A similar law to the “Maine law,” with modifications, exists in some of the other New England States. New Hampshire “has a prohibitory law, which is not enforced to any great extent. An effort to secure a constabulary bill has also proved a failure.”[345] Vermont, as we have already stated, has a prohibitory law, and a “Civil Damage Act,” passed in 1869, by which the drink-seller is held liable for any damage done by a drunken person to whom he has supplied the drink.[346] In New Hampshire, saloons, bars, &c., are declared to be “common nuisances kept in violation of the law;”[347] and intoxicated persons may be detained until they are sober, and then forced, on pain of imprisonment, to declare on oath where they obtained the liquor. In Massachusetts the law is not prohibitory, but there are various classes of licenses, those for light drinks being much less expensive than licenses to sell spirits. In New Jersey there is an Act which enables the authorities to regulate licenses, but inasmuch as it does not compel them to grant any unless they choose, the people of Chatham, Co. Morris, have refused to do so, and their right has been formally recognised by the Supreme Court. They have, therefore, a local option or permissive bill, or at least what is one there, where the force of public opinion makes itself felt through the local authorities. In Rhode Island and New York there is regulated licensing. The licenses are granted by commissioners appointed by the mayors in cities, subject to the approval of the aldermen in New York and Brooklyn. In Connecticut and some other States there are permissive bills with regulated licensing, also enforced closing on Sundays and election days, which is the rule in several other States. In Kentucky, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, &c., there are local option bills. In Pennsylvania, there is regulated licensing, with local option in some places; and in most of the other States there is regulated licensing, excepting in Nevada, where, we are told, “there is no law on the statute book relating to the traffic in alcoholic liquors.”[348] A word concerning Nevada. We do not know whether the absence of legislative interference has anything to do with it, but it is certainly a “frightful example.” It was at Virginia city in that State that Artemus Ward said, in taking his departure, “I never, gentlemen, was in a city where I was treated so well, nor, I will add, so _often_.” And Sir C. Dilke, who visited it, says that with ten thousand inhabitants it was blessed with five hundred whisky-shops; in some of which “diggers might be seen tossing the whisky down their throats with a scowl of resolve as though they were committing suicide, which indeed, except in point of speed, is probably the case.”[349]