CHAPTER XXV.

SINCE THE WAR.

THE legislature adjourned on the 30th of May, after passing three hundred and one acts and one hundred and five resolves. During the session the General Court refused any new legislation as to liquor selling, any interference with regard to the hours of labor, any change in the rate of interest, the equalization of bounties to the soldiers of the war, the organization of a board of railway commissioners, and the prohibition of horse railway cars on Sundays. It appropriated half a million dollars to continue work on the Troy and Greenfield Railroad and the Hoosac Tunnel, and authorized the Western Railroad to increase its capital to ten millions, in order to complete its second track, pay for the Hudson River Bridge, and enlarge its stock of cars and locomotives. A new plan for the organization and maintenance of a state militia was adopted, and General Butler placed at its head.

The aggregate expenditure of Massachusetts on account of the war amounted to more than fifty millions of dollars, including that of her municipalities.

The act of 1866 for organizing the militia of the commonwealth, provides that all able-bodied men, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, shall be enrolled in the militia. The active militia will consist of volunteers, who, in any emergency requiring the exercise of military force, will be

the first ordered to render service to the state. Of this class of troops there are to be one hundred companies of infantry, eight of cavalry, and five of light artillery; all arms and equipments are to be provided by the state, and annual encampments are to be held for the purposes of drill.

During the early part of the year the stringent prohibitory liquor law of Massachusetts was resisted in various ways. In March, the state courts ruled that a license to sell liquors under the Act of Congress providing for internal revenue, did not give authority to any person to sell liquor in violation of the statutes of the state. The cause was then carried to Washington for review; and the decision of the United States Supreme Court was rendered, fully sustaining the rulings of the state tribunals.

In accordance with a provision of the legislature, Governor Bullock visited and inspected the work at the Hoosac Tunnel three times in 1866. The progress in the work of the tunnel during this year was twelve hundred and forty-six feet, being four hundred and forty feet in excess of the year previous. The course of the work was much retarded by the introduction and experimental use of automatic drills in the eastern opening. By reason of constant breakage, cost of replacement, and delay of the work, these machines failed to answer their designs, and were discarded.

On the 13th of September, the republican state convention met at Boston, and renominated Governor Bullock and his coadjutors in office. The National Union state convention, composed mainly of conservative republicans, and of persons who sympathized with the political views of President Johnson, met at Boston, on the 3d of October, and . nominated Theodore H. Sweetzer, of Lowell, for governor,

and Brigadier General Horace C. Lee, of Springfield, for lieutenant governor. The democratic state convention met in the same place on the same day, and pledged its support to the ticket nominated by the National Union convention. In November Governor Bullock was re-elected by a majority of upward of sixty-five thousand votes. Among the republicans elected to the legislature were two colored men,Edward G. Walker, from Charlestown, and Charles L. Mitchell, from Boston. All of the republican candidatesten in number were elected to Congress.

The legislature met on the 2d of January, 1867, and was prorogued on the 3d of June. Once more the liquor question was freely discussed. In 1855 a law had been passed prohibiting absolutely the sale of all intoxicating liquors, including ale, beer, and cider, to be used as beverages, and also forbidding their sale for any mechanical or medicinal purpose by any one save the agents appointed by the state. Several petitions were now sent into the legislature praying for the enactment of a judicious license law in place of the prohibitory statute then in force; on the other hand, petitions were received remonstrating against the substitution of a license law for the existing statute. The various petitions were referred to a joint special committee, which, after having granted public hearings, and considered the matter from all sides, submitted a report to the legislature, which was summed up in these three propositions :

First: "It is not sinful nor hurtful in every case to use every kind of alcoholic liquors or beverages. It is not, therefore, wrong in every case to sell every kind of alcoholic liquors to be used as beverages.

But this law prohibits

every sale of every kind of alcoholic liquors, to be used as beverages." Second: "It is the right of every citizen to