regulation, not to confer legal existence, but, as relates to a profession, industry or business that can not be engaged in as a constitutional, common law or moral law right, a license, to engage therein, must be regarded as a conferred privilege.

Under the constitution, the common law and the moral law every one has a common right to impart information, to heal the sick and to cure the toothache without any license, but, when an individual desires to engage in the business of imparting information as a public school teacher, or of healing the sick as a physician or of curing the tooth-ache as a dentist, the state may regulate the business and require of him a license as evidence of his qualifications, to the end that the public may not be humbugged by him. The state may exact a license to prevent humbuggery, in a legitimate trade or profession, but it can not grant a license to permit humbuggery in an inherently unlawful business.

To make a just comparison with the rummage sale, we should have a rummage stock that will produce the same natural results as the saloon. Suppose we select such a stock, and, then, by comparison, reason to the logical and sensible result. We must have a stock that is a contagious peril to society and one that will naturally weaken, corrupt, debauch and slay human character and human life. And so we select a stock of rummage, old clothes, etc., infected with the germs of contagious diseases. Would any sane man, for a second, contend that the legislature of any state could legally authorize the licensing of such a business? Certainly not. Such an act would be an invasion of the fundamen

tal rights of citizens; it would be bargaining away the public health, and this no legislature can rightfully do; but such a license would no more effectually bargain away the public health than does a saloon license bargain away public health, public morals and public order. A state legislature has just as much legal right to license, for food purposes, the sale of poisoned bread or diseased meat as it has to license the sale of poisoned drinks for beverage purposes, and an intoxicating drink is a poisoned drink.

The Star editor is very unjust to the dog, for the dog, as a species, is not a contagious peril, while the saloon keeper is. However, there is a special type of dog, that belongs in the same class with the saloon keeper, and this type can be appropriately used in comparison with the saloon keeper. A mad dog belongs to the same class. Hydrophobia is a contagious peril. Surely no one would think that the state was not denying to the citizens the equal protection of the laws, if it were to attempt to authorize the licensing of the keeping of mad dogs.

Yet, according to the judgment of the best statisticians, the saloon slays annually one hundred thousand people in the United States, while mad dogs do not slay a dozen.

The editor is equally unfair to the undertaker. The undertaker embalms the dead in the interest of sanitation and health, and this is lawful; but the saloon keeper embalms the living, producing degredation and death, and this is unlawful.

But, the worst of all is to place the family doctor on the same plane with the saloon keeper. The fam

ily physician is a messenger of peace, of mercy, of relief, of compassion and healing, all of which is lawful; but the saloon keeper is a minister of disease, of suffering, of misery, of anguish, of woe, of shame, of crime, and of death itself, all of which is unlawful. In the case of the physician the license is exacted in order to insure the proper qualification to pursue a useful and lawful calling, while, in the case. of the saloon keeper, the license is granted in order to authorize the pursuit of an injurious and unlawful calling.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN A LICENSE AS A REGULA

TION AND A LICENSE AS A PERMIT

The language of Justice Bradley, of the United States Supreme Court clearly illustrates this distinction. "Licenses may be properly required in the pursuit of many professions and avocations, which require peculiar skill and training or supervision for the public welfare. The profession or avocation is open to all alike who will prepare themselves with the requisite qualifications or give the requisite security for preserving public order. This is in harmony with the general proposition that the ordinary pursuits of life, forming the greater per cent of the industrial pursuits, are and ought to be free and open to all, subject only to such general regulations, applying equally to all, as the general good may demand.

All such regulations are entirely competent for the legislature to make and are, in no sense, an abridgment of the equal rights of citizens. But a license to do that which is odious and against

common right is necessarily an outrage upon the equal rights of citizens."

Judge Cooley says of the liquor traffic:

"The business of manufacturing and selling liquor is one that affects the public interests in many ways, and leads to many disorders. It has a tendency to increase pauperism and crime. It renders a large force of peace officers essential and it adds to the expenses of the courts, and of nearly all branches of civil administration." Is a business which does these things odious and against common right? If so, then, its legalization by a license is an outrage upon the equal rights of citizens.

CHAPTER XV

THE SALOON LICENSE IS NEITHER A PROHIBITION, A RESTRICTON, A RESTRAINT NOR A

REGULATION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

Those who insist that it is lawful to license the saloon abandon the declarations of the courts that a license is a delegated right, a mere permit, a derivative right and a conferred privilege, and assert that the license is a limitation upon a common right imposed by the state legislatures in the exercise of the police power of the state.

THE POLICE POWER

While not claiming either the ability or the information requisite to a perfect definition of the police power, we may endeavor to convey some idea of its meaning. Civil government is merely the agency adopted by the people for the defense and protection of certain God-given rights,-not rights granted by the government. The police power is merely the power assumed by the people, in the foundation of the government, to accomplish these ends. Government is a protective institution; its function is to preserve and protect men in the enjoyment of the inherent and inalienable rights, with which Almighty God has endowed them. The police power, being one of the powers of the government is necessarily no more than a protective power; its function is to protect the pre-existing rights of men, not to create and grant to certain individuals new rights. It is the power to enforce the right and prohibit the wrong. It is the power to enforce the