Vermont followed the lead of Maine in legislation for the suppression of the liquor traffic, and in 1852 passed a prohibitory law. Each succeeding assembly has legislated to increase the stringency and efficiency of the prohibitory statutes. Yet the fact remains that, after forty years' trial, prohibition does not prohibit, and presents the anomaly of an apparently popular law feebly and perfunctorily enforced. It is a question whether the frequent and unnoticed violations of this law, and the many abortive prosecutions under it, have not made all laws less sacredly observed, and the crime of perjury appear to the ordinary mind a merely venial sin. FOOTNOTES: [99] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_. [100] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_. [101] Thompson's _Vermont_. [102] Conant, _Geography, History, and Civil Gov. of Vermont_. [103] _History of Montpelier_, by Daniel P. Thompson. D. P. Thompson is best known as the author of _The Green Mountain Boys_, _The Ranger_, and other tales that picture quite vividly early times in Vermont. [104] _Governor and Council_, vol. iv. [105] _Vermont_, by Zadock Thompson, an invaluable history. CHAPTER XXII. EMIGRATION. When the tide of emigration began to flow from New England to the newly opened land of promise in the West, Vermont still offered virgin fields to be won by the enterprising and ambitious young men of the older States. Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering, while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to utility. Some decades elapsed before the young State began to furnish material for the founding and growth of other new commonwealths, except such restless spirits as can never find a congenial place but in the foremost rank of pioneers. Such an one was Matthew Lyon, who, having borne his part in the establishment of the first State of his adoption, early in the century removed to Kentucky, then farther westward to Missouri, in whose territorial government he had become the most prominent figure when death set a period to his enterprise and ambition. Though there were yet vast tracts in Vermont awaiting the axe and the plough, the fertile lands of the West began to draw from the State a steadily increasing flow of emigration. The tales of illimitable acres unencumbered by forest, and warmed by a genial climate, were attractive to men tired of warfare with the woods, and the beleaguering of bitter winters. The blood of their pioneering fathers was fresh in their veins, and impelled them to found new homes and new States. The first migrations were made in wagons drawn by horses or oxen, and beneath whose tent-like covers were bestowed the bare necessities of household stuff and provision for the tedious journey.