Morals of Public Thought

long before it takes on any violent types or depravity. What the state licenses the community will persist in regarding as right. Thus all reverence for law is undermined in those who still believe it wrong, and all faith in morals is page 13 shaken with such as stickle for the law, so that obedience to authority, which constitutes good citizenship, finds itself embarrassed either in accepting or repudiating legalized intoxication. Indeed, it goes much further, for we thus have the state as a teacher of morals inculcating by way of a first lesson, that the beginnings—whether of virtue or vice, are, in-its estimation, matters, of indifference. How early the seeds of disobedience are sown by such teaching may be well learned from reports of the Boston public Schools, where, by careful inquiry, it has been shown "among the causes for truancy that which so far transcends all others as to be considered the cause of causes, is the early use of intoxicating drinks." Such is the attestation of Mr. Philbrick, for so many years Superintendent. If to this be added the