The MORAL LOSS is not confined to the direct influence of the brutalizing poison. The liquor traffic defiles all participants of a transaction which involves a sin against Nature, a crime against society and posterity, and an outrage against the moral instincts of the veriest savage, for more than five thousand years ago the lawgivers of the Bactrian nomads[6] recorded their protest against the vice of intoxication. A drunkard who flees from the prohibitory laws of his native place can not escape the voice of an inner monitor. The liquor dealer who points to his license is not the less conscious that he is an enemy of mankind, and that his servants eat the wages of a soul and body corrupting vice. The lawgiver who can be bribed to connive at that vice not only sins against the laws of political economy, but against Nature and the first principles of natural ethics, and forfeits his claim to the respect of the community. Faith in the sanctity of the law, in the wisdom and integrity of the legislator, is the very corner-stone of public morals, but that faith is incompatible with a system of legalized crime, and the lawgiver who consents to sanction the outrage of the poison traffic undermines the basis of his authority, and thereby the authority of the law itself. It is wholly certain that larceny and perjury combined do not damage the state the hundredth part as much as the curse of the poison vice; yet what should we think of the moral status of a legislative assembly devising a plan to increase the national revenues by granting license to pickpockets and professional false witnesses? Imagine a Titus Oates[7] offering his services on the public streets, and a chief justice compelling the courts to recognize the legality of his business, and protect him in the enjoyment of its emoluments! Imagine Jack Sheppard[8] filching the weekly wages of a half-witted working man, and flaunting a government license if the wife of his victim should demand the restitution of the plunder. The absurdity of such an arrangement might seem too glaring to imagine its possibility. Yet for the same reason posterity may refuse to credit the records of our liquor system; for, translated into plain speech, the contract between the state and the rum vender means even this: “On condition of receiving a share in the yearly profits of your business, I herewith grant you the right to poison your fellow-citizens.”