Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[520] peace, for the prosperity, of the State to make this great centre of wealth and population independent of such base control? We too may have a Fernando Wood,--who knows? Our sixth part of the population of the State may attempt, in the interest of liquor and despotism, to defy the Commonwealth. It is too important a machinery to be left in the hands of the dangerous classes. We want to take it out of the hands of the dangerous classes, and put it into the hands of the Commonwealth,--nothing else. One of two things is necessary. The law is bad,--repeal it; or the law is good,--keep it. No other county would be allowed to defy the law,--why this?

The Mayor says he cannot execute it. Take him at his word. Undoubtedly, he cannot, for he was specially chosen not to do so; but the question is, Can it be executed? What do the temperance majority of the Commonwealth claim? One trial,--nothing more. We have funded twenty-five years of discussion, any amount of toil and labor, in that statute. It never has had one trial yet on this peninsula. May we not ask simply one trial? The locomotive has never attempted to go beyond Groton. Why take up the rails yet? If Berkshire should say, “We can't execute your law against polygamy,” what should we do? Why, appoint fresh sheriffs, not repeal the law. So in this case, let not Massachusetts kneel and say, “I too am a slave to the grog-shops of the peninsula.”

We do not claim that drunkenness can be wholly rooted out. But we do claim that this law can be executed as perfectly as other laws are, if its execution be intrusted to competent and faithful hands. No crime is wholly prevented. Our crowded prisons prove that. No law is perfectly executed. But there is nothing in the Maine Liquor Law that distinguishes it from other statutes. No man claims that the use of intoxicating drink can be wholly