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My words imply the position, that the man
who puts his intoxicating liquors on sale
for a drink, forfeits thereby all property in
them. Need I defend this position? I certainly
need not defend the princple involved
in it—I mean the principle of foreitures.—
That has been long and abundantly recog-
nized. If any thing in the position is of
doubtful propriety, it is the application of
this principle to the case in hand;—and
even for such application, precedents—highly
authoritative precedents—are not wanting.
Our own State Government and the Federal
Government also, have applied this principle
of forfeiture to intoxicating liquors. More-
over, they have applied it, without the inter-
vention of judicial proceedings, Mr. Hill's
argument against their right to do so to the
contrary notwithstanding. I have in my
eye the summary process prescribed for dis-
posing of intoxicating liquors brought
among the Indians and upon parades.

I said, that the principle of forfeiture does
not need any defense. It needs no one's de-
fence. There is no principle, which the
Courts are more ready to act upon, than the
principle, that persons, by putting their
property to a destructive, or demoralizing,
or even to a dangerous and reckless misuse,
may lose all rights of property in it. Mr.
Hill starts up State Street by the side of his
young child. They meet a man, who aims
his pistol at the child; and, farther on, a
man, whom aims his cane at it; and, father
on, a man, who puts a glass of whiskey to
the child's lips. Mr. Hill may dash the
glass upon the pavement, and break the cane,
and pistol in peices, and, yet, it will be
vain to sue him for their value. The Courts
will hold, that the misue of them worked
the forfeiture of property in them. Mr.
Hill is so fond of watching the movements
of a tiger, that he buys one, at the cost of
a thousand dollars. He would find no diff-
culty in obtaining a Judgment for his tou-
sand dollars against his neighbor, who whoots
the securely caged tiger. But if his nei-
bor had found him unchained in the street
and shot him, the Courts would have told
Mr. Hill, that he had nothing to sue for
but, that, from the moment, he suffered the
dangerous animal to go at large, he forfeited
all property in him. So wide would Mr.
Hill find the difference between a caged and
an uncaged tiger;—as wide as between
absolute property and no property.

I scarcely need add, that our own Legis-
lature has repeatedly recognized this prin-
ciple of the forfeiture of property by per-
version of the thing from legitimate to ille-
gitimate uses. It has done so, in authoriz-
ing the immediate destruction of the gam-
bling apparatus brought upon parades, and
in declaring a virtual forfeiture of the horse,
that is brought upon the forbidden race-
course.

I said, that if any defence is required in
the present case, it is merely of the appli-
cation of this principle of forfeiture to in-
toxicating liquors. But why is it, that even
this defense can be requisite? It is not be-
cause liquor drinking is less mischievous
than horse racing, or than gambling on the
parade ground. It is a million fold more
mischievious than either. It is mainly be-
cause the habit of liquor drinking being so
general, there is a general insensibility to its
immeasurable evils—an insensibility, by the
way, not confined to the subjects of that bad
habit. Whoever gets his eyes wide open to
these evils, and sees the dramshop to be the
great manufactory of paupers and madmen,
and that more peril to life and property, and
more burdens upon the industry of the sober,