculiar. In Charleston there has been in progress all day a huge whisky fair. The air is filled with the tintinnabulation of the auction bells and with the cries of the auctioneer; in dozens of liquor stores are crowds of free-born American citizens buying whisky, wine and beer to lay in a stock against the dry spell, which sets in to-night. In the fashionable groceries extra forces of clerks have been at work day and night for a week, putting up demi-johns and kegs of whisky, brandy, rum, gin, and wine; and battalions of drays and delivery waggons have been employed carting the goods to the railroad depots and to the various residences. It is no exaggeration to say that there are not 1000 out of the 10,000 houses of white people in the city that are not provided with a supply of liquors to last six months at least." Six counties in the State are under statutory prohibition, and consequently no dispensaries could be opened in them. In many other parts the people refused to come under the Act, and in towns especially there was a spirit of undisguised opposition to the measure. It is in the towns that the old-line Democrats, whom Tillman drove from office, have always been the strongest. With the passing of the Act they saw their opportunity to have vengeance on him, and possibly to regain their old majority; and they resolved to do their best to wreck his Bill. In Charleston the word went forth that the law was to be ignored, and, as far as the city authorities could accomplish that end, it has been set at defiance. When the State constables have arrested liquor sellers, the constables have been mobbed and ill-treated; the sheriff has packed the juries; the justices who have tried liquor cases have been notoriously opposed to the law; and, as an inevitable consequence, the clearest evidence of illegal liquor selling has been insufficient to convict any offender there. What is true of Charleston is almost equally true of several other places. This, it must be understood, is not because of any fault of the Act; but because eager partisans are willing to perjure themselves, to break through the most sacred obligations of office, and to descend to any tricks in order to ruin the Tillmanites.