Rochester Law and Order Society Halts Sunday Liquor Selling
The Law and Order Society of Rochester, N. Y., have achieved a great triumph in the matter of restraining Sunday liquor-selling, though to do this they were obliged to arraign the highest officers of the city. We would be glad to see the liquor traffic thus vigorously taken hold of in other places. The Illustrated Christian Weekly thus speaks of it:— In defiance of all law and with the easy connivance of the officials, the Sabbath retail liquor trade was open and unconcerned. A year ago the pulpits sounded the alarm, and as the result a Law and Order Society undertook the work of rescuing the beautiful city from the clutches of the law-defiers. Without undertaking any crusade against the liquor traffic, they simply held the officials and the dealers who had taken out licenses under them to the strict letter of the law, which forbids liquor-selling on Sunday. All complaint of persecution was thus forestalled, and those who resisted were compelled to impeach themselves as law-breakers. It has been a hard but determined contest, requiring the indictment and arraignment of the Mayor of the city, the Police Commissioners, and the Excise Commissioners for their malfeasance, for like politicians generally, they were more scrupulous of the wishes of the liquor-dealers than of their official oaths. The careful, conservative, but resolute action of the Law and Order Society has overmastered the unscrupulous Sabbath-breakers and put them on their good behavior. In this they have proved, though at the cost of self-denial, vilification, and threat, that they realized the responsibilities and duties of good citizens, and have thus furnished an example to law-abiding men elsewhere of what can be done by confronting defiant lawlessness with the needful grit and backbone.