This change in the license laws of Massachusetts was declared, by Judge Aldrich, in 1867, to be "one of the most fruitful sources of crime and vice that ever existed in this Commonwealth." Up to as late as 1832, attempts were continued to patch up and amend the license laws of the State; after that they were left, for a time, to do their evil work, all efforts to make them anything but promoters of drunkenness, crime and poverty being regarded as fruitless.
"Miserable in principle," says Judge Pitman, "license laws were found no less inefficient in practice." Meantime, the battle against the liquor traffic had been going on in various parts of the State.

In 1835, a law was secured by which the office of county commissioner (the licensing authority) was made an elective office; heretofore it had been held by appointment.

This gave the people of each county a local control over the liquor question, and in the very first year the counties of Plymouth and Bristol elected boards committed to the policy of no license.

Other counties followed this good example; and to bar all questions of the right to refuse every license by a county, the power was expressly conferred by a law passed in 1837.
A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.
The good results were immediately apparent in all places where license to sell intoxicating drinks was refused.

After a thorough investigation of the matter, the Judiciary Committee of the Legislature reported the evidence to be "perfectly incontrovertable, that the good order and the physical and moral welfare of the community had been promoted by refusing to license the sale of ardent spirits; and that although the laws have been and are violated to some extent in different places, the practice soon becomes disreputable and hides itself from the public eye by shrinking into obscure and dark places; that noisy and tumultuous assemblies in the streets and public quarrels cease where license is refused; _and that pauperism has very rapidly diminished from the same cause_." An attempt to prohibit entirely the retail liquor traffic was made in 1838, by the passage of what was known as the "Fifteen-Gallon Law," which forbade the sale of spirituous liquors in a less quantity than fifteen gallons, which had to be "carried away all at one time;" except by apothecaries and practicing physicians, who might sell for use in the arts and for medicinal purposes.
But this law remained in operation only a year and a half; when, in concession to the liquor interest of the State, which had been strong enough to precipitate a political revolution and get its own men in the legislature, it was repealed.
"But the State," says Judge Pitman, "while the memory of license was fresh, was not to fall again under its sway.