n were brought to disgrace and crime by indulgence
in intoxicating liquors, and I therefore believed in regulating
the evil. Why should all other business be suspended, and saloons
only be open? I was in favor of a law imposing a large tax on all
dealers in liquor, which would tend to prevent its use. I believed
in a policy that would protect our own laborers from undue competition
with foreign labor, and would increase and develop our home
industries. This position was chiefly a defensive one, and experience
has proven that it is not a safe one. The Republican party is
stronger when it is aggressive.

On the 31st of August I attended the state fair as usual, and on
the morning of that day made a full and formal political address
covering both state and national interests. I quote a few passages
on the liquor question, then the leading subject of state policy.
I said:

"All laws are a restraint upon liberty. We surrender some of our
natural rights for the security of the rest. The only question
is, where is the boundary between rights reserved and those given
up? And the only answer is, wherever the general good will be
promoted by the surrender. In a republic the personal liberty of
the citizen to do what he wishes should not be restricted, except
when it is clear that it is for the interest of the public at large.
There are three forms of legislative restriction: Prohibition,
regulation and taxation, of which taxation is the mildest. We
prohibit crime, we regulate and restrain houses of bad fame. We
tax whisky and beer. I see no hardship in such restraints upon
liberty. They are all not only for the public good, but for the
good of those affected. If certain social enjoyments are prolific
of vice and crime they must give way, or submit to restraints or
taxation.

"I know it is extremely difficult to define the line between social
habits and enjoyments perfectly innocent and proper and those that
are injurious to all concerned. It is in this that the danger
lies, for the law ought never to interfere with social happiness
and innocent enjoyments. The fault of Americans is that they are
not social enough. I have seen on the banks of the Rhine, and in
Berlin, old and young men, women, children of all conditions of
social life, listening to music, playing their games and drinking
their beer, doing no wrong and meaning none. I have seen in the
villages of France the young people dancing gayly, with