WORSE AND WORSE.
How successful the good people of Massachusetts were in holding in check and regulating the evil which they had clothed with power by license, appears in the preamble to a new Act passed in 1711, "For reclaiming the over great number of licensed houses, many of which are chiefly used for revelling and tippling, and become nurseries of intemperance and debauchery, indulged by the masters and keepers of the same for the sake of gain."
So it went on, from bad to worse, under the Colonial Government, until 1787, when the State constitution was adopted. To what a frightful magnitude the evil of drunkenness, provided for and fostered by license, had grown, appears from an entry in the diary of John Adams, under date of February 29th, 1760, in which he says that few things were "so fruitful of destructive evils" as "licensed houses." They had become, he declares, "the eternal haunts of loose, disorderly people of the town, which renders them offensive and unfit for the entertainment of any traveler of the least delicacy." * * * "Young people are tempted to waste their time and money, and to acquire habits of intemperance and idleness, that we often see reduce many to beggary and vice, and lead some of them, at least, to prison and the gallows."
In entering upon her career as a State, Massachusetts continued the license system, laying upon it many prudent restrictions, all of which were of no avail, for the testimony is complete as to the steady increase of drunkenness, crime and debauchery.