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PERSONAL LIBERTY AND NEW ORLEANS. The Daily States of New Orleans, in commenting on the recent decision handed down by the Appellate Division of the Supremo Court In the case of Melville Collins, charged with a violation of the Hurt-Agnew law. says: "No matter how deeply interesting the value of personal liberty may appeal to the majority that makes up the real ruling jower in every state in our Union, very few in the Crescent City will absorb what the decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the state of New York meant to nearly 100,000 fairly good citizens of that commonwealth. "It was a decision that will have great weight In the endeavors of fair-minded people to check the almost insane efforts of those members of society who meddle with mens rights. "It would appear that various members of legislatures throughout the south and west were made to vote blindly, not only in putting racing out of busl-.ness, but everything else that savored in any way as being within the speculative zone. "The decision in the state of New York" shows that it is still of the opinion that the Percy-Gray bill was good law and the Hart-Agnew measure was a sumptuary act. "If "the Hart-Asnew bill as a law is carried to the same body it must decide it unconstitutional, as its verdict In the gerrymander cases in the state of New York made the senate do facto, thereby making Governor Hughes call for an extra session an usurpation, and an act that that court cannot stultify itself enough to accept. "Or, in other words, while no one denies the right of states to police themselves, the people at large will not allow its servants to dictate to them the curtailment of their personal rights and privileges "Then why. if the people of New Orleans wish to patronize racing, a sport which has been maintained within the environs of the Crescent City for over forty years, should so-called reformers assume that the people who are trying to promote it along lines calling for no transgression of the recently enacted Locke bill are a band of highwaymen? "Perhaps it would have been better If the mile track people had tried to find out the temper of the citizens of Now Orleans, but they did not choose to do so."
