PUTTING ON THE SCREW.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3124, 23 July 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

PUTTING ON THE SCREW.

That every form of public policy about the liquor traffic is transitional, experimental, and temporary is illustrated by what is happening in Vermont. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont recently announced that he and his associates on the bench had decided to adopt a new system in regard to the punishment of offenders against the liquors laws. The State has had a prohibitory law for forty years, but it has not been generally enforced, and the main reason appears to be that the courts have been very lenient in the matter of penalties. As to the present Chief Justice, it is said that " his court lias rarely advanced a liquor-seller beyond the first offence in the schedule of crime. The fine has for forty years been imposed and paid, and the seller returned to his traffic to make up, by larger sales and greater adulteration of his liquor, the money paid to the State in fines. At the recent term of the Court of Rutland, the Chief Justice announced that he understood how the people feel about the liquor traffic, and how for forty years the Legislature have been making the law more and more stringent, and adding heavier and heavier penalties. The judges realise that the only reason why the people violate the law is money. So it has been decided to adopt, as a general practice, an increase of the ordinary penalties for selling. If increasing the money penalties will not stop the traffic, then imprisonment may be added. He therefore imposes a fine of £2 for the first offence, and will double it for the second, and so on. The other judges have done the same thing. Alarm and consternation among the rum sellers are the result. The most remarkable thing about the is that it should take these judges forty years to understand the will of the people. When the Legislature have been making the law more and more stringent, and increasing the penalties, the judges have been rendering the law nugatory by making the penalty so mild that the traffic has been fostered rather than prohibited.— Dunedin Star's correspondent.