This, then, may be taken as the last enlightened utterance in the United States as to the impossibility of carrying out the Maine Law in its integrity; but, now, if we are asked whether the repressive legislation of the United States has tended to the diminution of drunkenness and to the elevation of the national morality, then the reply will be an emphatic “Yes.” We have quoted Judge Davis against the law, now let us quote him for it. Whilst there was no legal restriction upon the sale, he says: “It was permitted in almost every town; nearly every tavern in town and in city had its ‘bar;’ at almost every village and corner was a grog-shop; and in most places of that kind more than one, where old men and young spent their earnings in dissipation; men helplessly drunk on the streets and by the wayside were a common sight; and at elections, at military trainings, and at other public gatherings, there were scenes of debauchery and riot enough to make one ashamed of one’s race.” (Let us remark, by way of parenthesis, that this is but a slight exaggeration of the condition of England in our own time.) Well, Judge Davis goes on to show that the Maine law has effectually cleansed and reformed society in that State. “No observing man,” he says, “who has lived in the State for twenty years, and has had an opportunity to know the facts, can doubt that the Maine Law has produced a hundred times more visible improvement in the character, condition, and prosperity of our people than any other law that was ever enacted.”[362] And what he says is true. Almost every writer on the United States bears out his statement although they may not perhaps attribute all the improvement to this particular law. Even Mr. M’Carthy says that it acts as a check upon drinking, because it draws it into low places, and makes it disreputable;[363] and that the evasion is chiefly by foreigners, but that the Americans themselves are “largely total abstainers.”[364] He and others say that it enables the authorities to make raids upon men who carry on the trade with effrontery, and many instances are given where they have been forced by the law, with public opinion to support it, to give up the trade altogether, at least for a time. One case mentioned by Mr. M’Carthy[365] is worth recording. In Rutland, Vermont, drinking was carried to such excess that the authorities forbade the sale of drinks in the bars of the hotels. The hotel keepers “struck,” and closed their houses; but the inhabitants turned their houses into hotels, and met travellers at the railway station. This checkmated the regular innkeepers, who were glad enough to reopen their houses and submit to the law. Mr. M’Carthy adds, that a fortnight afterwards he obtained brandy at an hotel in Rutland; a fact which proves that it is possible to evade the law, and which is not calculated to raise Englishmen in the estimation of the Americans.