IMMORALITY AND THE LAW

liquor in all its phases throughout the State. The grounds for bringing it forward were that the number of drinking saloons was excessive, that there was no fixed licensing fee, that too much discretionary power was allowed to the local commissioner; while, above all, the would-be Puritanic legislators wished so far as possible to suppress the drinking of alcoholic liquors on Sunday. To achieve these objects the licensing fee was raised to four times its usual amount previously to this enactment; heavy penalties, including the forfeiture of a large surety-bond, were established, and more surely to prevent Sunday drinking only hotels, not ordinary drinking bars, were allowed, with many stringent restrictions, to sell drink on that day. In order that there should be no mistake, it was set forth in the Act that the hotel must be a real hotel with at least ten properly furnished bedrooms. The legislators clearly thought that they had done a fine piece of work. "Seldom," wrote the Committee of Fourteen, who are by no means out of sympathy with the aims of this legislation, "has a law intended to regulate one evil resulted in so aggravated a phase of another evil directly traceable to its provisions."²²