Effect on Suffrage.

What immediate effect the sale of intoxicating liquors is likely to have upon the exercise of popular suffrage, that great governing agency in this country, we are not left to conjecture. It may be judged of from the sentence which the State itself has seen fit to pass upon the practice. By a very stringent provision of the law, on all days of general election the sale of alcoholic drinks is absolutely forbidden, the saloons are required to be closed, and any violation is punished as a misdemeanor. Thus the State takes two very important attitudes: First, It declares that dram selling is in its very nature dangerous to any right exercise of citizenship. Second, that the only way to avoid that danger is to prohibit the traffic on all occasions of its exercise. Now, if this be true as regards a mere incipient act of governing, why is it not equally true when applied to a still more elaborate exertion of such authority? If the citizen may not help rule a village when so tempted, how shall he assist at governing a