The Excise Board at Work

New York, 1895

The Excise Commissioners of Jamaica began their year's work on Monday last. Mr. Clayton was full of objections, as usual, and would have a man's character established by rumor rather than by legal evidence. There was no substantial basis for his objection to a license for Emanuel Miller, for he had been tried and the state failed to secure a conviction, and, legally, he is bound to be presumed innocent. Moreover, if Mr. Miller violated the excise law he was driven to it in self defence, Commissioner Bauman having voted against his application through malice and Mr. Clayton on prohibition principles. Under the circumstances public opinion sustained Mr. Miller.

It is clearly a business principle on which Mr. Clark proposes to grant licenses. It is a bad public policy to refuse a man a license and permit him to go on doing business unmolested. It is not the policy of the state to make criminals in this fashion. The unlicensed place has many advantages over the licensed place, and less responsibility. The efforts to enforce the excise law, such as they were, were not well sustained. The very persons who were loudest in complaining hid themselves when called upon to sustain their charges. The sensible thing would seem to be to give every person the license he is entitled to under the law, thus putting all persons on a common footing, for juries rarely convict a party selling liquor without a license who can show that he sought a license in good faith.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, May 10, 1895, p. 4.