house, in every restaurant, druggist's, bakery, confectionery, grocery, dry-goods store, or peanut-stand, but places specially devoted to its sale could not be paved with silver dollars, or ornamented with costly paintings, or set fine free lunches, or provide free concerts, even if indeed they could continue to exist. And where liquor was sold in connection with food, entertainment, or other things, and at the prices which free competition would compel, it would not pay to let men drink themselves into intoxication or semi-intoxication or in any way to provoke or encourage the drinking habit.

In short, I believe that examination will show that the sweeping away of all taxes and restrictions, would not only destroy the "rum power" in our politics, but would much decrease intemperance.

And this view has the support of one of the keenest of observers. Adam Smith, who treats this matter at some length in Chap. 3, Book IV, of the Wealth of Nations, says:

"If we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people in Europe. People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is cheap as small beer. When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months' residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety."

"Almost universal sobriety," wrote Adam Smith in Kirkaldy, somewhere in the early seventies of the eighteenth century. Writing as the wonderful nineteenth century nears its final decade and in the great metropolis of a mighty nation then unborn, I can say no more, if as much. The temperance question does not stand alone. It is related - nay, it is but a phase, of the great social question. By abolishing liquor

taxes and licenses we may drive the "rum power out of politics, and somewhat, I think, lessen intemperance. Thus we may get rid of an obstacle to the improvement of social conditions and increase the effective force that demands improvement. But without the improvement of social conditions we cannot hope to abolish intemperance. Intemperance today springs mainly from that unjust distribution of wealth which gives to some less and to others more than they have fairly earned. Among the masses it is fed by hard and monotonous toil, or the still more straining and demoralizing search for leave to toil; by overtasked muscles and overstrained nerves, and under-nurtured bodies; by the poverty which makes men afraid to marry and sets little children at work, and crowds families into the rooms of tenement houses; which stints the nobler and brings out the baser qualities; and in full tide of the highest civilization the world has yet seen, robs life of poetry and glory of beauty and joy. Among the classes it finds its victims in those from whom the obligation to exertion has been artificially lifted; who are born to enjoy the results of labor without doing any labor, and in whom the lack of stimulus to healthy exertion causes moral obesity, and consumption without the need of productive work breeds satiety. Intemperance is abnormal. It is the vice of those who are starved and those who are gorged. Free trade in liquor would tend to reduce it, but could not abolish it. But free trade in everything would. I do not mean a sneaking, half-hearted, and half-witted "tariff reform," but that absolute, thorough free trade, which would not only abolish the custom house and the excise, but would do away with every tax on the products of labor and every restriction on the exertion of labor, and would leave everyone free to do whatever did not infringe the ten commandments.

A year before the "Wealth of Nations" was published, Thomas Spence, of Newcastle, in a lecture before the philosophical society of that place, thus pictured such a state of things:

"Then you may behold the rent which the people have paid into the parish treasuries, employed by each parish in paying the government its share of the sum which the parliament or national congress at any time grants; in maintaining and relieving its own poor and people out of work; in paying the necessary officers their salaries; in building, repairing, and adorning its houses,

bridges, and other structures; in making and maintaining convenient and delightful streets, highways, and passages, both for foot and carriages; in making and maintaining canals, and other conveniences for trade and navigation; in planting and taking in waste grounds; in providing and keeping up a magazine of ammunition, and all sorts of arms sufficient for all its inhabitants in case of danger from enemies; in premiums for the encouragement of agriculture, or anything else, thought worthy of encouragement; and, in a word, in doing whatever the people think proper; and not, as formerly, to support and spread luxury, pride, and all manner of vice.

There are no 'tools or taxes of any kind paid among them by native or foreigner but the aforesaid rent, which every person pays to parish, according to the quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land, housing, etc., which he occupies in it. The government, poor roads, etc., as said before, are all maintained by the parishes with the rent, on which account all wares, manufacturers, allowable trade employments or actions are entirely duty free. Freedom to do anything whatever cannot there be bought; a thing is either entirely prohibited, as theft or murder, or entirely free to everyone without tax or price!"

COMANCHE.

BY JOAQUIN MILLER.

A BLAZING home, a blood-soaked hearth;
Fair woman's hair with blood upon!
That Ishmaelite of all the earth

Has like a cyclone, come and gone
His feet are as the blighting dearth;
His hands are daggers drawn.

"To horse! to horse!" the rangers shout, And red revenge is on his track!

The black-haired Bedouin in route

Looks like a long, bent line of black.
He does not halt nor turn about;
He scorns to once look back.

But on! right on that line of black,

Across the snow-white, sand-sown pass;

The bearded rangers on their track
Bear thirsty sabres bright as glass.

Yet not one red man there looks back;
His nerves are braided brass.

At last, at last, their mountain came
To clasp its children in their flight!

Up, up from out the sands of flame

They clambered, bleeding, to their height; This savage summit, now so tame, Their lone star, that dread night!

"Huzzah! Dismount!" the captain cried.
"Huzzah! the rovers cease to roam!

The river keeps yon farther side,
A roaring cataract of foam.

They die, they die for those who died
Last night by hearth and home!"

His men stood still beneath the steep;
The high, still moon stood like a nun.
The horses stood as willows weep;

Their weary heads drooped every one.
But no man there had thought of sleep;
Each waited for the sun.

Vast nun-white moon! Her silver rill

Of snow-white peace she ceaseless poured; The rock-built battlement grew still,

The deep-down river roared and roared.
But each man there with iron will
Leaned silent on his sword.

Hark! See what light starts from the steep!
And hear, ah, hear that piercing sound.
It is their lorn death-song they keep

In solemn and majestic round.

The red fox of these deserts deep
At last is run to ground.

Oh, it was weird, that wild, pent horde!
Their death-lights, their death-wails each one.
The river in sad chorus roared

And boomed like some great funeral gun.
The while each ranger nursed his sword
And waited for the sun.

Then sudden star tipped mountains topt
With flame beyond!

And watch-fires ran

To where white peaks high heaven propt;

And star and light left scarce a span.

Why none could say where death-lights stopt Or where red stars began!

And then the far, wild wails that came
In tremulous and pitying flight

From star-lit peak and peak of flame!
Wails that had lost their way that night
And knocked at each heart's door to claim
Protection in their flight.