Herald Of The Times

A Prophecy.—The scene in the Police Court, yesterday, and the vague threats of prosecutions by the hundred which are to follow, reminded us of some remarks in an able document from the pen of the late Harrison Gray Otis, published upwards of four years since. We shall hereafter quote at length from this able production, but cannot refrain from copying a few sentences to-day. They emphatically mirror forth the present state of things in our Commonwealth, and show that the clear intellect of Mr. Otis, schooled amid the early storms which clouded our nation's independence, foresaw what would follow the headlong career of our mis-called philanthropists. We ask our readers to peruse this prophetic warning, and to remember the sound advice of the venerable writer:

“I regret to perceive,” says Mr. Otis, “that the leaders of this reform—yielding to the propensity of all reformers, except his who left an example that we should follow in his steps”—have adopted a system of coercion instead of persuasion, and attempt to compel the consciences of men by stretching the laws beyond the stringency of the old blue laws of our forefathers. This I lament, not merely because it is wrong in itself, but because it inevitably leads to a reaction that will leave matters more worse than they were before the temperance flag was unfurled. Laws which stigmatize lawful or innocent actions with the brand of crime, which multiply penalties, which require for their enforcement the base auxiliaries of SPIES and INFORMERS, which encourage confederacies for the sake of procuring witnesses, which lumber the tables of grand juries with indictments; which, in a word, are against THE GRAIN of great masses of the people—are proverbially curses instead of blessings, and will not be endured by a free people."

“Meanwhile, a strong sympathy is created with those who, having been bred to a vocation which the laws allowed and embarked their capital in it, are threatened with deprivation of their means of subsistence, and denounced as bad members of society. All these are brooding over their discontent, and preparing some of them unconsciously, to combine with any party, in putting down those who deny the exercise of the most natural of rights—of repressing thirst by the choice of their own potations—and who, by forcing all to drink water, would prevent many from gaining their bread.”—Boston Chronicle.