their interests, proclaimed that their supremacy was menaced and would be overthrown, if saloon domination must go.

On May 15, 1907, only four days after the decision of the Sopher case, the transcript of that case was filed in the Supreme Court, and on that very day, contrary to the custom and practice of both the supreme and appellate courts of the state, an order was entered advancing the case and requiring all briefs to be filed within a period of eighteen days. A day or two later an order was made for an oral argument of the case on the 6th day of June, the date being only twenty-two days after the record was filed in the Supreme Court.

This rush of proceedings would not attract attention, if it were not so out of harmony with the usual course of proceedings in the higher courts of Indiana. A few examples will disclose the variance. In Gillespie vs. State, 80 N. E. 829, in which the defendant had been convicted of first degree murder, for killing his twin sister, it required more than two years for the Supreme Court, in the usual course of events, to reach a decision. And this case is all the more illustrative, because of the fact that the court had previously had before it for consideration, in Gillespie vs. Rump, 163 Ind. 457, the very point upon which the case was finally determined.

The French Lick and West Baden cases are also good examples. In these cases, the state sought to forfeit the charters of certain hotel corporations on the ground that they were devoting their property to the conduct of unlawful and criminal pursuits, in the open, notorious and defiant conduct of

gambling. The place had become so notorious that it was known as and was commonly spoken of in the public press of Indiana and elsewhere as the "monte carlo" of the United States, thereby recognizing it as the rival of the Mexican monte carlo.

The trial court held against the state and the state appealed. The Attorney-General, as the representative of all the people, asked to have the cases advanced, but the request was promptly denied by the court, and it required about eighteen months to secure a decision of these cases.

On

But, in the Sopher case, in which the decision had been against the saloon and in favor of the people, the case was advanced on the day it was filed. June 25, 1907, only forty days after the case was filed in the Supreme Court a decision, which had apparently been made before the case was filed in that court, was announced, in the Sopher case, reversing the decision of the trial court.

The entire course of events, from the filing of the record in the Supreme Court until it entered its decision of record, was of such a character as to mark the whole proceeding as the sheerest perfunctory formality. The demeanor of the judges, at the oral argument, was very indicative that the case had already been decided, and that a time had been set apart for the argument to be made, but not heard, to complete the chain of events between the placing of the file mark on the papers and the writing of the minutes announcing the decision. The Judges, at the oral argument, indulged in a fusilade of questions, very clearly demonstrating that they were not

in a judicial frame of mind. Some of their interrogations were close competitors of Mark Antony's most accomplished irony. Judge Hadley inquired of counsel for the state: "Are you able to tell this court the difference between a man's inherent right to ride on horseback and his inherent right to sell whisky at retail?" To those who know Judge Hadley personally, it is very apparent that this question was not asked in seriousness but in a vein. of ridicule. If the question was, in earnest, the answer would be easy. The difference is merely the difference between right and wrong. It is not harmful to society to ride on horseback, it may be very beneficial; but it is always detrimental to society to keep a saloon. The courts say that the saloon is an evil without a single redeeming feature, the propogator of crime and the dispenser of misery and suffering; but nobody ever dreamed of such things being the natural results of horseback riding.

The courts have declared that, because of its certain dangers to society, no man has the privilege or a constitutional, an inalienable, an inherent or a natural right to keep a saloon, but no such judicial denouncement has ever been made of horseback riding. No man has any of these rights to keep a saloon, because the saloon is harmful and unlawful. Every person has each of these rights to ride horseback, because horseback riding is harmless and lawful.

Judge Jordan asked: "Has it not been the policy of this court for more than fifty years to hold saloon license statutes to be constitutional and is not the court now bound by its many decisions to this effect?

Is not the question thereby foreclosed?" A sufficient answer ought to be that the courts have declared over and over again that no question involving a principle of governmental right is ever settled until it is decided right.

A conclusive answer to Judge Jordan would certainly be the fact that the Supreme Court of Indiana, at a time when he was a member of the bench and with his concurrence, has said: "In deciding so grave a question as the constitutionality of an act of the legislature, involving no property or contract right between the parties, the rule of stare decisis (the rule of following previous decisions) does not require that we should be bound by even our own former decisions. In such a case, the correct rule for a supreme court, supreme in the majesty of duty as well as supreme in the majesty of power is, as said by the Supreme Court of Georgia: 'Let this decision be right, whether other decisions were right or wrong.'

Judge Gillett inquired: "Do you mean that the court should look upon the matter as a strictly legal proposition without any regard whatever to the will of the people as expressed by the legislature?"

It should certainly be looked upon as a strictly legal proposition. Neither the people nor the legislature can legally have any will at variance with the fundamental rights of citizens.

Upon this very question, the eminent jurist, Secretary-of-War Taft said: "The courts, and especially the Supreme Court of the United States, are the part of our government indispensable in making

good those guarantees of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, given in the Constitution and placed there by the people themselves to curb their own hasty action under stress of sudden impulse or with too little deliberation."

And then, above all, in an opinion written by Judge Gillett himself, the Supreme Court of Indiana has said: "There is, and always will be, in every representative government, a struggle going on between the various interests of society with reference to legislation. This but evinces the necessity for the existence of a co-ordinate branch of the government, also acting under the responsibility of an oath, to determine, when called upon to enforce legislation, whether it operates unequally."

And this means to ascertain, as a legal proposition, whether the legislation is an invasion of the equality rights of citizens. But, the question most clearly indicating that the court intended to apply a different legal proposition to the saloon than it applies to other pursuits of like character was put by Judge Montgomery, when he asked: "But, is it not the province of the legislature, not the courts, to determine, from a legal point of view, what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral?" Not conclusively so. Certainly not. For illustration, suppose that a state legislature would declare prostitution to be right and moral. Would it be so legally? Certainly not.. And, when it was not dealing with the political power and influence of the saloon, the Supreme Court of Indiana did not take the position that it did not legally and judiciously know the difference between morality and immor