The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 36
The Experience of England
The Experience of England
in the adoption of the beer law, and in other instances, is exactly-similar to that of the United States. The removal of restrictions and countenance of the business by the Government expands the evil just as naturally and inevitably as the removal of the dam lets out the water behind it.
page 35Prohibition has been more honestly and thoroughly tried in the State of Maine than anywhere else in America or Europe, except perhaps in Mohammedan countries, where both religion and law enforce total abstinence.
I can and do, from my own personal observation, unhesitatingly affirm that the consumption of intoxicating liquors in Maine is not to-day one-fourth as great as it was twenty years ago; that in the country portions of the State the sale and use have almost entirely ceased; that the law itself, under a vigorous enforcement of its provisions, has created a temperance sentiment which is marvelous, and to which opposition is powerless. In my opinion, our remarkable temperance reform of to-day is the legitimate child of the law.
To this high and emphatic testimony to the fact that prohibition does prohibit, I wish to add this evidence from the inexorable figures of the