MR. BONAPARTE REFUSES TO ACCEPT THE "WHISKY COMMISSION'S" DECISION

Mr. H. Parker Willis says:

"Attorney-General Bonaparte was now in an embarrassing position. He had already rendered his opinion with reference to the nature of whisky, and the proper methods of branding it under the existing law of the United States. President Roosevelt had sent Mr. Bonaparte the report of the Whisky Commission, which had just been transmitted to the White House, with a request for the Attorney-General's opinion.

" Two questions presented themselves to Mr. Bonaparte--whether he should reverse himself and accept the findings of Messrs. Wilson, Capers, and Dunlap, or whether he should stand neutral and idle, in case President Roosevelt should see fit to put into effect his Commission's recommendations. Mr. Bonaparte decided both of these points negatively. In a rather scathing letter to President Roosevelt, he pointed out that the Whisky Commission had based its suggestions almost entirely upon work that had been done in England by a body not known to American law,--the British Royal Commission,--while he had found it his duty to guide himself by the laws of the United States. He could not, therefore, as a matter of law, consent to the proposal now made. Noting that 'the assistant chemist of the Department of Agriculture suggests that on the question of the construction of a statute (the Pure Food Law) a very carefully considered and reconsidered opinion of the Attorney-General should be disregarded,' he went on to say that he could not 'fail to recognize in Dr. Dunlap's recommendation a challenge of the correctness of' his conclusions. He therefore called attention to the interpretations of the Food Law, in line with the views of the Department of Justice that had lately been handed down by the courts. It was stated by officers of the Government that he had privately conveyed to the President the intimation that although only about a week remained before his termination of office as Attorney-General, he should feel compelled to resign, in the event that the President saw fit to overrule his decision in the whisky matter. The President had been largely animated by his own sense of fair play in giving the rectifiers every opportunity to set forth their ideas; and he now made his own stand evident by approving Mr. Bonaparte's views, and continuing the existing methods of marking and branding liquors."

In the Washington Herald of Feb. 27, 1909, is an editorial from which I quote:

"VICTORIOUS MR. BONAPARTE

Our good right hand, palm up, to Mr. Charles Joseph Bonaparte in warm congratulation extended! 'Whisky is whisky, and nothing else is whisky,' says the Attorney-General; and so sayeth his Chief, the President of the United States! * * *

"We regard this as -a great victory for the common people, and we trust they appreciate fully its momentous significance. Heretofore every old thing that could assume the most remote whisky-like disguise has labeled itself whisky, and posed in the open market as the real, genuine, simon-pure article. * * *

"Mr. Bonaparte need not fear that it is not the people's tremendous applause he hears ringing in his ears! It is just that very thing. Pat with him they stand. 'Whisky is whisky, and nothing else is whisky.'"

If the rectifiers had only been endowed with prophetic vision, they would not have made a continuous fight for two long years against the Attorney-General and the President and the Food Law. They would not have commenced numerous actions in Federal Courts, all of which they lost with monotonous regularity. They would not have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in retaining great advocates like Mr. Choate, and others of the same character as mentioned in the article by H. Parker Willis. They would simply have waited. This final rebuff by President Roosevelt occurred on the 19th of February, 1909, thirteen days. before the advent of the new administration. On the morning of the 5th of March the storm clouds which had darkened the sky of the rectifiers for two long weary years broke asunder. The rays of victory shot through the rift, and the full sunlight of triumph shone forth. The principles which had guided the Roosevelt administration were eternal and just. The law was not altered, but its interpretation was radically changed in the interest of the rectifiers of whisky and other alcoholic distilled beverages.