Residents of Westmoreland County seek to block the sale of ardent spirits. Although the petitioners admit that the "license system is a source of Revenue to the treasury of the State," they assert that the costs to the welfare of the state are much higher. The citizens attribute "two thirds of the crime resulting in prosecution ... to the retail trade." They cite that "the use of these liquors incapacitates many men for labor or employment in any business and to this extent curtails the aggregate productive industry of the County." They contend that "through the agency of free negroes, a heavy contribution from the products of the farm, is annually made a proper item of charge to this same whiskey revenue." They decry that the whiskey trade's "work in the domestic circle is rarely exposed. Its tendency is to manufacture undutiful children and tyrannical parents, harsh husbands and oppressed wives, bad masters and dishonest servants, useless citizens and inefficient public officers." Therefore, the petitioners pray that "no license for the retail of ardent spirits shall be granted in the County of Westmoreland."
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Repository: Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
