"Millions of Felons"

What the Treasury Department in Washington characterized as a "wide de- parture," what many a Wet construed as a reduction of the law to an absurdity, what many a Dry welcomed as a solution of the problem of punishing liquor buyers occurred last week in the U. S. District Court at Peoria, 111. There Federal Judge Louis Fitzhenry laid down a new and startling interpretation of the Jones

("Five & Ten") Law which would in effect make felons of countless U. S. citizens.

The Fitzhenry judicial reasoning: The Jones Law raised liquor violations from misdemeanors to felonies. The half-for-gotten misprision of felonies law (1790) makes any person who fails to report a felony within his personal knowledge himself guilty of a felony. Therefore, ruled Judge Fitzhenry:

"Any person who buys a drink of liquor from, a bootlegger and does not make a report to the authorities has committed a felony and is equally guilty as the person making the sale. . . . Whether it was wise to make hundreds of thousands or even millions of people of the U. S. felons in the eyes of the law is a matter addressed not to this court but to Congress. . . . The wisdom of the law is one thing, the constitutionality is another. . . ."

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