of a license." So that, if the saloon is a common right, the license is not a permission or a granted right, but the courts say that it is. And in this, the writer follows the courts, but the News does not.

On April 15, 1907, the News, editorially, said: "The saloon exists, not because the license law permits it to exist, but because the business of retailing liquor is legal."

But, the Supreme Court of Indiana says: “The privilege of keeping a saloon is a derivative right, springing alone from the provisions of the license statute."

There is certainly a disagreement between the News and the Supreme Court, but none between the Supreme Court and the writer on this point.

A PRE-EXISTING RIGHT CAN NOT BE A PERMIT There can be no such thing, in a legal sense, as a permission to exercise a pre-existing right. Permission implies that the right does not exist without it. In a liquor case, on this very question, the Supreme Court of Ohio, in Adler vs. Whitbeck, 9 N. E. 672, said: "The result of the definitions that have been given of a license, as implied in its etymology, is in conformity with the sense in which the word is ordinarily used, and may be regarded as strictly accurate in all respects. That is permitted that can not be done without permission; and to say a person is permitted-licensed-to do what he may lawfully do without permission, is a misuse of words."

Logically then, if the News be correct, the courts have been making a wholesale misuse of words, and, not only the courts, but also the News itself, for on

November 19, 1907, it editorially styled the saloon, "a business that has been legalized." On November 13, 1907, the News, editorially, referred to the saloon as "this inherently lawless traffic," and on December 12, 1907, it said: "For years the liquor interest has been altogether lawless."

The four statements of the News can be put together, only upon the theory that the News believes that an inherently lawless business, an interest altogether lawless and a business that has been. legalized is lawful in advance of legalization. In other words, that there may be lawful lawlessness. The News is the advocate of the doctrine that, if all saloon statutes were repealed, the saloon would be lawful at common law. On April 28, 1906, the News said: "Open saloons on Sunday always bring crime and disorder. The freerer the policy with reference to the saloons the greater the lawlessness." The open saloon on the other six days of the week will assuredly have some of the effects of the open Sunday saloon. As a legal proposition the News affirms that an open saloon twenty-four hours a day and seven days each week is a legal right. It may be the contention of a freak to assert that no man ever had a lawful right, common law or any other kind, to bring crime and disorder upon any community, but this is the position of the writer. And it is the position of the courts, if only they would apply to the saloon the same legal principles that they apply to other inherently dangerous and injurious acts and pursuits.

Then, to license the saloon must have the effect to confer upon it the right of existence, which it did

not previously have. Upon this proposition, in Chilvers vs. People, 11 Mich. 43, a license case, the Supreme Court of Michigan said: "The object of a license is to confer a right that does not exist without a license."

DREAM OF THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

On April 16, 1907, the Indianapolis Star published an editorial, entitled "Judge Artman's Delusion," in which the Star editor charged that the writer was ignoring all judicial precedents and was assuming to be a law unto himself, and, using his editorial irony, sarcasm and ridicule in the most severe acrimonious tone, he said, among other things:

"Judge Artman furnished a key to his peculiar theory of the regulations of the liquor traffic in a lecture which he delivered at Lebanon on Sunday night. The subject was 'The Legal Status of the Saloon Business.' The substance of his argument, as reported, is summed up in this proposition:

"The object of a license is to confer a right which does not exist without a license. Its function is to create a right, and not to restrict or prohibit an existing right.

"There is not a man in Indiana, lawyer or layman, who will not recognize this proposition as unfounded and preposterous if he will give five minutes to its consideration. Look at a few unquestionable facts.

"The Legislature of 1905 passed a law making it 'unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to buy junk without having first obtained a junk dealers' license.' Did anybody have a right to buy or sell

junk before that law was passed? Is it true that the law created a right, and did not restrict or prohibit an existing right? Answer, ye rag men, ye old clothes men, ye old iron men, ye women of Indiana who have been selling junk for more years than you will acknowledge, and have been buying it for some years past at rummage sales. Is the purchasing of junk a newly created right?

"There have been laws for some years requiring a license for keeping a dog. Had nobody the right to keep a dog until a license law was passed? Is that a newly created right? The Legislature of 1901 and 1905 provided for licensing embalmers. Was there no lawful embalming before then?

"Take another case that has received a large amount of attention. In 1885 the Legislature passed a law providing that no person should 'practice medicine, surgery or obstetrics' in this State without a license. The doctors were indignant. Their business was not only lawful but necessary. They had common law rights, moral rights, scriptural rights."

This exhibition of editorial wisdom is really amusing. The first sentence of the quotation, and the one containing the thought so severely criticised and ridiculed in this editorial, is literally the language of the Supreme Court of Michigan in the Chilvers case. When the editor was gleefully firing his shafts of satire at the writer, he was ignorantly directing the darts of his arrow at the Supreme Court of Michigan. It is clearly not an unfair proposition to say that no cause can have a better legal status than its natural effects.

The Star, in 1906, editorially said: "The masses of the people are coming more and more to the realization of the fact that drunkenness is the one great cause of poverty, misery and crime, beside which all others fade into comparative insignificance."

No truer statement was ever made by any one. The saloon is the one great cause of drunkenness, hence the saloon is the one great cause of poverty, misery and crime, beside which all other causes fade into comparative insignificance. If the saloon be lawful, then the misery and crime, produced thereby, would be lawful also.

We can logically reason by comparison only by selecting likes, not unlikes. In view of the Star's own characterization of the saloon, it should have selected some business that is a very productive source of poverty, misery and crime in its discussion of the purpose of a saloon license.

The Supreme Court of Kansas says: "The saloon is a contagious peril to the peace and good order of society; it weakens, corrupts, debauches and slays human life and human character." For the purposes of comparison, then, we should select a business that is a contagious peril to the peace and good order of society and that weakens, corrupts, debauches and slays human life and human character. Neither the ordinary purchase and sale of junk, nor the keeping of an ordinary dog, nor the emablming of the dead, nor the healing of the sick, does any one of these things, as a natural result.

As relates to a legitimate and useful profession, industry or business, a license may be required as a