1. COMPETENCE OF LEGISLATIVE POWER.—There can be no doubt that the legislative authority even of civilized governments has been frequently misapplied. The most competent exponents of political economy agree that the state has no business to meddle in such affairs as the fluctuation of market prices, the rate of interest, the freedom of international traffic. On more than one occasion European governments, having attempted to regulate the price of bread-stuffs, etc., were taught the folly of such interference by commercial dead-locks and the impossibility of procuring the necessaries of life at the prescribed price, and were thus compelled to remedy the mischief by repealing their enactments. Usury laws tend to increase, instead of decreasing, the rate of interest, by obliging the usurer to indemnify himself for the disadvantage of the additional risk. The attempt to increase national revenues by enforcing an artificial balance of trade has ever defeated its own object. It is almost equally certain that compulsory charities do on the whole more harm than good. On the other hand, there are no more undoubtedly legitimate functions of government than the suppression, and the, if possible, prevention, of crime, and the enforcement of health laws; and it can be demonstrated by every rule of logic and equity that the liquor traffic can be held amenable in both respects. The favorite argument of our opponents is the distinction of crime and vice. For the latter, they tell us, society has no remedy, except in as much as the natural consequences (disease, destitution, etc.) are apt to recoil on the person of the perpetrator; the evil of intemperance therefore is beyond the reach of the law. We may fully concede the premises without admitting the cogency of the conclusion. The suspected possession or private use of intoxicating liquors would hardly justify the issue of a search warrant, but the penalties of the law can with full justice be directed against the manufacturer or vender who seeks gain by tempting his fellowmen to indulge in a poison infallibly injurious in any quantity, and infallibly tending to the development of a body and soul corrupting habit; they may with equal justice be directed against the consumer, stupefied or brutalized by the effects of that poison. The rumseller has no right to plead the consent of his victim. The absence of violence or “malice prepense,”[1] is a plea that would legalize some of the worst offenses against society. The peddler of obscene literature poisons the souls of our children without a shadow of ill-will against his individual customer. The gambler, the lottery-shark, use no manner of force in the pursuit of their prey. By what logic can we justify the interdiction of their industry and condemn that of the liquor traffic? By the criterion of comparative harmlessness? Have all the indecencies published since the invention of printing occasioned the thousandth part of the misery caused