THE QUESTION
OF A
DOMINION PROHIBITORY LAW,
CONSIDERED IN ITS
Financial, Moral and Religious Aspects,
BY
WAKEFIELD HARDGRAVE, A. P.
PRICE 15 CENTS.
■ <•> ■
' TORONTO :
THE AUTHORS' PUBLISHING Co.
1897.
j^:r:-^ '-::/.i^.''*m'^''!Ki:.i^Ji-ii^'-:' ■'-
{^'^r^iz 'i'y-rli; iV'^^^jg'rjf?
y THE QUESTION
OF A
DOMINION PROHIBITORY LAW,
CONSIDERED IN ITS
Financial, Moral and Religious Aspects,
BY
WAKEFIELD HARDGRAVE, A. P.
PRICE 15 CENTS.
TORONTO :
THE AUTHORS' PUBLISHING Co.
1897.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,
in the year iSgy, by The Authors Publishing Co., in
the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.
PREFACE.
As tho writor of the following pagas T <lootn it lulvisahlo to
hUiU\ by way of prof.iot^ tiiat, in giving tlioni to tho public, my
principal aim is to assist my readers in forming a true estimate of
the adverse manner, in which a Dominion Prohibitory Law would
alFect tho interests of our country generally. I may also state,
that r have no connection whatever with the manufacture or sale
of li(juor, anil that no person engaged in the licjuor tralKc, nor any
other person, has ever asked ujo to write one word in its behalf. I am
I)ersonally a firm believer in voluntary temperance — the temperance
of the Bible — but, at the same time, maintain, to the fullest extent
the principle of individual responsibility ; and decline to force my
neighbour, by Act of Parliament or otherwise, to eat or drink just as
I do. T have made a careful study of Prohibition, have been connec-
ted with its judicial enforcement in its Scott Act shape, and, after
much experience of its operations, have come to the conclusion that
sumptuary laws of this character do more harm than good ; and
confer no benefits on society to compensate it for the fierce social
hatreds, the contempt of the law, and the dangerous criminal
classes they create. Sooner or later the {)eriod of reaction
against them will 'iertainly make its apj)earance, and then the
dial-hand of true temperance is sure t<> recede instead of advanc-
ing.* Much calm consideration of the question has led me to
believe, that the moral suasion and religious teacliing which brought
Pagan Home into the fold of Christianity, in Apostolic times, can
alone form the true basis of ethicial reform in the present day. —
There is so much bigotry, so much intolerance, &o much self-righte-
ousness, so much falsehood and special pleading connected with the
existing advocacy of Prohibition, that an independent, honest and
Ciilm review of the whole (juestion, in its Financial, Moral and
Religious aspects, can hardly fail to do good. To this task I have
applieii myself, and in endeavouring to accomplish it seek only the
welfare of my country.
WAKKFIELD HARDGRAVE.
* Tliis view of the case has recently had ample confirmation in Maine. The
Prohibitionists of that State met in convention, at Waterville, on April
.SOth, 1896, antl one plank of their platform was as follows :
" We declare that the State of Maine presents a condition of lawlessness
that disgraces its civilisation, that nullification of the litjuoi law is wide-
spread and open, that whole communities are com[)el ed to ctinsent to a
shameless illegal traffic, that County Officials work the law for purposes of
revenue, and that long continued familiarity with illegal rumselling has
I egotten, in a consideraMe number of citizens, a disrespect of the authority
of the lav/ in general. We hold the Republican and Democratic political
jtarties responsible for this deplorable condition ; the olficials of these parties
nullify the law, and the "oters of these parties condone nullification at the
ballot box." — Appleton's CVloptL'd;a for 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
General Review of Prohibition ftiwl tho Scot Act, page 3.
CHAPTER II.
The Financial A«p<)ot9 of Prohibition, l.'t ; How ia Prohibition to bo on*
forced, IQ.
CHAPTER III.
Hiatoryof the Temperance Movement, 25 ; DiscuHsion as to Chemical pro-
perties of Hibhi WiiieH, 20 ; The Irish Presbyterian (yhnrch reject! nnfer-
mented Sacramental Wines. 27 ; Tlio Modern Wines of Palestine, 28 ; The
Wines of the Old Testament. .SO ; Prohibition and the New Testament, 33.
CHAPTER IV.
Some of the Protestant Chnnihes an I Prohibition, 3!); The Theism of
Ololdwin Smith, 42 ; Professor Workman's allejforioal and huterodoxioal
method of Bible exegesis. Modern Wine heresie-i, 47 ; Clerical polities in
Ontario, 48 ; Sir Oliver Mowat, Sir Wilfred Lauricr, and Mr. Hardy, 49.
CHAPTER V.
Prohibition ail the world over— in England and the Continent of Europe—
in the United State.", oH ; The Maine Law, 57 ; Prohibition «loe<i not pnmiote
public prosperity, 51) ; Deatlis fnmi Alcoholism, 60 ; The Scott Act in the
Maritime Provinces. (W ; Conchision, 61 ; Crime in the United States, 03 ;
Prohibition and Politics in the United States, 04 ; Appendix, articles from
the Toronto Olobe and Montreal, Qazette, 65.
-4*»-
ERRATA
Page 8 in note marked * fi»r ti'^ure 3 read 5.
" 16, line 21 for pan read pay**.
•• 16, line 22, for have read han.
" 25, line 20, for it^ read their.
" 33, line 11, for but read yet.
" 53, lii»e 17, for clniwes reatl jieopte.
" 55, line 37, for But the insect plagne has, read The insect p'agne
has, however,.
Page 49. The statement made on this page that clergymen are not tax-
payers may reijuire a brief explanation In Ontario clergymen's salaries up
to $1,000 were formerly exempt from taxation by a special statutory clause.
The Assessment Act of 1892 has not however, got this clause, and the sum
of $700 is now the limit of salary exemption. That sum represents the
average clergyman's salary, but even where it exceeds that amount assessors,
as a rule, make no return therefor.
f. ,r • p.- ■■ - ^ t. , ■.-,
CHAPTER I.
*
GENERAL REVIEW OF PROHIBITION AND THE SCOTT ACT.
THE Dominion of Canada was thirty years of age on the first
day of July, 1897. During the three decades of its existence
it has passed through various vicissitudes of one kind or another,
not the least among which were the en ictment by the Federal
Parliament of the Canada Temperance, or Scott, Act in 1878, and
its adoption, by the electoral vote, in nearly the whole of the Pro-
vince of Ontario in 1884. Foremost among its advocates stood the
Methodist Church, then rendered unusually strong and influential
by the union of its various principal wings. Despite much opposi-
tion the movement was most successful. A large number of
electors who were not favourable to Prohibition on general princi-
ples, but were, nevertheless, opposed to the evils of the liquor
traffic in the abstract, held aloof from the agitation altogether,
declined to appear at the polls on election day, and, in this way,
permitted the act to go into active operation in their several dis-
tricts. They were willing to give it a full trial for three years, in
that fair judicial spirit so eminently characteristic of the Canadian
people as a whole, and if they did not like its operations at the end
of its first term, stood prepared to vote it out of active existence.*
In 1887 the people of Ontario began to grow heartily weary of
the Scott Act for a variety of reasons, and in the ensuing year a
strong agitation commenced for its repeal. They had weighed it
fairly in the balance for three years, and in some cases for a longer
period, and found it sadly deficient in many respects. They also
found that it had added neither to their happiness, nor their com-
ort, nor even to public morality ;t were much dissatisfied with the
* McMuUen's History of Canada, vol. 2, p. 436.
t In the Province of Ontario the average of convictions for all offences
and crimes, for the four years preceding the Scott Act period, namely, from
1881 to 1884, stood per 1,000 of the population, at 8.76 per annum. During
the four years the Scott Act waa in force, that is from 1885 to 1889, the
<7V
e (lENEHAL TIEVTEW
inquiHitorial tyranny of ifcH oporations, and tlm most unsatinfactory
inannor of its «nforcPment ; and voto<l, as a rulw, by lftrg« maJoritioH
for its repeal.
Tn the UniUsd States the retail liiiuor vendor is an important
factor in the puliticul arena, and in numberless instances, and in
every part of the Union, has largely influenced legislation in his
own favour. In Canada, and especially in Ontario, matters in this
direction are altogether different, and liquor dealers exercise very
little influence with the general electorate. When the repeal of the
Scott Act was voted on, they accordingly deemed it to be their
best policy to remain out of sight as much as possible, and leave
the result entirely with the rest of the electorate. As a rule they
attended no public meetings of any kind, had no special advocates
to champion their cause, and did little or nothing otherwise to
influence public opinion in their own behalf ; and made no general
canvass of votes. A similar policy was pursued by the great mass
of the opponents of the act. They had made up their minds to
vote against it, owing to their bitter experience of its operations,
and declined to waste their time on what they considered as useless
discussion. It might well be called, so far as they were concerned,
a silent vote given without passion or prejudice — a vote based solely
on reason and honest conviction, and emphatic only in the
light of the large majorities it had almost everywhere in its favour.
It was the deep current of public opinion, educated by the force
of circumstances, among a free people, and swept aside everything
out of its course. " It was the verdict of people who were not
drunkards," said the Montreal Daily Gazette, " and just as it were
people who were not total abstainers who first put the act into
force."
On the other hand the supporters of the Scott Act, all over
Ontario, were exceedingly active, and held meetings in every direc-
tion, which were addressed by their ablest speakers both clerical
and lay ; while much of the public press, and Prohibition fly sheets
as well, were used without stint in their behalf. At the same time
they had the most perfect electioneering organization it is possible
to conceive. Every Methodist church in the Province might be
described as a committee room, and the bulk of its congregation
as the most active of canvassers. In many cases, also, Presbyter-
ian congregations were almost equally active. In addition, the
Prohibitionist Party had the great advantage of being strongly
supported by the Scott Act enforcement committees, who had con-
trolled, hitherto, the expenditure of large sums of money on the
host of spies and informers, which they had called into existence to
carry out their behests, and did not now hesitate to use the corrupt
convictions rose to the yearly average of 10.14. During the four years imme-
diately following the mneal of the Scott Act, the annual per centage of con-
victions, to every 1,000 of the population, decreased to 8.85. — Vide BJue
Book.
I
OF PROHiniTTON. 7
powor they had in this way accjuirod.* And, yK, d«*Hpitfl nil these
fnvdurnble uircuniHtanueH, they wore utterly beaten by unorganised
und undirected public opinion, by the people of their own honest
and independent free will, and met their Waterloo with a ven-
geance in the great prenuer province of the Dominion. In IHHH
the Scott Act repeal vote was taken in eight counties of Ontario,
and was successful in every case ; in Home districta by majorities of
nearly two to one. In IHH9 the net was rejected by a vast aggre-
gate majority in seventeen counties, and in Uuelph and 8t.
Thomas. Not a single municipality in the leading province of
Canada, as regards population, education and prosperity, remained
eventually under its unbearable and un-Hritish yoke, and its people
once more breathed OcmI's blessed air as free men. There was
indeed a marvellous change ! A great and peaceful calm at once
succeeded to the fierce social storm which had raged so violently,
during the four preceding years, from one end of Ontario to the
other. The huge array of spies and informers whicli the Scott Act
had called into existence, and who had fattened upon the public so
long, disappeared as if by magic ; and with them also passed away
the perjury, the contempt of the law, the fierce personal hatreds,
and the man}' social disorders otherwise that had recently afflicted
the country. At the Hamilton Spring Assizes of 1888, Mr.
Justice Rose, when addressing the grand jury, alluded to the Scott
Act, and said he was glad it had been repealed in a number of
counties, because it had done so much to lower the tone of the law.f
* The Canada Temperance Act does not provide for the coat of its enforce-
ment by the Federal Govt^rnment, and leaves that duty to the provinces and
municipalities immediately concerned. In Ontario different statutes made
provisions for the enforcement of the act, which were finally consolidated in
the Liquor License Act of 1887- This act provided that where the licenses
paid by druggists were not sufficient to meet the expenses incurred in
enforcing theScott Act, one-third of the deficiimcy shou'd be borne by the
Province and two-thirds by the county or minor municipality. License
Commissioners and Inspectors were directed to enforce the act. The Prohi-
bitionists becoming dissatisfied, in many cases, with the manner in which the
act was enforced by the authorities, formed local committees to prosecute
offenders. A large part of tlie enforcement fund was distributed among these
committees, to be paid out to infoimers and secret spies, and to be otherwise
used to secure convictions. Serious complaints were made at the time that
no proper returns were ever given to the public as to how their money was
expended. As fines belonged to this enforcement fund, it was eventually
sought to increase them by prosecuting all crimes against the Scott Act as
first offences. The fine in this case being only ^50, was readily paid by
frequent offenders. Unless in some extreme cases, tb j punishments for second
and third offences were rarely put in force. A great source of corruption and
law-breaking was thus opened up.
t Toronto Olobe, April 24th, 1888.
The Royal Commission showed very plainly that the operation of the
Scott Act in the Maritime Provinces was not ut all conducive to the morals
of the people, and that the law was systematically disregarded. It was
carried in most counties by a minority vote of the whole electorate, and the
8 GENERAL REVIEW
On a subsequent occasion the same judge declared that while on a
circuit from Prescott to Sandwich, during Scott Act times, his
experience was that about half the criminal business before the
courts arose out of attempts to enforce tliat law.* Numbers of
clergymen had not only exerted themselves in advocating the Scott
Act, but also in enforcing it, and now shared the odium of its
oveivviielming defeat. They had abandoned moral suasion and
religious teaching, the only true foundations of public reformation,
and betook themselves to the platform of legal coercion, to pay the
penalty of their fatal mistake in being utterly I'outed at the polls,
and so weakening their influence with their flocks.f
Without designing to reflect in any way on our French-Canadian
brethren, we may here state that the English-speaking people of
Canada are, mentally and morally, a wonderfully well-balanced
community. The ^-^imate, in the first place, tones down in no
small degree the angles of Old World national character, be they
English, or Irish, or Scotch, and has a strong tendency to blend
that part of our population into one harmonious whole ; while
travel and a wider experience of human nature, in the second
place, make it more thoughtful, more intelligent and more cosmo-
politan. English-speaking Canadians, are, at the same time, in
the aggregate, a most orderly, unassuming and law-abiding people ;
apt to think a good deal for themselves, and naturally fond of
much personal liberty, but not of license. It will, therefore, be read-
ily understood why the repeal of the Scott Act was taken so sober-
ly, and conduced to no excesses. It led to no increase of drinking,
to no increase of crime, but on the contrary caused the decrease of
both, j Breweries which could not manufacture beer fast enough
to fill their orders during the Scott Act period, and were thus com-
* Toronto Mail, January 13th, 1894.
+ McMulIen's History of Canada, vol. 2, p. 493.
The Ottawa correspondent of the Toronto Globe of September 14, 1896,
makes some statements which support this contention. He says that at St.
Andrew's (Presbyterian) Church the Rev. W. T. Herridge alluded very
forcibly to the decline of clerical influence. The time had gone by, he said,
when clerical utterances were received as oracles from heaven.
t For the facts see note to page 3.
majority of the voters not being behind it, its enforcement soon became a
matter of difficulty. The commissioners found that liquor was sold very
generally in all the hotels, and even at some of the railway stations. For
example, the Scott Act was carried in the County of Cape Breton on August
11th, 1885, by a vote of 739 to 216, out of a constituency which numbered
3,702 names on the voters' list, leaving nearly three-quarters of the total
body of electors unpolled, and who now, as the Act does not suit them,
decline to enforce it. The same state of things precisely prevails in various
other parts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and where, while nominally
under the Scott Act, the open sale of liquor is tacitly permitted. How
infinitely superior would a good license law be to this immoral state of
thing*.
■,:'H'Y ...v.- -^^ .. , -:-f ) ,.i ,i ♦' :■ '.'.>^-i.'^.
OF PROHIBITION. 9
pelled to send out for consumption a fresh and comparatively
unwholesome article, had now ample time to permit their product
to ripen and become tit for use ; and while the operations of a well-
administered and effective license law, such as the Province of
Ontario possesses, almost wholly extinguished illicit liquor selling,
the tavern keepers' receipts^ under the new order of things, fell, in
the great majority of cases, to fully one-half what they were while
the Scott Act was in force, a fact which can be substantiated by
any amount of sworn testimony if necessary. But this is not all
that can be said to show the benefits resulting from the repeal of
the Scott Act. During the period of its enforcement it was well
known that very few private dwellings of any great pretence were
without a consjjant supply of liquor for domestic consumption,
mainly because it was the forbidden fruit for the time being, and
because human nature is prone to rebel against sumptuary legisla-
tion which interferes with personal responsibility, and full freedom
of action, as to what we shall eat and what we shall drink, and
which is wrong in theory and impossible of success. Among the
first fruits of the adoption of the Scott Act, arose a state of things
of tho most painful and demoralising character. Before it came
into active operation there was a general rush, especially in towns,
to lay in supplies of liquor of every description ; and a good many
avowed supporters of the act were not a whit behind its opponents
in this respect, a circumstance which created not a little amuse-
ment and a good deal of comment at the time. So great was the
demand for liquor that the stocks of all the local dealers were
speedily exhausted, and fresh purchases had to be made in order to
supply their customers. People who never before had liquor in
their houses now freely purchased the article, and soon became
accustomed to the use of strong drink. Domestic tippling, the
most dangerous of all modes of using liquor, was inaugurated on a
large scale. Many men who had become accustomed to the moder-
ate use of stimulants, but who had hitlierto carefully concealed the
fact from their families, now for the first time introduced liquor
openly into their homes, and once they had it there could not
churlishly deny a share to other members of their household. In
all the border towns lying close to the Ameiican frontier, smug-
gling at once received an enormous impulse when the Scott Act
came into full force, and a good deal of dry goods and grocery
business soon followed in the wake of the illicit liquor traffic. But
while trade drooped along the Canadian border, it flourished like a
bay tree in conterminous Yankeedom, Where rivers constitute the
international boundary line, and bibulous Canadians crossed over
to the land of free whiskey, to have a good time, several persons
were drowned when returning home in a state of intoxication.
Adopt Prohibition all over Canada, and this unhappy state of
things will be reproduced, but, as a matter of course, in a greatly
increased degree. When the Scott Act' came to an end, smuggling
bad liqnor from Yankeedom came also to an end. Supplies of the
•7j-:y.rv,n^- .,;,.»^.f, , „• , V ■ .•"■■.. .-;^ 7, , ;,, jv^
10 GENERAL REVIEW
article for domsstic use were no longer laid in, as it could now be
purchased at tlie stores when needed, and thus matters returned to
their normal condition, and all temptation to secret tippling, the
curse of the household, was removed. And now that liquor was no
longer the prohibited article, numbers abandoned its use altogether,
and forgot all about it.*
Despite all assertions to the contrary, it is an undoubted fact
that the English speaking populations all over the world are a
much more sober people to-day than at any former period. It is
the bitter experience of all the great cities of the mother land that
poverty is now, as indeed it has always been, the strongest incen-
tive to intemperance, and that this vice decreases as the lower
order of society rises to a condition of comparative comfort and
prosperity. Every careful reader of English literature must be
aware of the great change for the better, as regards the drinking
habit, which has taken place among the higher classes of Great
Britain. The tierce drinking carousals, which constantly occurred
at dinner parties during the past century and the first half of the
present one, have wiiolly disappeared ; the drunken gentleman, so
common in those days, is now rarely met with, and is ostracised by
decent people of every rank in society. Our ancestors of a century
and a half ago drank three times as much beer, and eight times as
much spirits, as are consumed by each individual in the mother
country to-day. In 1750, William Maitland, F. R. S., of England,
and a celebrated statistician of that day, published a History of
London, which contains a vast amount of curious information with
regard to the drinking habits of its people in his time. The
number of public houses in the metropolis was ascertained by exact
survey, and the figures of consumption were derived from the cus-
tom house and excise returns. The population of London was then
726,303, living in 95,968 houses, or an average of nearly eight
persons to every house. Tlie quantity of liquor annually consumed
by this population was enormous. It embraced 70,955,604 gallons
of beer, 11,205,627 gallons of ardent spirits, and 30,040 tuns of
wine, which, at 80 gallons to the tun, would be equal to 2,403,200
gallons. The year's consumption per head would therefore be beer
97 gallons, spirits 14 gallons, and wine say 3^ gallons. The yearly
consumption per head in Great Britain, during the three decades
ending with 1894, has been beer 28.4 gallons, spirits and wine
together 1.48 gallons. The consumption in the United States of
these beverages is somewhat less per capita,! and Canada shows a
* While the Scott Act was in force in a large centre of population, the
manager of a new water company assured the writer that liquor was fouud iu
almost every cellar into which his men went to put in pipes.
t Although the population of the United States has more than douhled
between i8J.) and 1893, the consumption of liquor iu that country was less
in the latter than in the former year. In 1860 it was 90,000,000 of gallons,
in 1892 79,000,000 gallons. At the same time the production of malt liquor,
especially the almost non-intoxicating lager beer, rose from 8,380,000 barrels
OF PROHIBITION. 11
still greater improvement in this respect. According to Mr. Mait-
land, the addiction of the people of London to the use of spirits,
during his time, was so general and so great as to affect the value
of food ; the consumption of which so diminished in volume as to
cause a fall in price, to the no small loss of the landed interest.
Attempts were made to check the evil by legislation, but at first
they were too severe, then too mild, and both did more harm than
good. Gradually, however, the spirit traffic was reduced in extent,
the people, wisely at length left to themselves, turned again to beer,
and as time progressed intoxication became less common. When
one compares the state of things described by Mr. Maitland, with
the moral condition of the people of Canada to-day, he will
realise the vast dift'erence between the two. A more sober, a
more orderly, law-abiding people than Canadians do not exist to-
day on the face of God's earth, and no people need less legal
restraint of any kind, or can be more safely intrusted with the
fullest possible personal liberty as to what they shall eat or what
they shall drink ; and in no country in the world is prohibitory
legislation, with all its attendant restrictions and annoyances, less
required. And further, in no country in the world to-day is
genuine temperance sentiment making more rapid advances than in
Ontario. As a daily newspaper very aptly remarks, the only class
of people among whom intemperance seems to be on the increase is
the Prohibition class. They cannot for the life of them, let well
enough alone, and their meddling and muddling will be sure to do
much harm, and, as in the case of the Scott Act, retard the pro-
gress of true temperance instead of promoting it. " Prohibition,"
said Professor Clark of Trinity College, Toronto,* "is a serious
interference with personal freedom. It is alcohol to-day, it may be
tobacco to-morrow, it may be something else the day after. This is
not the way to make men good, or true, or strong. *(= * * It
is sometimes terrible to see a teetotaller eat, and Sir Henry
Thompson (a celebrated physician) says that over-eating (gluttony)
does more harm physically and morally than over-d linking (drunk-
enness). Prohibition leads to secret drinking and the morphine
habit. The latter is comparatively unknown in Canada, whereas
it prevails extensively in the United States." f
* Professor Clark's letter to the Daily Mail, Nov. 22nd, 1893.
+ " What then is to be done ? " said Professor Goldwiu Smith. " 1 must
answer that my faith is fixed first of all on the natural and unforced infiu-
ences, of which the churi;h, the school, the Christian home, the enlightened
community, and last, not least, the oracles of medical science, are the organs.
The effects wrought by these influences, unlike those wrought by legislative
coercion, are pui-ely good, free from all drawbacks, connected with the
general strengthening of the character and sure to be lasting. In the habits
to 2.50,000,000 barrels.. A similar change in popular drinking habits is also
seen in England, and more strikingly still in Canada. The advent of the
bicycle will have a very wide effect in promoting greater abstemiousness as
regards the use of liquor.
12 GENERAL REVIEW
While the people of Canada have fortunately been able to sur-
mount every difficulty which has beset their national existence since
confederation, and safely weather every storm, they have now to
confront a new and most formidable danger in the Prohibition
movement recently inaugurated. Should this movement prove a
success, a new state of things will arise which cannot fail to pro-
duce the most disastrous results. Viewing it from a financial, a
moral, or even a leligious, stand-point, no question of equal social
importance has ever before been submitted for the consideration of
the people of Canada, and its calm and thorough discussion cannot
fail to be highly beneficial to them, and materially aid them in
coming to a just verdict thereupon. It is for them to say whether
they will bend to the tyrannical yoke of a general Prohibitory Law
which an intemperate fanaticism now seeks to fasten upon their
necks, or whether they will continue, as at present, to promote the
best interests of true temperance by a wise adherence to the princi-
ple of religious and moral suasion, and to the reasonable restriction
of the liquor traffic by good license laws, which, without interfering
with personal liberty, give all due protection ^^^o ^he public.
of the wealtliy!(class in England during the last half century a marvellous
improvement has taken place, not only without coercive legislation, but in
spite of the temptation presented by unlimited command of the richest
liquors. Canon Farrar ii able exultingly to count his total abstainers in
England by the myriad, and all this is the result of freedom. Every old
inhabitant of this country testifies to a spontaneous reform of the same kind,
and says that the time was when excess was deemed a point of hospitality,
and the Canadian farmer often went home drunk from market, whereas now
our farmers are almost univen-ally temperate, and excess even in the great
cities is comparatively rare. If a distinction could be made between the
native Canadian and the emigrant. Canada's bill of moral health, it is
believed, would be cleaner still." — Temperance versus Prohibition. (1884)
page 21.
CHAPTER II.
THE FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF PROHIBITION.
ON the morning of September 3rd, 1896, the Premier of the
Dominion, now Sir Wilfred Laurier, was waited upon at
Ottawa by a temperance delegation, who asked that his Govern-
ment should submit a Prohibition plebiscite to the electorate of
the Dominion. His answer to tins request was, that this plebiscite
was part of the Liberal programme, as adopted at the convention
of 1893, and would be carried into effect within the very shortest
possible limit.* Sir Oliver Mowat was present on that occasion,
and used the following language, which, although very guarded in
its tone, is well worthy of the careful consideration of every
elector : —
"If Prohibition wa^ a practicable thing it was also a right thing. He
dill not pretend to feel perfectly certain about iti being a practicable thing,
for they could not be certain that public sentiment is such that a law of that
kind could be enforced throughout the country. It was a very important, in
fact an essential, thing to have popular sentiment in such a condition that a
Prohibitory law could be enforced. It was also importan^; that popular
opinion on the question should be obtained on this question free from any-
thing that might distract the attention of the voter. The Government
wished to have that vote as early as possible They wanted to know the
opinion of the people, and also to know whether the people are willing to hear
the burdfjis implied hy the adoption of Prohibition. The object was well
worth the burden — (cheers) — but did our people feel that way ? Was the
sentiment strong enough to enable them to bear the burdens and privations,
if there were privations, attending such a law ? "
It will be seen from the language of Sir Oliver, that the Govern-
ment desired to ascertain the opinion of the people upon two
important points, namely, (1st) whether they were in favor of
Prohibition, and (2nd) whether they were prepared to bear the
burdens it must necessarily place upon their backs, presuming it
were adopted. And this is, unquestionably, the true form in which
this important question should be submitted to the people, unless
the matter of compensation to vested interests would also be con-
sidered. If they desired Prohibition they should honestly be pre-
♦ See Globe of September 4th, 1896.
+ Olobe of above date.
14 GENERAL REVIEW
pared to pay for all the burdens it must entail. The Toronto GloJ>e
realised the full force of this aspect of the question, and with the
view of educating its readers thereupon, the following article
appeared in its issue of September 14th, 189G : —
HOW WILL WE RAISE $7,089,556?
" The question of public revenue is inseparable from any discussion of the
prohibition of the liquor traffic. Every nation ac(niirea the habit of paying
its taxes through certain channels, and, although these channels may have
no reason for existence except habit iind use, extensive disturbances cannot
be made without far-reaching consequences. In the Dominion the tax col-
lected by the Inland Revenue Department on spirits, malt and malt liquor
for the year ending June 30, 1893. was $5,09(3,454. That does not include
$3,285 realized from seizures, nor $1'2.39() levied on methylated spirits. The
customs department collected on imports under the head oi "spirits"
$2,080,559. Omitting from this the tax on cordials, elixirs, perfumes, etc ,
the collection on brandy, gin, rum and whiskey reached $1,993,102, making,
in customs and excise on such liquor as may fairly be regarded as used for
leverage purposes, $7,089,556. Under a prohibitory liquor law there would
he the necessity of making good that amount. Prohibition would do away
with the necessity of much legal and governmental machinery, and might, as
contended, lessen greatly the cost of criminal law administration. But the
Dominion revenue stated is by no means all the taxation collected through
the liquor traffic. Proviucial and municipal revenues would also be affected,
and there wou'd be the need of special machinery to euforce the restriction,
Roughly offsetting these accounts against one another, it is safe to esti-
mat;. tl; it the loss in Federal revenue would have to be made good by some
other miithod of taxation under a prohibitory system. We invite suggestions
as to the best methods of making good the $7,089,556 delicit in the event of
that tax beinp relinquished by prohibition. Taxation is the most unsettled
of Oovemmtald operations, and no loubt many of our readers will be able
to give valuable Mnts =3 to the best method of displacing and making good
the liquor tax." *
As will be seen from the foregoing article, the total Federal
revenue arising from ihe i manufacture and importation of liquors,
during the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1895, amounted to
$7,089,556. But the loss to che Dominion exchequer of this large
amount, although over twenty per cent of the entire revenue for
the same year,t is only a part of the price, and not the largest part
either, which the people of Canada will be called upon to pay for
the luxury of Prohibition. As the Globe very truly states, " pro-
vincial and municipal revenues would also be affecte<l ; and then
there would be the cost of the special machinery necessary to
enforce the act." Let us now look at the facts which confront us
in these directions. In 1896 the Province of Ontario levied a tax
upon liquor licenses of $268,172,and on brewer'sand distiller'slicenses
of $18,250, or $286,422 altogether; while the municipalities receiv-
ed, .as their share, of the same tax, $267,072, making a total of
$553,494. Quebec also derives a very large income from its liquor
licenses. The revenue arising from the same source in the six other
* There were quite a number of replies made to the request, but the
burden of most of them was that the delicit must be made good by direct
taxation in some shape.
tThe total revenue for that year was $33,978,129.
, I'll
OF PROHIBITION. 15
provinces of the Dominion (including the Noi t!: West) will be fully
$200,000. The net provincial and municipal revenue <lerived from
licenses throughout the whole Dominion may accordingly be put at
about $1,400,000. It will therefore be seen that the total annual
loss to the public revenue, which must be caused by the adoption
of Prohibition, would be some eight and a half million dollars,
which the farmers and other property owners of the country would
have to make good by some sort of direct taxation. Assuming our
whole population to be now five millions, and the heads of families,
who might be called property owners, at 800,000, each elector of
this class would have to pay nearly eleven dollars per annum to
make good the deficiency in the ^ederal, provincial and municipal
revenues. As clergymen, who aie the prime movers in this matter,
arc not taxed, as a rule, upon their incomes, they would wholly
escape this burden, and their share of it would have to be paid by
the ordinary taxpayer. In this case, therefore, like the Jewish
clergymen of old time, they seek to place a load on the backs of
the laity, no part of which would be borne by themselves.
The census of 1891 showed that there were 150 brewers and
malsters in the Dominion, with a total capital of $8,534,953, whose
annual wage bill amounted to $906,681, and whose total output
per year was $5,955,252. Of this sum it may be safely assumed
that at least two hundred thousand dollars were paid to our
farmers for hops, and one and a half million dollars for barley. In
addition to the large market this industry creates for our agricul-
tural products, the farmers for miles around every brewery find
the grains, or barley residue after beer-making, of great value for
their stock, and especially if their grass or fodder is scarce. The
statistics of the liquor traflic have not changed materially since the
Royal Commission marie its report thereupon, based on the trans-
actions for the years 1890 and 1891. That report states that the
annual revenue of the several provinces, derived from licenses,
amounted to $924,358, and that received by municipalities from
the same source to be $429,107. It also gives the total amount
annually paid out by brewers and distillers as follows ; —
Products of the farm $2,382,765
Annual wages bill 1,194,046
For fuel 170,000
Freights by water and railroad 450,000
Casks, bottles and cases 206,455
Capsules, corks, etc 76,186
Printing and advertising, etc 79,897
Repairs, etc 47,005
Insurances 151,685
Gas, taxes and water supply 123,1 18
Cutting and drawing ice 36,757
Sundries not enumerated 121,995
Total $5,039,992
•7
16 GENERAL REVIEW
The capital invested in the liquor business, as shown by tho last
census, is : —
Distilleries ' $ 7,054,000
Breweries 8,311, 453
Malt houses 223,500
Cider mills 136,795
Wine presses 396,475
Total $16,122,225
The Royal Comrnis&ion rated the value of the hotels, ami other
buildings or places for retailing liquor in the Dominion, at $38,-
000,000, the depreciation in the value of which, in the event of
Prohibition being carried, would certainly not be less than one-
third, or $12,666,667, independent of the loss on fixtures, which
might safely be estimated at one million dollars. In the event of
the adoption of Prohibition, time, no doubt, would be given to dis-
pose of the stocks op. hand, and to export the liquors in bond. We
shall not, therefore, take into consideration any losses which might
be suffered in this direooion. The wine-making industry of Canada
has, in recent years, reached very large proportions; and represents
to-day a capital of fully half a million dollars, pay out in wages at
least fifty thousand dollars annually, and have a total output of
three hundred thousand dollars per year. Prohibition would at
once kill off this large, very valuable, and constantly increasing
industry, and bring ruin to numbers of our most intelligent
farmers, who have put all their surplus means into it.
Prom the foregoing figures, based upon the most accurate infor-
mation attainable from government blue books and other reliable
. sources, the value of the vast industries and interests that will be
destroyed by Prohibition will be seen at a glance. All these
industries, and all these interests, have sprung into existence by
the authority of the Parliaments, and therefore of the people of
Canada, and in good faith. The advocates of Prohibition claim
that they stand on high moral ground, and that they would not,
for a moment, entertain the idea of being guilty of any act of dis-
honesty, or even of a questionable character, in its support. The
Christian ministers who everywhere lead the Prohibition movement
stand up Sunday after Sunday in their pulpits, and refer you to
presumed Biblical teaching to justify their proceedings. In other
words, having first formed their Prohibition creed, they turn to the
Bible in order to find something there that will support it. Yet,
in utter contempt for the Pauline injunction, " that we must not
do evil that good may come,"* they wholly ignore the justice of
due compensation for vested interests, acquired, too, under the
protection and sanction of legal enactment, and unblushingly seek
to rob by Act of Parliament their fellow citizens of their property.
* Romans iii, S.
f'
OF PIvOHIBTTION. 17
Just fancy a body of men, and women as well, who claim to be
strictly honest, and even, in a majority of cases, exceedingly religi-
ous, commencing what they assert to be a great moral movement
by committing acts of the grossest injustice, and most dishonest
spoliation. In their half.demented anxiety to get astride of the
backs of the people of Canada, in Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea
fashion, they are evidently prepared to stop at nothing, no matter
how illogical, how injurious, or how immoral it may be. In the
Mother Country, where, thank God, a true sense of British justice
and fair play still prevails, from the palace to the cottage, no sane
person would ever dream of totally destroying vast industries
without considering the question of compensation. Even the slave
owners of the West Indies, those traffickers in the bodies and souls
of immortal beings, were compensated by the British Parliament
for the loss of their human chattels ; and the same spirit of
honesty, of justice, of honour, should animate the people of
Canada. " Righteousness exalteth a nation,"* and persons engaged
in the manufacture and sale of wines, beer and spirits, however
we may dislike their occupation, should have fair and honest treat-
ment at the hands of all fair and honest people. A Prohibitory
law, like any other law, to bring any solid or enduring benefits to
the people of this Dominion, should be distinctly moral in all its
aspects, should be based upon the principles of everlasting justice,
and there should be no public dishonesty, no bad faith, no wrong-
doing of any kind connected therewith. Those people who, in
utter defiance of the eighth commandment, would plunder .their
neighbors, under the colour of legal enactment, solely because they
are engaged in occupations they dislike, should bear in mind that
'* honesty is the best policy," even from a Prohibition stand-point.
The Lord Chief Justice of England, Baron Russell, visited this
country a short time ago, and was accompanied by his son, Mr.
Charles Russell, an able lawyer, an active politician, a very
influential member of the English Liberal party, and a gentleman
who is fully competent in every way to give the best possible idea,
not only of the views and opinions of his own friends, but also of
those of the British public generally as well. In the autumn of
1896, Mr. Russell accorded an interview, at Montreal, to the
representative of the Daily Star of that city, to whom he gave
much interesting information as regards the temperance question
in England, and the recent defeat of Sir William Harcourt's local
option bill,* which he stated was owing to the fact that it did not
provide any compensation for vested interests. His (Harcourt's)
idea was to transfer the licensing power from the magistrates to
the municipal councils, with the right to issue licenses or refuse
them as these bodies might see fit. " You must not infer, how-
• Proverbs xiv, 34.
* See Montreal Star of September 3rd, 1896.
,>'•
18 OENEHAL REVIEW
ever," s/iid Mr. Russoll, " that thu words local veto nioans in Eng-
land tho right of a inajority, in any spBoial part of th« country, to
refuse to allow licjuor to ha sold to the minority. The principle of
a majority holding its foot on the neck of a minority, is too
un-English to be tolerated for an instant. * * * The difficult
part of the whole temperance (juestion is that relating to compen-
sation. Suppose, continued Mr. Russell, that T ciftne to Montreal
now, and build a hotel, or a restaurant, or oven a saloon. I buy
furniture, and llttings, and advertise in the papers. Altogether I
spend $25,000. Six months hence the Canadian Parliament passes
a Prohibitory law. What are you going to do to compensate mo
for the loss of all the capital T have in the world ? Easy enough
to Hay that Parliament has the right to pass such laws us it may
see fit. It has the power to knock me down and pick my pocket if
it passes a special bill to that effect, no matter how unjust and
immoral such a bill would be. It may be Parliamentary not to
discuss compensation, but is it justice?" There cannot be the
slightest doubt that Mr. Russell correctly outlined British fooling
in this matter. Sir William Harcourt's local veto scheme, although
a very mild temperance measure of reform, did Jiot provide for
compensation, and that is the main reason why the English people
would have none of it. The exceedingly immoral scheme, which
has for its chief object to deprive a part of the Canadian people of
their properties, under the illusive plea of furthering the cause of
public morality, is based on the pernicious example of a few of the
adjoining states, is fostered in Canada by paid American profess-
ional temperance spouters, imported here to propagate their own
peculiar views, and should be denounced by every lover of British
justice and fair play. The terse and fair manner in which Mr.
Russell has put the justice of conapensation, merits the considera-
tion of every honest Canadian.
But aside from the great and direct loss which must be sustained
by brewers, distillers, wine-makers and farmers, in the event of
Prohibition, the huge gap it would cause in Dominion, provincial
and municipal revenues, the loss of an important home market for
the products of the farm, and the reduction of the working man's
wage bill, hotel property all over the country will be largely depre-
ciated in value. In the rural districts especially, the wayside and
village taverns, of such great usefulness to commercial and other
travellers, and to the farmer going to and from his market town,
which disappeared very generally under the Scott Act, will sustain
the same fate again, but necessarily to a much wider extent. All
oyer Ontario these useful hostelries, which have grown up with the
country, and have always hospitably given food and shelter to the
traveller at very low rates, as a result of the profit of their little
bars, will be either wholly blotted out of existence, or be compelled
to raise their tariff of charges, as under the Scott Act, to a height
which the farmer could not afford to pay. Many a traveller
will recollect what straits he was put to at times to secure
v«
OF PUOHIIUTION. 19
a nijj;ht's lodjijin)? or a nioal in Hoinn Imiiilot, whom the whilom
hospitablit littli; inn, in which, hko Shakospcaro, hu could take his
ease hitherto, had closed its doors owing to the Scott Act. Were
it not for the kindness of private fanulies, who on many occasion'*
oharitahly took in the stramleil wayfarer, he would be left without
either food or shelter. Commercial travellers, especially, who had
of necessity to visit these small c(Mitres of business, were frecjuently
very badly cornered. American ttmrists, who every sumujer spend
a good deal of money in Canada, shunned, as a rule, Scott Act
districts, and e.\cursion steamers passing up or down our lakes and
rivers rarely stopped where the inhospitable law was in force. All
these things will be readily remembered by many of our readers,
and how completely the Hcott Act put the normal conditif»n of
things generally out of joint. Nor can it be shown, at the same
time, that the Scott Act ever reformed a single habitual drunkard.
It may, it is true, have prevented the lowest atul most degraded
class of drunkards, who had formerly given a good deal of employ-
ment to our police courts, from getting liquor as freely as under the
old system ; but among persons immediately above that class it
was notorious that it greatly stimulated intemperance. In the
latter case the offenders having plenty of friends to take care of
them, and being naturally orderly and circumspect, rarely got into
the clutches of the law. The good policy and justice of causing
vast losses to a whole country, and interfering with the full liberty
and personal independence of its people, in order to prevent a few
habitual drunkards, here and there, from obtaining liquor, may
indeed be very gravely questioned by all soberly-thinking persons.
HOW IS PROHIBITION TO BE ENFORCED ?
There is another phase of the question under consideration,
which is of the greatest importance, namely, how is Prohibition to
be enforced ? It would be a most unwise and even immoral course
of procedure to pass a Prohibitory Law, unless the fullest possible
provisions were made for its enforcement. Nor should this duty be
left to provincial governments or municipal bodies, [t should, on
the contrary, be undertaken by the Federal Government. Most of
us will recollect how the dual authority conflicted under the Scott
Act, while it was in operation in Ontario ; and that what was
everybody's business became in the end, to a large extent,
nobody's business, until finally the law developed into an utter
abomination to the people of the province, and was everywhere
repealed. When we take into consideration the vast extent of the
frontier line to be policed in order to prevent the smuggling of
liquor from the United States, it is plain that the Federal Govern-
ment is alone equal to the task, if it could at all be performed,
which is very doubtful. Owing to its peculiar geographical posi-
tion, Canada is the most difficult country in the world in which to
enforce Prohibition. Its five million of people represent a narrow
▼ <
10 (lENKHAL REVIEW
ribbon of population Htn^tohnd along a vast frontier lino, wliioli
could only bo polioo<l at an onormouH annual outlay.* Leaving out
our poHSOHsiona in the Arctic Heas, our Atlantic and British
Columbia coast HneH are 17,181 iniles in nxtont.f In addition the
length of the frontier line between Canada and the United States,
exclusive of the Alaska boundary, is 3,000 geographical miles,
1,400 of which lie on water, (rivers and lakes) and 1,600 miles on
land. To enforce Prohibition properly, and to prevent liquor
smuggling from the United States, this international boundary
will have to be sufficiently policed both by land and water ; while
at the same time, a largo body of inland revenue officers will have
to be maintained in order to prevent illicit distillation, (which
otherwise will be sure to speedily assume large proportions in every
hole and corner of Cana<la) and to keep down the illicit sale of
spirits. Where there is a demand for this article, as in every other
case, there will be sure to be a supply ; and to furnish that supply
there will be everywhere organisations of un8c**upulous and desper-
ate men who will stop at nothing to accomplish their purpose, that
is to make money, and a new class of dangerous criminals will thus
at once spring into existence, who will have to be kept down, no
matter wfiat the cost may be. Unless our vast frontier line is well
guarded. Prohibition would merely transfer a large part of the
liquor trade of Canada to our American cousins over the border,
who in view of their McKinley and alien labour laws, and their
unfriendly trade policy generally, should not be permitted to make
money out of us at present, in any form, either illicit or otherwise.
We have an expensive and moat difficult task to perform just now
to prevent the smuggling of liquor along the lower St. Lawrence,
and on our Pacitic coast line. During the recent session of Parlia-
ment, the government asked for a grant of $5,000 for a secret
service fund to be used to pay informers, and to prevent smuggling
below Quebec. This grant was assailed by the Opposition, and
while defending it Sir Richard Cartwright stated, that this smug-
gling had become a system, with a complete organisation which
had its chief headcjuarters at Quebec. The loss to the revenue was
estimated at $800,000 a year, and worse still this evil of smuggling
was demoralizing the people of whole parishes. " It would be
impossible," said ho, ** to bring home guilt to the principals without
the aid of informers." J "When such a bad state of things prevails
* It ia now estimated that the coat of policing the Klondyke district alone,
and preserving law and order there, will cost the Dominion a quarter of a
million of dollars annually.
t Statistical Year Book of Canada for 1&95, p.p. 98, 100.
+ The following deapatcbes to the Montreal Star, will give a ^ood idea of
what smuggling means along a small part only of our frontier ; and the
terrific state of things that a general Prohibitory law would produce from
one end of the Dommion to the other : —
Ottawa, July 8. 1897.— Despite the untiring efforts to stamp out smuggling
in the St. Lawrence, little has been effecten ; practically only one seizure
having been made. The authorities state that the men who carry oa this
OF PllOHrniTION. 21
nUmn tho lower St. L)iwrniicM>, witli a licenso MyHttMU wliioh permita
mlullH to obtain, without any <lilKculty, all tlie liquor they require,
our HMulerH win roudily j<(iu^<' for thoinsnIveH the t«rrible dihonlom,
on a vuHt Hoalu, that will 8ur«>ly follow a Dominion Prohibition law,
and tho tiUinio nature of tht^ task which niutit b«^ undertaken in
order to enforce it. The coat of its enforcement, even under the
most favourable ciroumstuncos, will certainly be very groat, and
cannot fail to be a severe strain on the resources of the Domiuioa,
oven should they prove ecjual to it. As thingH now stand our Pro-
hibition friends ask us to takt; a blind leap into an unknown region
of great ditticulty and even danger.
If the people of Canaila desire to indulge in the very expensive
luxury of a Dominion Prohibition law, covering land and water
from the Atlantic to the Pacirtc Ocean — from the Ameri. nn boun-
dary line to tho Arctic regions — and two thousand miles up the
Yukon country, or some twenty-three thousand miles altogether,
(for that is the vast area which will come under its sway) they had
bettor first count the cost, and look into the whole matter most
carefully before they betake themselves to the ballot box. They
should not allow a comparatively few narrow minded-persons, who
have small interests at stake, to do the whole thinking, as weU as
the whole talking for them. It should not bo forgotten, too, how
very careless electors sometimes are about voting at all on ques-
tions of the character now under discussion. As regards the great
masses of the Canadian people there is no strong feeling, as a rule,
behind these questions, no political or personal ambitions to be
contraband trade become more cautious year by year, and do not carry on
their operations twice running in the aame locality. The long unsettled
coaats afford them every facility for running in and landing tfoods under
cover of the darkneas. Quebec is still the destination of most of the smuggl-
ed stuff, and the whole scheme is worked from there. The goods are almost
invariably transferred from the smuggling craft to another vessel off shore,
and in this way the chance of detection in minimized. In many cases the
feeling prevails that the Minister of Customs is warranted in taking the most
radical steps to wipe out this traffic.
Quebec, July 19, 1897. — The recent increase in the duties imposed by the
Canadian Government upon the importation of spirituous liquors has given a
fresh impetus to smuggling so extensively carried on in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, as well as to the illicit manufacture o'' alcohol in the country. la
the very heart of this city a few days ago, a large illicit still was found in full
operation in the upper part of an old house, and now comes the news that a
group of similar stills has been seized at Stoneham, some twenty miles from
Quebec, away up in the mountains, where the yield of contraband whiskey
was so large that it meant a loss of revenue of $500 a day.
While some seizures are being made on shore, the pirates of the gulf have
practically everything their own way. With the steam cruiser Constance
constantly on the lookout for the smugglers, and with lines of telegraph
along both the north and south shores of the river and gulf, the government
is thus far quite powerless to check the evil. Some idea of the enormous
extent of the smugglers' operations may be gained from the fact that not-
withstanding the higher duties upon alcoholic liquors, and the certainty that
there is no decrease in their consumption, the diminution in the revenue
from this source amounts to several thousands of dollars a ilay.
22 GENERAL REVIEW
subserved, and hence indifferentism very largely prevails. It was
this state of things that led to the Scott Act being so generally
adopted in Ontario in 1884, to be subsequently voted out of sight
after the people had fully experienced the indignities, the tyran-
nies, and the moral disorders it produced. The Ontario plebiscite
of January 1st, 1894, was carried by the large majority of 81,730,
solely owing to the apathy, the indifference, of the majority of the
electorate, men and women — for women were also permitted to
vote on that occasion. The total male vote of the Province at that
date was 481,499, the total female vote, 42,492 ; or 523,991 alto-
gether. The whole number of votes polled was 303,244, so that
220,747 votes remained unpolled. There can be no doubt that the
Prohibition vote turned out on that occasion in its full strength.
It footed up to 192,487, leaving a vote against it, polled and
unpolled, of 331,504. This state of things very plainly showed
that if all those who were virtually opposed to Prohibition had
gone to the polls, it would have been defeated by an actual major-
ity of 139,017 votes. Past experience clearly shows, both in the
case of the Scott Act* and otherwise, that a Prohibitory law can
never be properly enforced unless where the sympathy of the
people is fully behind it. The prospective plebiscite therefore, to
be of any real value, should be sustained by a majority of the
whole Dominion electorate, and no Prohibition legislation should
be based on the vote of a minority. The plebiscite ballot, in all
fairness and honesty, should put three questions to be answered,
either yes or no, by the elector, namely : (1) Are you in favour of
Prohibition ? (2) Are you in favour of compensation to all legal
interests which may be adversely affected ? (3) Are you willing to
submit to direct taxation, not only as regards the losses sustained
by the public revenues of the country, but also as regards compen-
sation, and the expenses of enforcing the act ? If the people of
Canada desire a Prohibitory law they should be willing to pay,
honestly and fully, for all the needed outlay connected therewith ;
and in order to be in a position to do so, the levy of a direct
Federal tax upon the whole property of the country is the only
practical financial solution which presents itself. At present the
ordinary sources of the public revenue are scarcely adequate to
meet the current expenditure ; and new modes of taxation will
have to be devised to meet the additional requirements of a Prohi-
bitory law. We need scarcely s^^y, that the advocates of such a
law are not in favour, by any means, of submitting the whole
questions involved to the electorate, and seek to snatch a verdict
on one issue alone. And in order to snatch that verdict they
would like to deceive the people into the belief that they would
not have to make good the vast outlay involved, and that the
* The Scott Act was also carried in Ontario by a minority vote. In an
aggregate of counties of which the total electorate was 398,764. the total
number of votes cast for the Scott Act was only 123,680, more than two-
fifths of the electors having either voted against it or stayed at home.
OF PROHIBITION. 23
Federal government would, in some mysterious way, provide for
that outlay without adding to their existing burdens. Nothing
could be more dishonest — more practically delusive, than a course
of this kind. How strange is it that men who preach truth and
righteousness from the pulpit or the platform, deliberately lend
themselves to a double-dealing policy of this kind — to the acting
out of a practical and palpable lie. At the annual meeting of
the Dominion Alliance for the suppression of the liquor traffic, held
in Toronto on the 14th of last July, (1897) it was clearly shown by
the language of the principal speakers, that they were opposed to
have the people vote upon the whole (juestion at issue, and held
that a part of it only should be submitted to the electorate at the
coming plebiscite. We now add, for the information of our
readers, some extracts from the press despatch giving a synopsis of
the proceedings at that meeting : —
The chairman said they had met to take counsel as to the best method to
be pursued under the present condition of affairs. He had hoped that the
Dominion plebiscite bill would have been submitted to Parliament at the last
session, but he was not going to say anything condemnatory of the govern-
ment. He held that if the question of prohibition was to be submitted in
connection with a vote in regard to direct taxation it would be most dishon-
orable and unfair. The government already had sufficient information to
submit a Prohibitory measure to the people. The information which had
been obtained presented a mass sufficient to justify the prohibition legislation
asked for.
Rev. Dr. Lucas was firm in the belief that if, in the final proclamation
regarding the plebiscite, there was reference to direct taxation, the vote
would go against the measure, and that it would wreck the Laurier Govern-
ment.
Rev, Dr. Ross, Brantford, was of opinion that the government would not
add such a rider to the proclamation, and was not at all alarmed for the fate
of the measure by means of this cry. What he feared most was that a clear
majority of the votes of those registered might be required, as asked by the
liquor men, before the measure became law. This might jeopardize the
measure, as so many of the electorate might abstain from voting as to render
a clear majority of those on the lists irapossiWe. He believed that such a
clear majority of the voters had never been obtained by any government.
The Plebiscite Committee's report recommended that tlie Executive Com-
mittee urge upon Provincial Executives the perfecting of county and local
organization at as early a date as possible. Also that the Executive Com-
mittee form a platform bureau in each province with a list of speakers who
will be available for addressing meetings.
A short discussion took place on the last clause, occasioned by Rev. Mr.
StafFor' iggesting that the word " Canadian " be inserted before the word
" speakers, so that none but Canadian speakers be employed, they being
better acquainted with the conditions in Canada than those in the United
States.
Dr. Ross favored the suggestion, as by adopting such means professional
temperance speakers would be kept out.
A delegate from Quebec said that they would employ good men wherever
they could get them.
Others thought it would not be well to prohibit the engaging of well-
known temperance men from the United States.
The report was adopted without the change being made.
The language used in the Alliance meeting with regard to sub-
mitting only a part of the whole question at issue to the electors,
24 GENERAL REVIEW
has been re-echoed all over the country at every Methodist gather-
ing of any importance. The Prohibitionists fear to submit the
whole case to the great jury of the Dominion electorate, and would
like to hocus-pocus that jury in some way, so that a snap verdict
might be had on a part of it only. It will be also seen from the
quotations we have made, that the Rev. Dr. Lucas, a professional
Prohibition advocate, assumes the prophetic role, and threatens
that if there were any reference or allusion to direct taxation in
the plebiscite proclamation, it would wreck the Laurier govern-
ment. In other words this open threat implies, that if the Laurier
government were not sufficiently subservient in the matter the
Methodist support would be withdrawn from it. That government
very gallantly withstood the powerful hierarchy of the Province of
Quebec. It remains to be seen whether it will surrender to the
bullying of the Methodist clerical body in Ontario, who would
evidently like to rule the roost there just as absolutely as their
prototypes down the St. Lawrence. It is to be sincerely hoped
that the government of Sir Wilfred Laurier will show the same
manly independence of clerical rule in Ontario that it has in
Quebec. We are inclined to regard Dr. Lucas as simply playing
the role of the false prophet in a very unscrupulous sort of way,
for the purpose of intimidation, and to hold the insolent lash
of the withdrawal of Methodist political support over the heads of
the Federal administration, and just as it is held over the Hardy
government of Ontario. Let us filch for the nonce a little of Dr.
Lucas' prophetic afflatus. Just as sure as the Laurier government
submits the plebiscite without the taxation or compensation clauses
and simple Prohibition is carried in consequence, and the concur-
rent legislation goes into effect, so sure will a chaotic state of
things arise from che Atlantic to the Pacific that half a dozen
governments would go down before it. This question is one of the
gravest character imaginable, and the whole electorate, and not
the Federal government, should assume the full responsibility in
the premises. The government should be the agents of the people's
will in the matter and nothing more, and should not be embarrass-
ed by the creation of a condition of affairs, that must speedily ruin
any cabinet, no matter how strong its support might be. Assum-
ing, at the same time, that the plebiscite were favourable to Prohi-
bition, Parliament, when enacting the necessary legislation, should
make the most ample provision for its enforcement, so that the
measure might have a full and fair trial, and thus prevent cavil for
all time to come. If it fails, as it will be sure to fail, let it be dis-
tinctly on its merits, and not from any radical defect in the
machinery provided to enforce it.
CHAPTER III.
THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT,
"VT/^HAT is called the Temperance movement had its origin
VV in the United States, some seventy-one years ago. In
February, 1826, " The American Temperance Society " was organ-
ised in the city of Boston, with the object, " to restrain and prevent
the use of intoxicating liquors." In 1829, " The New York State
Temperance Society " was formed, with the same platform as its
Boston predecessor ; and before the close of that year fully
one thousand affiliated local societies were in operation. A
monthly periodical, entitled the " Journal of Humanity," was
established to promote the new movement. News of the progress
of temperance in the United States soon reached the Cld World ;
and in August, 1829, a society was started in Ireland at New
Ross, in the County of Wexford, the members of which pledged
themselves to abstain from the use of ardent spirits, but not from
beer or wine. In the same year the movement spread to Belfast,
in the north of Ireland, and also to Scotland, where it speedily
acquired a large membership. In 1830 numerous total abstinence
societies were formed, which, however, permitted to its members
tlie use of ordinary small beer, and wine for sacramental purposes.
In the latter part of the year the movement extended to England,
where the first society was formed at Bradford. In 1834 were
formed what are termed teetotal societies, which pledged their
members against the use of all intoxicating liquors. In 1838
Father Matthew founded Ireland's " National Temperance Asso-
ciation," which did much to abate the excessive drinking habits of
the Irish people of that day. Despite the great poverty of the
people, the population of the little island of some 306 miles in
length, and averaging about 150 in breadth, much of which is bog
and mountain, had increased prodigiously in the three preceding
decades, and now numbered over eight million souls, Father
Matthew 'li mission did much for the Irish people for a time, but its
results were not of a permanent character, and the old social
26 GENERAL REVIEW
habits were fast re-asserting themselves when the terrible famine
of 1845, owing to the potato rot, burst upon the land.
The temperance movement was very soon retarded, by the fierce
dissensions which arose between its more moderate and extreme
wings. These dissensions were presently still more embittered by
differences of opinion in regard to the chemical properties of the
wines of the Bible. The extremists asserted that these wines were
of two kinds, one non-fermented and therefore non-intoxicating,
which Christ and his disciples alone used ; and the other fermented
and intoxicating, which should not be used even for sacramentu '
purposes. The original Hebrew text was appealed to. On a
critical examination it was found that at least a dozen difterent
designations for wine* were used in the Old Testament, but that
the two by far the most frequent were yayin and tirush. The
first of these is tlie generic Hebrew term for wine, corresponding
to the Greek oinas and the Latin vinum, with both of which it is
etymologically connected ; and the extremists accordingly contend-
ed that yayin means the fermented product of the grape, and is
the word used when wine is denounced. Hence it is that yayin
is a mocker (Prov. xx. 1), that is not to be looked upon when it is
red (Prov. xxiii. 31, 32). f On the other hand when wine is praised
in the Old Testament tirush is the word used, and means the grape
in clusters or their unfermented juice The true facts of the case
do not, however, at all warrant this contention. The word tirosh
occurs about forty times in the English Bible, and is invariably
translated, both in the old and new versions, as wine or new wine,
and is frequently referred to as intoxicating, as in Hosea iv. 2,
where yayin is applied to wine, and tirosh to new wine. " Whore-
dom, and yayin and tirosh take away the understanding." The
great Hebrew scholar, Gesenius, and numbers of the Jewish com-
mentators on the Talmud, declare that tirosh means new wine, and
that the wine used in the Passover has at all times been fermented
wine. I
As this sacramental question had never before been seriously
* These names no doubt denoted different kinds of wiue, and just as in the
present day one kind of wine is termed champagne, another port, another
sherry, and so on,
+ Those who desire to arrive at right conclusions on this passage should
read the revised version carefully. Two things are condemned particularly
in these verses aud their contexts, namely, tarrying long at the wine, and
seeking out and using mixed wine. There was a custom among ancient
nations, as there is at the present time in oriental countries, of mixing an
extract of Indian hemp, and other noxious drugs, with wine just previous to
use. These gave it a fiery red colour, and a moving or sparkling motion just
like champagne ; and rendered it much more intoxicating, and at the same
time more pleasant to use. No doubt strong drink, or distilled spirits, in
some form, was also mixed with some wines by the Jews, as is done at
the present day. See also Burckhardt's Travels, page 25.
J See Presbyterian Review for January, 1882, for an able article on this
point.
;
OF PROHIBITION. 27
raiaed in any of the orthodox Protestant churches, which had from
the Reformation always used fermented wine for eucharistic pur-
poses, the new contention speedily caused the most active discus-
siop throughout the British non-conformist denominations.* The
question assumed such larjje proportions, that it presently came up
for discussion in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
of In land, held in the city of Londonderry on the 8th of June,
18.^5. On that occasion Professor Watts, of the Presbj'terian
College of Belfast, submitted the following overture or request
from the Presbytery of that city : —
" That, whereas differences of opinion exist among the members of our
congregations, in regard to the kmd of wine appointed by our Lord to be
used in the celebration of His Supper ; and whereas these differences of opin-
ion have greatly disturbed the peace of our churches, and led, in some
instances, to what many regard as grave departures from the teaching of
Scripture, in the observance of this most sacred ordinance, this Presbytery
earnestly asks the Assembly to issue a pastoral letter to all the fiock over
which the Holy Ghost hath made them bishops, for their information and
guidance, setting forth authoritatively the views of the Presbyterian Church
m Ireland on this question."
In conformity with this request Professor Watts moved, seconded
by Professor Wallace ; —
First — "That the Assembly approve the overture, and declare that, as the
wine used in the oblations under the Old Testament at the Passover, and by
the Lord Himself in the institution of the Supper, was the ordinary wine of
the country — that is, the fermented juice of the grape — they cannot sanction
the use of the unfermented juice of the grape as a symbol in the ordinance."
Second — " That the Assembly direct sessions to deal in a spirit of Chris-
tian charity with brethren whose consciences are troubled ; and, with this
view, and because we should eerve God with the purest which can be procur-
ed, recommend them to use a mild natural wine as most in accordance with
the institution of this sacrament and the general practice of the Church in
all ages."
Third — " That the Assembly deprecate the agitation for the introduction
of the unfermented juice of the grape ; affectionally exhort all the members
of the Church to adhere to the simple and significant usage of Scripture ; to
avoid minute questions and divisive courses ; to cherish brotherly kindness
and forbearance, and to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace ;
and when celebrating the dying of the Fjord Jesus Christ, to lift their
thoughts to the inestimable blessings which have been purchased by His
blood, and to seek that spiritual communion with Him, and that fellowship
with one another, which may be enjoyed by all who worthily partake of the
memorials of His sufferings."
Fourth — " That a committee be appointed, in accordance with the request
of the overture, to prepare a pastoral letter embodying these resolutions, as
setting forth authoritatively the views of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland
on this subject, a»d, if occasion require, to advise and assist the brethren in
carrying them into eCFect. "
The debate which ensued was an exceedingly able and learned
one as regards the fermented character of Bible wines, and ended
in the adoption of the motion by an almost unanimous vote.
Towards the close of the debate the Rev. William Wright, who
• The Church of England firmly held to the use of fermented wine, and
does so yet.
28 GENERAL REVIEW
had been the Assembly's missionary in Syria for the previous ton
years, made the following statement :—
Mr. Moderator and Brother Presbyters, — I find the afiscrtion iterated again
and again by the advocates of the wine of division, that a non-fermented
wine is in cotninon use in Bible lands. This assertion, by bold and constant
repetition, has ch.anged the wine of communion and love into the wine of
division and strife. The assertion has been reiterated to-night again and
again. I have now a statement to read which I trust will set this question
at rest for ever. The statement is signed only by those missionaries and
residents of Syria who are specially qualitied to give an opinion on this sub-
ject, and who are all strictly men of temperance : —
" We, the undersigned, missionaries and residents in Syria, having been
repeatedly requested to make a distinct statement on the subject, hereby
declare that, during the whole time of our residence and travelling in Syria
and the Holy Land, we have never seen nor heard of an unfermented wine ;
nor have we found among Jews, Christians, or Mahommedans, any tradition
of such a wine having ever existed in the country.
••Rev. VV. M. Thomson, D.D. Rev. S. H. Calhoun.
C. V. A. Van Dycke, D.D. Rev. James Robertson.
Rev. H. Jessuv. Rev. John Woktabet, M.D.
James Black, Ksg. Mjchael Meshaka, Doctor.
Rev. John Crawfoku. R. W. Briostocke, M.D., M.R.C.S., &c.
Rev. William Wright, B.A.
"May, 1875."
Dr. Thomson is the author of the Land and the Book, a book which I trust
is known by every Bible student in this assembly. It is, undoubtedly, the
best book, as Mr. Spurgeon said to me a few Sabbaths ago, that has ever
been written in illustration of Bible manners and customs. Dr. Thomson
has spent more than forty years in Syria and Palestine, in investigating the
manners and customs of the Land in order to throw light on the Book. He
has had full opportunity during that period to become actjuainted with every
minutise of the customs and inner life of the peojile of Bible lands, and yet
he never heard, in all that period, so much as a lingering tradition of an
unfermented wine. This would seeni a strong case to sensible men, but Mr.
Shanks, and American D. D. 's over the Atlantic, of course know better.
Mr. Calhoun is President of the Albeih Seminary, in the neighbourhood of
the best Vineyards in Syria. He has had opportunities of studying the uses
to which the grape is put for thirty- eight years, and yet he never heard even
a tradition of this " non-fermented wine in common use in Bible lands."
Dr. Van Dycke is the translator of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into
idiomatic and classic Arabic, and has resided for thirty-live years in Syria
and Palestine. He is perhaps the finest Arabic scholar in the world, and he
is equally at home in the'ancient Semitic languages. His perfect knowledge
of Arabic, and faultless use of it in the ears of the people, nearly cost him
his life during the massacre, when the Druses thought he was a native
Christian in disguise, for they said no foreigner could ever acquire the use of
the language as he had done. Dr. Van Dycke, it seems, though equally con-
versant with Greek, Hebrew, and modern Arabic, and with the customs and
modes of thought of the wine-growing Arabs, never heard even a tradition
of this Bible wine.
Mr. Robertson is an accomplished scholar in Rabbinical literature. He
has spent twelve years in Turkey and Syria in the close study of the Talmud
and cognate works. He is the author of the articles on the Talmud which
recently appeared in Good Words ; and he is now about to publish a volume
on the Talmud, from whicli I trust we shall all glean knowledge.
Dr. Jessup is the author of The Women of Syria. He is perhaps the most
eloquent and successful preacher in the mission field, and has resided for
nineteen years in Syria.
OF PROHIBITION. 29
Dr. Wortabet, who is a native of Syria, received his education in Scotland,
and is now a Professor in the Protestant Syrian ('oUej^e, Beyrout.
Mr. Black is the friend of the missionaries, and has been for forty-ono
years resident in Syria. Aa a merchant he has done more than any other
man to raise the name of Englishmen in the Levant.
Dr. Meshaka is the Luther of Syria, and his works circulate wherever the
Arabic language is known. He is a Syrian, and is now far advanced in
years, and yet, like Dr. Wortabet, neither in his childhood nor his manhood,
nor yet in his old age, has he ever heard a tradition of this " wine in common
use m his native !and."
Mr. Crawford is the colleague of your missionaries. He has lived in Syria
for seventeen years, and has made a careful study of this question with a
view to the controversy going on in America.
Dr. Brigstocke, formerly of the British navy, has been for nine years a
successful doctor at Beyrout, and he is also a lecturer in the Protestant
Syrian College, Beyrout. He has been in the habit of spending his summers
in the Lebanon, in the neighbourhood of splendid vineyards, and he has had
ample opportunity, which he would not likely neglect, of studying the uses
to which the grape is put.
At the close of an explanatory letter, subsequently written on
the 7th July, 1875, at Ballynnskeagh, the Rev. William Wright
uses the following strong language, which we connnend to the con-
sideration of his Presbyterian bretliren in Canada : —
" The advocates of the wine of division suggest that, as a missionary, I
should have been neutral and silent on this question ; that is, that I should
assail hoary errors abroad, but spare incipient heresies at home. Now if
this were an abstract question, the discussion of which was likely only to
result in proving who had the strongest lungs, I should certainly be both
neutral and silent. But when the advocates and advertisers of a drink pre-
pared by one chemist, puffed as ' the only preparation of the kind now in
the Briti.sh market,' twist and pervert and wreit the Scriptures in the
interest of this unique preparation, and to the discredit of the holy cause of
temperance ; when in blindness, or blasphemously, they call in question the
wisdom and goodness of God, and brand as wine-bibbers Christ and His
followers who commune from the same cup, then I should be disloyal to Him
who gave the cup, and to those who have handed it down to us, did 1 permit
that cup to be tampered with on the strength of assertions which Providence
has placed me in a position to disprove.
" Might I be permitted to remind my temperance brethren that the Devil
tries to spoil what he cannot hinder, and that he is using their intemperate
advocacy to injure the cause of temperance— dear to every Irish Christian
and patriot.
••WILLIAM WRIGHT.*
The foregoing extracts present the strongest testimony that can
be produced as to the fermented properties of Bible wines, and also
of the wines of Palestine at the present day. But the most
unlettered student can very easily learn by his own researches and
the aid of a good concordance, the true character of Bible wines
from the Bible itself, and especially from the revised translation,
the result of the most profound modern scholarship, both as
regards the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and the Greek text
• For the full text of this letter, as well as of the speeches of Professor
Watts and Wallace before the Assembly, see Yivjiii, or the Wine Question.
MuUan, Belfast, 1875.
30 GENERAL REVIEW
of the new. Paul tells Timothy that from his childhood ho had
known the sacred writings, which wore able to make him wise unto
Salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. " Every scripture
inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction, which is in righteouaness." (II Timothy
iii. 15, 16, revised version.) When Paul wrote that he had full
acquaintance with the Old Testament in the Septuagint, and in
very nearly the same foi-m in which we have it to-day. And as
all orthodox Christian people, no matter what church they belong
to, must firmly hold that everything necessary to salvation in the
Bible was divinely inspired, and that it contains the whole counsel
of Ood for the moral and religious direction and government of
mankind, it constitutes the true court of last appeal for the
removal of every doubt in the questions under discussion. We
shall now proceed to examine its plain teaching as to the character
of its wines, and the legitimate uses to be made of them. In doing
mt we shall use the revised version, as being in the majority of
cases the more critically exact, and expressing the meanings of the
Hebrew and (Jreek originals more clearly.
In the grandly sublime account of the creation, given to us in
Genesis, w find that God saw everything that he had made, and
behold it was very good. The vine was a part of the creation, and
its fruit, by the simple act of pressure of the hand, yielded a liquid
which had all the properties, saccharine and otherwise, of preser-
vation by fermentation within itself, and of becoming wine as it
were of its own accord. It required no process of distillation — no
scientific knowledge. The intelligence of the savage who was
competent to mould the rudest form of pottery, or to form a bag
from the skin of the animal slain for his sustenance, would be fully
equal to the production of wine. And subsequent events plainly
proved, without the shadow of .a doubt, that the Creator of the
world designed it should be so ; and that fermented wine, the only
legitimate product of the grape, should be one of his gifts, for the
use and benefit of mankind, throughout all time. Sixteen hundred
and fifty-seven years afterwards a notable event occurred in the
history of the human race, which clearly corroborates this view of
the case. When God determined to destroy all living flesh upon
the earth, because of the wickedness of mankind, the righteous
Noah alone found grace in his sight, and he and his family were
saved. What little we know of this patriarch shows him to have
been a man of culture, of wide information, and well versed in the
arts and sciences. When God directed him to build a huge ark,
fully equal in size to the great steamships that now plough the
seas, and very nearly of the same dimensions, no special instruc-
tions as to working details were given him — only the general plan.
The hewing, and squaring, and bending into shape, of all the great
beams of gopher wood, the forging of all the bolts and nails
required for the big three decker, and the making of pitch so that
its seams might be made water-tight, were all well within Noah's
OF PROHIBITION. 31
already acquired knowledge. His well-built ship safely weathers
the winds and the storms, and when the deluge is all over securely
rests upon an Armenian mountain. He presently descends into
the pleasant plain below, whose natural fertility is now stimulated
by the rich alluvial deposit left behind by the retiring waters.
One of his first acts was to plant a vineyard, for which his
practical knowledge of viticulture, acquired long before, enabled
him to select the best and most prolific grape vines. His vineyard
in that warm and fertile region was covered with grapes the
second or third year. And we are told that he drank of the wine
which he made therefrom, and became intoxicated ; and that as
one consequence of his sin a curse rested upon Canaan and his
posterity. What a memorable series of incidents ! The antedilu-
vian past had disappeared, a new future had dawned upon the
world ! If God designed that the culture of the grape and the
making of wine should be forbidden to man, as sources of evil
to him, the true crisis for interference had now surely arisen.
iJut there was no Divine interference — no command to discontinue
the cultivation of the grape nor the making of wine. Prohibi-
tionists practically assail the wisdom and goodness of God, as
regards his creatures, and virtually maintain that he did what was
wrong on that memorable occasion, and so inflicted a perpetual
injury on mankind. What audacious presumption — what positive
wickedness !
Under the Jewish dispensation the tithe (tenth part) of the
wine, like that of the other products of the soil, was set apart for
the use of the priests and Levites, and God commanded wine to
bo used in the sacrifices offered to himself.* The true character
of this wine may be gathered from the fact, that God, under the
penalty of death, expressly forbid the use of wine and strong drink
to A.aron and his sons, when they went into the tabernacle, or
tent of meeting, to conduct public worship, in order that they
might be in full possession of all their faculties, and be able to
instruct the people properly, f If there were any such thing as
unfermented or non-intoxicating wine known at. that period, this
command would be as unnecessary as in the case of milk or water. J
But the clearest possible proof that Prohibition was never destined
to form any part of God's moral or religious law for the guidance
of mankind, and that the sale or purchase of wine, (tc, is perfectly
lawful, may be found in Deuteronomy xiv. 22 and following
* See Exodus xx. 40, Levitifcus xxiri. 13, aiul Numbers xii. 5. t Leviticus
X. 9-10.
t Strong drink, that is a liquor still more intoxicating than wine, was wcl
known to the ancients, as appears from recent archa-ological discoveries in
oriental countries. Arrack was distilled in India from time immemorial, and
the manufacture of beer had become one of the iuduatries of Chaldea centur-
ies before the time of Moses. Kecords in the British museum show that
discoveries in Chaldea have recently been made, which prove that beer and
wine shops existed at the time of Amraphel and Abraham (Genesis xiv. 1.)
il
32 GENERAL REVIEW
verses. Moses, the grandest figure in ancient Jewish or in any
history, wlio has been engaged in finally sumniing up the whole
counsel of Go<l to his chosen people, proceeds to say : —
'22 Thou slialt truly titho all the increase of thy seed, that the Held bring-
eth forth year by year.
23 And thou shalt oat before the Lord tliy (Jod, in tlie place which ho
shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of thy corn, of thy wine, antl
of thine oil, and the tirstlings of thy herds and of thy Hocks ; that thou
mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always.
24 And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry
it ; or if the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy (Jod shall choose
to sot his name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed tliee :
25 Tlien shalt thou turn U into money, and bind up the money in thine
hand, and shalt ao unto the place which the Lord thy God shall cnoose :
26 And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after,
for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy
soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou
shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household.
There can be no mistake, — no quibbling or explaining away of
this passage of scripture. Its meaning i.s so direct and uncjualified,
that it may at once be fully grasped by the simplest intellect, and
there is no casuistically getting around it, in any way, by any
Christian man or woman. The agnostic Prohibitionists (and there
are numbers of them) who quarrel so constantly with the Bible,
because it does not support their temperance views, will, as a
matter of course, ignore its authority altogether.
But while God proclaimed no general statute of total abstinence
or prohibition, and permits the mwlerate or temperate use of wine
and other intoxicants, he fully recognizes the law of personal res-
ponsibility — of voluntary abstinence, either collectively or individ-
ually. In the sixth chapter of Numbers, beginning at the first
verse, God directed Moses to enact a special statute, covering the
case of a man or woman who shall make a certain vow — the vow of
a Nazar.ite — and who, during the period of separation, shall drink
neither wine nor strong drink, nor use the product of the vine in
any form.* Let the reader take up any good concordance of the
Old Testament, and examine it carefully under the several heads of
wine, corn and wine, oil and wine, etc., and he will be able to
realise, in the fullest sense, that all its wines of whatever quality,
strong or weak, light or dark, no matter by what distinguishing
name known, were fermented wines, and that no such article as
unfermented wine was known to the great masses of the Jewish
people. Both the Greeks and Romans resorted to expensive pro-
cesses, by burial in the ground and otherwise, to prevent the
fermentation of grape juice, and preserve it at the same time. But
not a single quotation can be found, in either the Old or New
Testaments, to show that the Jews resorted to any expedient of
* See also the case of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, in Jeremiah xxxv. This
chapter is made a great deal of by Prohibitionists. But it will be seen that
the sons of Jonadao are praised, not because they abstained from wine, but
because in doing so they obeyed their father's commands.
OP PROHIBITION. 33
this sort. Thoir scriptures held fortli wino as ono of tho greatest
earthly blessings, which Ood could bestow upon his creatures ; and
thoy thankfully reciuved his gift without cavil or (juestion. Dur-
ing their occupation of its soil, while still existing as a nation,
Palestine supplied, just as it does to-day, the very best wine-
producing grapes of every variety. Vineyards covered every sunny
mountain and hill slope, and tho wine press was everywhere in
operation. But, just as to-day, different kinds of wine — the strong
and the weak, the white, the claret colored and the blood red, the
product of separate favouring localities, were known by distinctive
names, but wine (yayin) was still the generic term for them all.
Wine of one kind or another was the common table drink of
all the Jewish people, from the king to the peasant, in the days of
their national prosperity, and when of too strong or heady a
variety, was usually mixed with water. The abuse, but not the
use, of wine or strong drink is alone denounced in the Old Testa-
ment, wliich teaches, from beginning to end, no enforced principle
of abstinence, no Prohibition doctrine ; and gives no authority to
any person, however exalted, to make himself or his habits a rule
for his neighbour as to what he shall eat or what he shall drink.
Let the reader reverently take up his Bible, study it for himself
calmly and without prejudice, and he cannot fail to come to the
manifest conclusion that the temperance it teaches is not Prohibi-
tion ; and that Prohibition, as it is now understood, formed no
part of the counsel of God, as delivered to his servant Moses and to
the other ministers of his will, during the Old Testament period, as
regards the moral and religious government of mankind ; and that
those who maintain the contrary, maintain what has no real foun-
dation in fact. '
PROHIBITION AND THE NEW TESTAMENT.
It would be foreign to the purpose of a necessarily brief sketch,
such as this pamphlet is, of the various subjects under consideration,
to enter upon any lengthy discussion as to the character of the wines
of the New Testament, or of the false or illogical deductions
foisted upon the public in regard to them by Prohibitionist writers.
We would merely say here, that as the Hebrew word yayin is the
generic term used for wine in the Old Testament, so also is the
Greek word oino8 the generic term for wine in the New Testa-
ment, and corresponds with the Latin vinum. it we stand upon
much simpler ground as regards the latter book. In the Old
Testament wine, as we have already seen, is called by different
names, but in the New Testament, out of thirty-eight places in
84 OENEHAL REVIEW
which tfc iH alluded to, it \n tormod oinott in thirty-sovon, ftnd in tho
one othor caH<i ij/ucoufi, or Hwo<!t win«, in tho word uh«mI. lloinor,
whoii hfl HpealcH of wino (and he always alludcH to it as i\w fer-
nifintml artiol(i) invariably uhch the woni oinon, as do all tho othor
Orook clasHical writerH. Ft is plain, tlmroforo, that if vinon may
b« said to bo tho only word usod to donoto wino in tho Now Tosta-
mont, that thoro could bo only ono kind of wino alluded to. It
must bo altogether tho fcrniontcd artiolo or tlm unfcnnentod ; and
it must bo always roinoinbor<Hl that the juico of tho grape does not
become wine at all until aftc^r fermentation develops its alcoholic
properties. A boiled syrup made from raiBins or grape juice,
and destitute of alcohol, is not wine. But, as in tho case of tho
Old Testament, tho best way to loarn the true character of tho
wineg of the New Testament is from its own pages. Lot us now
for a brief space enquire into what they teaeh.
Tn the fulness of time God, in his wonderful mercy and love
towards sinful men, sent his own beloved son to bo manifest in tho
flesh, to live for us, to dio for us, to render in his own person full
satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and then to sit down
forever at the right hand of tho Father, there to make, as our
great High Priest, perpetual intercession for his people. Mani
tested first to tho shepherds of Rothlehem, then, after the lapse of
twelve years, to the doctors of tho Temple, if they only had eyes
to see Him. He next is seen as the obscure and humblo worker
at the carpenter's bench, but still growing in stature and in favour
with God and man. At length he reached, unnoticed by tho world
at large, the full period of ripened manhood, when it became
necessary that his ministry should be publicly ami miraculously
announced. There was a we(' ling in Oana" (Jf Galilee, and as was
then the custom among well-to-do people in oriental countries, ami
is still the custom there, the relatives and friends of the bride and
groom, from far and near, were all bidden to the marriage. And
we are told that Jesus and his mother, and his disciples, were also
among the invited guests, who filled the spacious mansion to
overflowing, and presently the marriage feast began. There was a
ruler of the feast who saw that the guests were made as comfort-
able as possible, and had their wants, as regards food and drink,
fully supplied. He had numerous servants under him, who waited
on the guests. These marriage feasts among the ancient Jews
sometimes lasted for several days, and probably owing to the
number of persons at the Cana wedding, the supply of wine after
a time gave out. The situation which ensued may be best
described by the following quotation from Canon Farrar's Life of
Christ :—
" Whether the marriage festival lasted for seven days, as was usual among
those who could afford it, or only for one or two, as was the case among the
poorer classes, we cannot tell ; but at some period of the entertainment the
wine suddenly ran short. None but those who know how sacred in the East
ia the duty of lavish hospitality, and how passionately the obligation to
exercise it to the utmost is felt, can realize the gloom which this incident
OP PHOHIBITION. SH
would liavo thrown over the occaiiion, or the niinory ami mortitlcation which
it would h»vo caiiHud to the woddxd pair. Thoy would hivo felt it to ho, an
ill thu Kut it would atill Im felt to hu, n hittor aud iadeliblu diiigraou."
The Mother of Josub wjih, inoHt probiihly, a iiour relative of the
family of the bride, and had accordingly conHiderahlo authority in
the household. Shn was therefore very naturally concerned al)OUt
the crisiH which had arisen in the feHtivities, and mentioned the
matter to her Divine Son, in the inspired hope, no doubt, that he
would remove the dif!iculty by Home notable manifestation of Iuh
power. And ho she told the servants, " Whatsoever he saith
unto you do it." And there were there, says the sacred narrative,*
six water pots of stone containing two or tliree firkins apiece.
These pots, by the direction of Jesus, were filled to the brim, so
that nothing could be added to detract from his miracle. (Jood
wine, such as was usually made from the pure juice of the grape
by the Jews, was the immediate result. " And Jesus thus mani-
fested his glory," continues the gospel narrative, " and his disciples
believed on him." The quantity of wine produced by this miracle
is variously estimated by commentators, owing to doubts as to
the size of the firkin. Barnes says it means the Hebrew bath,
containing about seven and a half gallons. This would give at
least fifteen gallons to each water pot, or ninety gallons
altogether ; a quantity which shows what a large number
of persons were at the feast. All commentators of
repute agree that the oinoa, or wine, of the miracle was the fer-
mented article, in common use among the Jewish people of that
period, but of a better quality than usual. You have kept the
good wine until now said the ruler of the feast. Let it be supposed
that the plebiscite of the Laurier Cabinet has a majority in its
favour, that Prohibition becomes the law of the land, one result
would be that if Christ were to perform that miracle again, he must
necessarily be prosecuted for the commission of a crime. If Christ
did right, Prohibition is wrong. If Prohibition is right, then
Christ did wrong. Which horn of the dilemma will Christian
Prohibitionists, who declare that they believe in the Bible as con-
taining the whole counsel of God for the moral and religious
government of mankind, elect to swing on ? How true it is that
history is constantly repeating itself. When the founder of
Christianity came upon earth, drinking to excess was a prevalent
sin then just as it is now, yet we never hear of Him preaching
Prohibition. He found the clergymen of those days teaching for
doctrine the commandments of men, precisely as they are doing
to-day. If there is anything in the Bible condemning the moderate
use of wine and other intoxicants, by all means let our modern
Pharisees give us the chapter and verse. If, however, they are
unable to do so, they must admit that, so far as the Bible is con-
cerned, the facts are wholly against them. It would require a vast
* See the (ioapel of St. John ii. 6,
36 GENERAL REVIEW
amount of evidence to discredit the miracle of Cana of Galilee.
All the gospel records very plainly show, that when our Saviour
at any time alluded to the product of the grape he meant the ordi-
nary fermented wine of the country. "John the Baptist," said he
to the Pharisees, "came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and
ye say he hath a devil ; the Son of Man is come eating and drinking,
and ye say behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of
publicans and sinners." (Luke vii. 33, 34, 35.) If the wine was not
fermented there could be no more cause for the censorious language
of the Pharisees, than in the case of water. In all the great wine-
making countries of ancient times, the wine bottles were made of
leather, and were frequently of large size, and similar to what
oriental water carriers use to-day. When these wine bottles, or
rather wine skins, were new they expanded as the liquor ferment-
ed, but old bottles having become dry and hard, like an old shoe,
had lost their property of expansion, and consequently burst.
Accordingly in Matthew ix. 17 the revised version reads, " Neither
do men put new wine into old wine-skins, else the skins burst, and
the wine is spilled and the skins perish ; but they put new wine
into fresh wine-skins, and bo.;h are preserved." See also Mark ii.
22 in the same version, and L';ke v. 37, 38. In verse 39 of the latter
chapter we find, " And no man having drunk old wine desireth
new, for he saith the old is good," or better, as the marginal note
says many authorities give it. The more we examine the gospels,
the more certainly does the conclusion force itself upon our minds,
that the wine alluded to by Christ was invariably the fermented
article. And there cannot, therefore, be the slightest doubt that
the omoj* used at the liLs*-, supper, and by Christ's command to be
drank forever in hi ' 'nembrance, was fermented wine, such as
was required for the Temple sacrifices, and sold in the wine shops
of Jerusalem — the fruit of the wine which he was to drink no
more with them until he drank it new in his Father's kingdom.
(Matthew xxvi. 29.) The character of new wine, the Hebrew
tirosh, may be further learned from Acts ii. 13 and succeeding
verses, where Luke states that the apostles were accused of being
filled with new wine, and that Peter commenced the defence of
himself and his brethren, by declaring that they were not drunken,
seeing it was but the third hour of the day (9 a.m.) In Ephesians
V, 18 Paul charges the Christians of Ephesus not to be drunk with
wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit. In Timothy
iii. 8 Paul commands that the deacons must be grave, not given to
much wine. In v. 23 he tells Timothy to be no longer a drinker
of water, but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake and his
often infirmities. In all these quotations fermented wine is alone
alluded to, and in the Greek text is designated by the single word
oinos.
But the strongest testimony, as to the true character of the
wines of the New Testament, will be found in the First Epistle of
St. Paul to the Corinthians, eleventh chapter, twentieth and
OF PROHIBITION. 37
following verses. There Paul strongly rebukes the members of the
church at Corinth for the improper manner in which they partook
of the Lord's Supper, and especially for getting drunk thereat.
But while doing so he never tells them, that in the future they
must not use fermented wine at this Supper, but, on the contrary,
the unfermented and non-intoxicating wine, or a syrup made irom
dried grapes instead. He gave no command whatever upon this
point, evidently for either one of two i*easons, to wit, because a
non-intoxicating wine was not in ordinary use, or because the
fermented wine was that which was used at the Last Supper. The
Corinthians were to continue to use the same wine precisely that
our Lord gave to his disciples at that memorable Supper, the most
solemn and impressive of all his acts. And from that day forward
until a few years ago, when the Prohibition wine heresy set in, all
orthodox Christian people, have used, and should still continue to
use, fermented wine whenever the communion is administered in its
double form, as instituted by Christ. It is perfectly plain, when
all these facts are fully and fairly considered, that there can be no
valid administration of the Lord's Supper when the bread and
wine which he commanded to be used are not used. Little wonder
that the Protestant Archbishop of Rupert's Land (Machray)
stated at the synod of that diocese held in Winnipeg last May
(1897), that he would vote against Prohibition, and that a motion
favouring that measure was lost by a vote of 40 to 10. The
Church of England, which occupies the foremost place in the Pro-
testant world, as regards influence and profound scholarship,
stands firmly by the use of fermented wine at the communion
table, just as the Presbyterians of Great Britain do, and as all
Protestant churches, which claim to be orthodox Christian, should
do. The truth is that Prohibitionists, whether in the pulpit or
out of it, directly ignore the Bible and its plainest teaching on the
Temperance question, and are fast drifting into practical heresy,
and playing into the hands of infidelity. As we have clearly
shown neither the Old nor the New Testament prohibits the moder-
ate use of fermented liquor of any kind, and those who state the
contrary state what is untrue. Christ and his apostles form the
great exemplar group of the Christian world, and their teaching
constitutes for that world the whole counsel of God both as to
faith and morals. They sought to regenerate mankind by moral
suasion and religious teaching, and never taught that the arm of
[the law should be used to compel their fellow-men to think or to
relieve as they did. " Let no man therefore judge you in meat or
in drink," said the apostle Paul (Colossians ii. 16). That is what
Prohibitionists are seeking to do when they go to our Parliament
to ask for legal enactments, to compel all the people of Canada to
do as they do — to enable them to put their yoke upon our necks,
and force us to bow to the Prohibition idol which they have set up
— to practically cease to be a free people. Having heretically set
the command of the Pounder of Christianity, as regards his Last
38 GENERAL REVIEW
Supper, at defianco, they would, if possible, compel Anglicans and
other Protestants, who still hold fast to the orthodox mode • of
communion, to do as they do ; and would no doubt, if they had the
power, refuse to permit the use of true wine even for sacramental
purposes, and compel the use of the fraudulent article instead.*
The great logical difficulty of Prohibitionists very plainly presents
itself at this point of our argument. If Christ used fermented
wine at his meals, and so placed himself in a position to be des-
scribed by the Pharisaical Prohibitionists of t^ose days as a wine-
bibber, if he graciously and miraculously made good wine for the
use of the numerous guests at the wedding of Cana in Galilee, if
he used true wine at his memorable Last Supper — just the same
wine that the Corinthian church used, on what moral or religious
grounds can its lawful and temperate use be now forbidden to the
whole, or to any portion, of the Canadian people ? Prohibitionists,
clerical and lay, now vainly seek to escape from this logical diffi-
culty by a resort to palpable deception — by falsely endeavouring
to make it appear that Bible wines were of two kinds, fermented
and non-fermented ; that while the use of the former was denoun-
ced and forbidden, the use of the latter was permitted ; and that
our Saviour, his apostles and the early Christian churches, only
used non-fermented wines.
• The red colour, aymbolical of Christ's blood in the Eucharist, cannot be
imparted to wine without fermentation.
Some of the methods of preparing the so-called " unfermented wines "
might here be noted. In the majority of instances poor, thin clarets are sub-
jected to distillation to get rid of the alcohol, sugar is added to sweeten and
thicken, and elderberry to restore the colour partially destroyed by boiling.
In others, the juice is boiled with sugar to a sj^rup, and mUcylic acid added
to prevent fermentation. In not a few instances which fell under the
writer's own observation, cider, sweetened and coloured, has been sold under
the name of unfermented wine, and these samples contained a notable quan-
tity of alcohol. These instances will give a fair idea of the sophisticated
abominations that are sought to be forced upon the public under the cloak of
religion and philanthropy. Quite recently a feminine lecturer declared that
the time would come when " fermented " v/ine, " that last relic of barbarism
and immorality, would be swept out of the churches." And the writer is
credibly informed that a reverend gentleman also hoped that the time would
come when it would be a "criminal offence " to use fermented wines in the
Sacrament. Nor is this language any more extravagant than consistency
requires. Just so long as it is deemed necessary to use wine for the proper
commemoration of the Saviour's death, — and that will be while reason and
Bible language lasts, — so long will it be impossible to get public opinion to
regard moderate drinking as a sin /^erse.— Temperance versus Prohibition,
page 35.
CHAPTER IV.
SOME OP THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES AND PROHIBITION.
b-
lul
Id
he
.er
.li-
ed
of
at
ita.
is
lUl
ihe
icy
per
md
to
on,
T is a remarkable fact, in ecclesiastical history, that all the
heresies and schisms of any great importance, which have
Afflicted Christianity, from the days of the apostles down to the
n-esont time, must be laid at the door of the clerical order. That
[rder is chiefly responsible for all the metaphysical hair-splittings
-all the fine logical subtleties which have disturbed the Christian
I'orld from time to time, and have so frequently set the more prac
ical but less abstruse laity by the ears. An impartial historian,
ashington Irving, tells us in his Life of Mahomet, that when
liat great Prohibitionist, and notable imposter, first appeared
jrominently on the world's stage, the Eastern churches were so
istracted by heresies and schisms— so puzzled by the subtle
jstractions, to which the Oriental intellect has always been so
rone, of one theologian after another, the simple Christianity
jiught by the apostles and their immediate successors, had almost
Eased to exist ; and had been supplanted, as regards Asia and
Lfrica at least, by gross error and superstition. And so down
ion these heretics and schismatics came Mahomet and his
[ccessors to literally sweep the.n from the face of the earth. With
le destruction of the Roman Empire, East and West, which
tbbon so eloquently tells us about, came that dark mediaeval
Iriod which so long oppressed the world, until at length the dis-
Ivery of the art of printing became the dawn of a new renaiss-
ice, which gradually ripened into the mental triumphs of modern
les. But with the return of a higher intellectual condition
irae also back disquisitions of all kinds, metaphysical hair-
ittings, and ologies of every description. The day of doubt and
cussion is again upon us, in which history is repeating itself,
d presenting us with new types of the Sadducee, the Pharisee
tlie Epicurean ; and when philosophy is propounded by a
)dern school of carping agnostics, who agree upon nothing and
jagree almost upon everything, and who essay to revive the
40
GENERAL REVIEW
nature religion of the Greeks and Romans, or something akin to
it. A day, too, when skilful sophists, like Goldwin Hmitli, who
without being either very original or very profound, have acquired
a peculiar faculty of assimilation — of clothing other people's ideas
in their own language, and presenting them in new forms.
Ignoring what the Bible has done for mankind, what Christianity
has done and is still doing for the betterment of the world, these
men of second-hand ideals would destroy both if it were in their
power to do so, and reduce us to their own pitiable condition, and
to their wretched belief that our existence, like that of the brute
beasts that perish, terminates with this life. Even if Christianity
were the mere baseless fable that the modern agnostic endeavours
to prove it to be, yet so long as it makes the world brighter and
better, and people live and die more happily, what enemies to the
human race must those persons be who seek to disturb with
malice prepense, or in mere evil wantonness, a sound and wholesome j
condition of things for which they have no substitute to oifer.* If
* "You have destroyed," said David Hume's mother, who had once been
a pious Presbyterian, to her son shortly before her death, ' ' all my faith in a j
blessed hereafter. Oh give me something now instead to comfort me on my
death-bed." With all his philosophy, and all his profound knowledge, the
great sceptic and historian, who is said to have been much distressed, had
nothing to give to his dying mother, to replace the hope he had deprived her I
of.
Henry Ward Beecher, while still in his best days, and before the Tilton
scandal had wrought him so much woe, was on one occasion invited to meet i
the infidel Robert IngersoU in debate. The large hall, where the meeting
was held, was filled to overflowing by the audience. 'OlngersoU spoke long
and eloquently in support of his peculiar views, but in more guarded
language than was usual with him. When he had finished all eyes were f
turned upon the great pulpit orator. Beecher slowly arose, drew himself up
to his full stature, and then quietly told the audience that a circumstance
had occurred, as he came up Broadway (New York) just before the meeting,
which had so disturbed him that he was not in a condition to make any very
lengthy reply. A poor lame man, he said, who supported himself with
crutches, was endeavouring to cross the crowded street just below City Hall
Park, when presently a great burly fellow suddenly ran against him, threw
him down, and without offering to assist him, disappeared among the
dense surrounding crowd. ' ' What an inhuman scoundrel, " exclaimed IngersoU
in a voice so audible as to be heard throughout the hall. Beecher turned j
upon him instantly. Mr. IngersoU, said he, in tones that filled the hall,
that man whom you term an inhuman scoundrel, did nothing worse than I
you have been doing here to-night. You have said and done everything in]
your power to dash the crutches of religious faith from the hands of the!
struggling Christian man and woman — to strike them to the earth, and leave!
them there, without extending a helping hand, utterly bereft of all hope."
The effect upon the audience was almost electrical in its force. IngersoU at
once felt his utter defeat, and presently took up his hat, and left the hall|
without saying a word.
Goldwin Smith, who, in vulgar phrase, has a peculiar and very foolisl
habit of running his head against stone walls, occupied himself during thel
earlier part of the present decade in writing a book called " Canada and th€|
Canadian Question. " It had for its main object to prove to the Canadian
people that their true policy was to disloyally sever their connection with
the Smother Country, and to cast in their fortunes with the United States.!
OF PROHIBITION. 41
Christianity, teaching as it does, our future accountability for our
personal conduct in the present state, conduces to a higher moral as
well as religious life, and smooths the death-beds of many millions
of worthy people, how needlessly cruel is the ruthless hand that,
without any good object in view, would destroy our belief in the
immortality of the soul, and the hope of a blessed resurrection and
a happy hereafter. " If in this life only," said the Apostle Paul,
" we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Let
us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." (I Corinthians xv. 19, 32.)
But the Bible and Christianity will as certainly survive the
assaults of the present schools of atheistical and theistical philoso-
phies, just as certainly as it survived the attacks of Voltaire, of
Gibbon, of Hume, and the host of lesser lights who became their
disciples. In Paul's day the simple yet most beautiful gospel of
Christ, was to the profound Greek philosopher the merest foolish-
This book was a very clever and elegantly written piece of special pleading,
but showed a very s'ender acquaintance with the true political idiosyncrasy
of the Canadian people. It wholly failed to accomplish its object, and is
now almost forgotten. At no former period of their history were the people
of this country more strongly attached to the British Empire, and more
determined to remain part and parcel of it, than they are now. Unsuccess-
ful in his persistent efforts to do a political mischief to the people among
whom he lives, Goldwin Smith now essays to do them a new injury, by a
fresh display of his want of common sense, in running his head against
another stone wall— the Pible and Christianity. It requires no very great
extent of prophetic vision to predict that both will continue to exist, and
just as our grand Dominion will continue to exist, when Goldwin Smith is
dead and gone, and all his works and idle egotisms have been buried forever
in the same Lethean tomb where so many of them already lie forgotten.
The gratification of his curiosity — the curiosity of over three score and ten —
to which he alludes in his recent most mischievous work, "Guesses at the
Riddle of Existence," is a poor excuse for seeking to injure his fellow-man,
by destroying his hope in a future state, and making him unhappy in this
world. There is certainly very little philanthropy in his composition.
The cacoethes scribtndi is evidently an irresistible disease with Goldwin
Smith, and must be gratified in some way, if not for good then for evil.
When there is no opportunity for perpetrating any other mischief, he usually
insults the loyalty, to their Queen and country, of the Canadian people.
His latest escapade in this direction, was a letter to the New York Evening
Post, under date of August 14th, 1897, in which he uses the following offen-
sive language : —
" How often has the action of the great forces, sure in the end to prevail,
been suspended by that of the secondary forces or by adverse accident !
How often did the unification of Italy and that of Germany miscarry though
certainly destined at last to arrive ! Protectionism will run its course. The
J ubilee fever will abate. The time will come when American statesmen,
now so indifferent to this question, will see that if it was worth while to
spend all that blood and money in averting the establishment of an antago-
nistic power to your south, it is not less worth whi'e to bestow political
eff'ort in averting the establishment of an antagonistic power to your north.
" British statesmen, on the other hand, will learn the hopelessness of their
attempt to keep 5,000,000 of North Americans out of North America and
attach them to Europe. The day will come, though men of my age are not
likely to behold it. Already in spite of all the wrangling among tne politic-
ians, the two sections of our race on this continent are rapidly lucing.
Hardly anything now divides them but the political and fiscal line.
42 GENERAL REVIEW
ness, and U) the Pharisaical Jew a stumbling block. It is just tho
same now ! Rut, at the same time, how gratifying it is for the
Christian man or woman to be able to realise, in its fullest sense,
that however the athiest or theist may sneer at that gospel as being
beneath his philosophy, its sympathetic story. Divine and human,
will still contiime to pour its blessed sunshine into millions of
gentle and loving hearts, that the i-eign of the cross will still
remain supreme, arid that the greatest book the world has ever
known, and through which for countless ages men have heard the
voice of God proclaiuiing the eternal distinctions of right and
wrong, will still hold its place as the most valued treasure of
mankind, l^werything in nature, as well as in science, points
clearly to a beginning, and if there was a beginning there must be
some pre-existent power to cause that beginning. It could not
produce itself. There was nothing in existence before the begin-
ning, and nothing produces nothing. Herbert Spencer, after many
years of patient research into the abstruser sciences, with a view
to discredit the Bible and Christianity, finishes in doubt just as he
began, and winds up tiie last volume of his last work witli the, to
him, humiliating admission : —
" But one trutli must grow ever clearer — the truth that there is an Inscru-
table Existence everywhere uianii'ested. to which he can neither iinil nor
conceive either beginning or end. Amid the mysteries, which become more
mysterious the more they are thought about, there will lemain the one
absolute certainty that he is in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal
Eueigy, from which all things proceed "
Even Goldwin Smith, the latest assailant of Christianity, who
has sadly fallen from grace in his old age, and now seeks to dis-
credit what he recently believed in, admits that there is a God
who created this world, but who takes no interest in its affairs.*
How illogically absurd is the idea, that the Supreme Being who
formed this beautiful world out of chaos, with all its sunshine and
happiness, and placed everything thereon and therein to sustain
and benefit mankind, and made man the physical and intellectual
lord of his creation, would leave that man, for wh'r » he had
already done so much, without any chart to guide hi i way, or any
rules of conduct to govern his life. A position of this kind is
opposed to every law of reason and common sense, and every form
of fact ; and carries its own best refutation on its face. And,
thus, we naturally and logically come to the Bible, the book of all
books, which despite all its alleged human error and fallibility,
either as regards transcription or otherwise, still contains the
whole law of a beneficent Creator for the better government and
happiness of his creature — man.f
* Guesses at the Eiddle of Existence, page 223.
t The man who has no hope as regards auother life, and has no belief in a
future state of reward and punishment, has no restraint beyond the policemjin
and the law. From this class comes tlie anarchist of the present day, with
his belief ia a miBaioa to murder whea he sees fit. France's infidolity is
OF PROHIBITION.
43
But f-he mischief done to the Bible and Christianity by their
open foes, is nob infrequently small in comparison to that which
they suffer at the hands of their supposed friends. As in primitive
times, the greatest injury to the welfare of mo<lern Christian
churches is now frequently inHicted by their own teacliers.
Clerical doubters everywhere abound, who have become converts to
a new school of Biblical exegesis, which places the uncertain teach-
ings of geology, and other modern ologies, in the front rank,* and
seek to meet adverse criticism by admitting a good deal of tiie case
it makes out. According to these doubters, the accounts of tlie
creation, the fall of man, the flood, and so forth, are mere alle-
gories, or a soi't of Biblical Esop's fables, but embodying some moral
or religious truth ; and they do not hesitate to use their pulpits to
impress their views upon their congregations. Dr. Lyman Abbott,
costing her heavily in tiie gross sensuality of her peop'e, and the decline of
liur population. To show the rottenness of its irreligious social life we
append the following paragraph clipped from a press despatch of May 'Jth,
1897 :—
There has been a veritable epidemic of suicide in Paris for some weeks
pa.st, the recent tropical heat adding to the number of cases. The tragediei
commenced with the self-de«truction on July 7th last, of four young dres>
makers in the Poissonniere (quarters of Paris, who suffocated themselves in a
small room with the fumes of a charcoal stove after dining together.
Since then, almost daily, one or more women have committed suicide, and
the self-murder of men has been equally numerous. The bodies of men were
found daily hanging to trees in the J^ois de Vincenues.
In an alley of that part alone six bodies of suicides were found during the
past" week, and the Morgue is so full of dead bodies found in the Kiver Seine
that there is no further room for them.
* To plain, sensible people, who are in tiie habit of testing theories of every
kind by the standard of reason and common sense, the wild guesses at times
of geologists, and archivologists, and other ologists, nearly half crazed by their
special studies, have almost come to be a matter of amusement. While many
scientists admit the beginning of all things by the hand of a great first cause,
they deny the necessarily miraculous power of that first cause. Having
prepared everything in his own way and according to his own will for the
final consummation, the great First Cause could li^ve finished the creation in
fix days as well as in a thousand years. Sir William Dawson has recently
well said : —
" I rejoice, however, in the confident belief th.at with God's blessing it
may be large, enthusiastic and useful in the highest sense. I rejoice also in
the belief that present indications warrant the hope that the clouds of an
agnostic and merely mechanical view of the universe, which have for some
time obscured the fair field of natural science are beginning to be dissipated,
and that Christian students of nature will be able more fully to show that
the history of the earth is that of the development, in many ways ami by
many subordinate agencies of His own appointment, of the plans of the
Almighty Creator, our own Heavenly Father, and Redeemer, and to bear an
ever increasing testimony to their own experience of divine love, as well as
to the congruity of belief in God with the earnest and successful pursuit of
science, and especially with broail and enlightened views of the system of the
universe, and of our own relations to it and to its Maker.
" I shall earnestly pray that the spirit of God may guide all who take
part in the meeting, so that the Divine blessing may fully rest upon its
exercises."
44 GENERAL REVIEW
for example, who now tills the pulpib of Plymouth Church, in
Brooklyn, where Henry Ward Ijeecher, a few years ago, preached
to delighted crowds of hearers, amused the greatly diminished con-
gregation, in the earlier part of 1897, by openly ridiculing, so as to
create even laughter among his hearers, the story of Jonah and the
whale, and to tvhich our Saviour alludes. (Matthew xii. 40.) In
any case Dr. Abbott's irreverence should have been restrained by
the reflection that the Book of Jonah, whether it be allegorical or
otherwise, teaches the lesson of implicit obedience to the commands
of God, who is perfectly able to enforce that obedience by a
miracle if he sees tit to«do so. The Rev. Dr. Buckley, one of the
foremost theologians of the Methodist church in the United States,
has also succumbed to the Higher Criticism and the new school of
scriptural exegesis, and has recently been calling attention to
human errors in the Bible, and denying its inspiration. The Rev.
S. J. Harben, another Methodist minister, at a recent clerical
meeting in New York, where this matter informally came tip for
discussion, maintained that Dr. Buckley's position is the true one ;
and this statement was not seriously questioned by any of his
brethren who were there at the time.*
While the doubting malady has badly attacked the Methodist
churches in the United States, both north and south, Canadian
Methodism has by no means escaped the disease.! The Rev. Dr.
Workman, recently a professor in Victoria University, Toronto,
the principal Methodist educational institution of the Dominion,
had to be removed from his position for his heterodox opinions.
During the present year (1897) this reverend gentleman has
undertaken, in a little book, entitled "The Old Testament Vindi-
cated," to reply to Goldwin Smith's attacks on the credibility of
that part of the Bible. He asserts, in substance, that these attacks
are based on premises which have now no existence in fact, as the
plenary inspiration of the Old Testament is not endorsed by
Christian scholars of the present day. Let us listen to him for a
brief space on this point : —
" Professor Smith is too profoiiuJ a stutleat, general as well as special, not
to know that the account of tlie Fall in Genesis, which was once explained
by theologians as literal history, is now explained by Christian scholars as
religious allegory — an allegory, like a parable, being a form of narrative
employed by the sacred writers to illustrate and inculcate spiritual truth.
."The second and third ch-iptera of the book were constructed out of
traditional materials which are not only of Babylonian origin, but are also
stamped with a Babylonian impress, as Professor Sayce, the eminent archae-
ologist, has shown. Hence, in primitive timos, no doubt, some features of
the story were regarded as literal fact« which, at the present time, are not
80 regarded ; but the structure of the nvrrative indicates that the inspired
writer purposely clothed his descripticm of the Garden, as well as his account
of the Fall, in somewhat symbolic langua^d." +
* Vide New York Christian Advocate during February, 1897.
tD. D.'s are remarkably plentiful among Methodist Canadian ministers
now-a-days.
:^ The Old Testament Vindicated, page 24.
OF PHOHIBITION.
45
From the foregoing extract it will be seen that Professor Work-
man virtually admits the accuracy of a good deal of Professor
Smith's adverse criticism, and seeks to evade its force by giving
up, as lawyers would say, a large part of his case, and taking
refuge in the allegorical method of Old Testament exegesis.*
He might be excusable were he content himself by seeking to
harmonise the six days of the creation with vast geological periods,
but when he coolly tells us that the second and third chapters of
Genesis were constructed out of Babylonian traditions, he states
something which neither he nor any other person can prove. The
descendents of Noah, who settled in that part of Asia, gradually
sank into polytheism, and abandoned the worship of the one true
God ; and their records are, accordingly, of a very uncertain char-
acter, and quite different from the clear and definite Biblical
narrative, which they can only bo regarded as corroborating and
not as originating. Noah, as we have stated elsewhere, was a
man of ability and wide information, and must therefore have
been familiar with the leading facts of antediluvian history and
chronology, and transmitted the knowledge which he possessed to
his children. It is in that direction we should look for the
basis of Babylonian tradition, which evidently was merely a
corruption of the true story in Genesis. The simple straight-
forward trutii rests with the Bible narrative, the mysticism and
the legend with the Babylonian fragmentary remains that have
been unearthed by archieologists in- recent years.f Not every
person now-a-days will maintain that all the books of the Old
Testament were inspired. St. Paul does not say so. The revised
version very clearly expresses his true meaning, when he tells
Timothy (II Timothy iii. 16) : " Every scripture inspired of (iod
is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction, which is in righteousness." Thus showing that there
were scriptures which were not inspired. But we must agree with
Dean Farrar, that the inspired portions of the Bible contain the
whole counsel of God as regards faith and morals, and the full
salvation of mankind. It is not necessary to criticise at any
length Dr. Workman's allegorical methods of Old Testament
* The allegorical method as applied to Old Testament exegesis was first
founded by the eminent Jewish philosopher, Philo. who was contemporary
with Christ. Although unacquainted with Hebrew, Philo. who was a native
of Alexandria, was a tine Greek scholar ; and in order to meet the arguments
of heathen philosophers, and Plato among the rest, who objected to certain
parts of the Old Testament (just as Goldwin Smith does to-day) adopted the
allegorical method of explanation, which Greek philosophy had already
applied to the mythological legends of its own nature religion. While Pro-
fessor Smith's plagiaristic ideas are nearly two thousand years old, Professor
Workman essays to answer him in the manner of Philo Judeeus almost
equally aa ancient.
t At no period in the annals of mankind was the knowledge of the one
true God ever obliterated. Thus in Genesis Xiv. 28 we read of Melchizedek
King of Salem, priest of God Most High.
I
46 GENERAL IIKVTEVV
oxoj^esi.s, but in onlor to show how untcuiihlo aad ovoii heterodox
thoy are, we would refer our readiM-s to the fourth chapter of Dean
Farrar's recent work, " The Bible, its Meaning and Supremacy."
\V») may statn, however, that Prof. Workman's position is endorsed
by some of the l)urning and shining lights of the Canadian Metho-
dist church. In the first place his book, "The Old Testament
Vin<licated," is given to the public by tlnj lliiv. \Vm. liriggs, the
(lenerid Conference manager of the " Methodist Book Publishing
House," at Toronto, which has become, of late years, a great trail-
ing and mercantile concern, and dabbles in everything, in the book
and stationery line, frt)in a needle to an anclujr, after, as some
people might aver, a very worldly fashion. Wo cannot say whether
tmr reverend book and stationery brotlujr endorses the very heter-
odox ideas of Pr()fessor Workman, l)ut he has evidently no objec-
tion to make a little money out of them for tiie benoKt of the
church — to do evil that good may come.* How history does repeat
itstdf I There can be little doubt that the money changers of the
Temple contributed a share of their profits into the same treasury
where the poor widow cast in her mite. But there can be no
manner of doubt that Nathaniel Burwa.sh, 8. T. 1)., L. L .D., the
(Chancellor of Victoria University, has written a preface to Pro-
fessor Workman's book, in which he fully endorses all his {)i'oposi-
tions. The matter came up incidentally on the 14th of last June,
at the Toronto Conference, with its president, Dr. Carman, in the
chair. The chairman alluded to the fact that a high ollicial of
Victoria University had endorsed the opinions of Professor Work-
man, and that if his (Burwash's) introduction was i-ight, the
dismissed professor should be reinstated. Whereupon the Rev.
Dr. Blackstock spoke very severely, as the newspaper report states,
of the practice of attacking ministers from the chair, and evidently
had a good deal of Conference sympathy behind him in doing so.f
* In order to show the sort of mouey-inaking literature wliioli tliu Metho-
dist Hook Publishing House cultivates, wo give free circulation to tiie
following advertisement, clipped from a recent issue of the Mail and F^inpire:
"Agents wanted— For our new book 'The Glory of Woman,' or bove,
M irriage and Matrimony ; coiitainiug full information of all the marvellous
and complex matters pertaining to woman ; bearing, nursing, and rearing
children ; hereditary (lescent ; hints on courtship and marriage^; promoting
health and beauty ; vigour of mind and body ; together with the diseases
pecuUivr to the female sex ; their causes, symptoms, and treatment ; the
whole forming a complete medical guide for women ; embellished with nuvny
aupe' oloured platen, phototype and wood engravings ; send fifty cents for
outfit. William Briggs, Wesley buildings, Toronto."
+ How the heterodox leaven has affected the Methodist body may be
gathered from the foUowing paragraph clipped from the Mail and Empire of
a recent date : —
" The talk of Chancellor Burwanh being called to task before the regents
of Victoria College by the genera! superintendent at the August meeting of
the board is quite lively in Methodist ministerial circles. Among the state-
ments made by Toronto Methodist preachers who belong to the "advanced
thought " section are that the He v. Dr. Shaw, principal of the VVesleyan Theo.
OF PUOHnUTlON.
47
Hut Profossor Workiimii !iii»l tJliancellur liurvviv.sli ans not by
any inuans the only Methodist divinuH who can now be charged
with inculcating heUu-odox or oven heretical views. A very
largo number of Methodist niinisterK in Canada although well
aware that the practice of the orthodox Christian churches, for
«)ver eighteen hundred years, was to celebrate the Eucharist with
feruientod wine, now insist on giving a syrup inst(>ad ; and are
thus virtually guilty of tlii; heresy «)f withholding the true sacru-
ntental cup from the laity. In doing this tliey cannot for u
moment plead the example of their great founder, John Wesley ;
nor the teachings of their ujust able eonimontator, Dr. Clark. Tt
is to 1)0 much regretted that the more religiously conservative
Presbyterian church of Canada, is now t.avelling a good deal in
the same heretical direction, despite the action of the Assembly of
Belfast, as given elsewhere. The unsound doctrine of Christian Per-
f(;ction, which the MethcKlist church has added tt) the pure doctrines
it derived from the Church of England, tends to make it more Phar-
asaical than it would otherwise be — to imbue it more strongly
with the " I am holier than thou " idea. Saturated, accordingly,
with the true super-extra holiness sjtirit, it now evidently stands
prepared to enforce its peculiar opinions upon other denonunations.
And in order to justify its own heretical practice, as regards the
refusal of wine at the communion table, it would, if possible, pre-
vent the making or importation of wine for .sacramental as well as
any other purpose. As the Church of England, as well as the
niore orthodox members »jf the Presbyterian church, hold that no
valid administration of the La.st Supper can take place without the
use of true wine, and wholly ignore the bogus Methodist article,
the painful position in which they would be placed by Prohibition
will fit once become apparent. No womler that Ai-chbishop
Machray is opposed to Prohibition, and declares that he cannot
vote for it, and no wonder also that Principal Grant, the most able
clergyman by all odds oi. the Presbyterian church in Canada,
logical lastitute, Montreal, ia in the same category aa ChaiiceUor Burwash,
because, in his recent publication, he declares that Christ, when tlescril'ing
future torment, was speaking in a metaphorical sense. The same '• school "
of Methodist divines ask who among the professors at Victoria College is
orthodox if (Chancellor Burwash is not. It is further asserted that it will be
found impossible to formulate charges against Chancellor Burwash atl'ecting
his standing as a Methodist minister, an<l it is claimed on his behalf that
such should be the only question to be r.aised.
" In consequence of the foregoing statements a representative of The Mail
and Empire asked from an official source yesterday morning what was the
" Methodist Standard of Faith?" The reply was, "The tifty-two sermons
and notes of John Wesley." The local Methodist higher critics state that if
Dr. Carman presses his charge against Chancellor Burwash 's orthodoxy or
suitability, holding the views of a higher critic, for the principalship of the
Methodist university, ten times as much diflference can be established
between Dr. Carman's teachings and John Wesley's, as compared with the
divergence of the teachings of Chancellor Burwash and the founder of
Methodism."
48 GENERAL REVIEW
declared in a luttAr to the Globe, in the autuum uf 1893, that he
was nut in favuur uf Prohibition.
CliERICAL I'OLITICS IN ONTAItlO.
In every age and in every civilized com»try there huH always
existed, as regards the clerical orders, a latent desire to unduly
elevate themselves at the expense of the laity. The Methodist
church forms no exception to the general rule. For nearly a cen-
tury its clerical order governed their lay brethren after the most
despotic fashion, and refu.-ied to admit them as co-legislators into
conference. The English Methotlist Conference,* constituted by a
deed of declaration filed in the Court of Chancery in 1784, made
no provision for lay representation, which was only conceded, in
either hcmisphere,after a long,and frequently acrimonious, struggle,
within the last thirty years. Made exceedingly strong, wealthy
and influential, during the past decade, by the union of its princi-
pal wings, the clerical section of the Canadian Methodist church
has, in recent years, asserted itself as forcibly as possible, not only
in the religious field, but also in the political arena. In Ontario,
especially, it aspires to the same po.sition of power and authority
which the Roman Catholic hierarchy holds in the Province of
Quebec. It is true, that it may not so directly assert itself, and
has, owing to the force of circumstances, to operate on different
lines, and with more caution. But the latent lust to unduly
elevate itself nt the expense of the laity, and of other churches, is
(juite as apparent in one case as in the other. The only difference
is, that the Protestant divine is the more Jesuitical of the two.
Under the guise of advocating Prohibition, as a great moral and
even religious movement, Methodist clerics bullied and badgered
Sir Oliver Mowat, their political friend (they are chiefly Grits of
the straitest type) for several years, and so worried him that in
order to escape from his dictatorial and persistent persecutors, he
Anally surrendered the proud position of Premier of the great
Province of Ontario, and took lefuge in a subordinate portfolio in
the Laurier administration. Sir Oliver is a wise man in his day
and generation, and agreeing with Butler's Hudibras,
That he who tichta and runs away,
Will live to fight another day,
came to the conclusion that a good retreat was better than a bad
* In Great Britain there never has been a union of the various principal
Methodist bodies as in Canada. There the Primitive Methodists, who adhere
more closely to the John Wesley standard than the others, are very numer-
ous and influential. They have 1,113 ministers and nearly seventeen thous-
and lay preachers, against 2,358 Weeleyan Methodist ministers and 17,224
lay preachers. There are five other smaller branches of Methodism in the
British islands who have about nine hundred ministers altogether.
OF PUOHriUTION.
49
hattle. He had tried to coriuiliato iuH MuthodiHt clcricnl frieiida
as far aH it wan possible for him to do (without neriouHly wounding
the financial int«rastH of tho Province) liy making tho liquor
licenxn law more and moru stringont. But ho found that nothing
would ploaso thorn uulesH ho went tho whole Prohibition hog. His
retreat was HkilfuUy accomplished, l)ut it was a retreat all the
same. Had Hir Oliver been a little less anxious to play the role of
the Christian Stnteamaii, and not ho seriouHly desirous to placate
these sharp clerical politicians, his later position would have been
much more comfortable and independent, and he would have had
their support into the bargain, for they dare not turn him out to
let in their Tory foes. His successor, Mr. Hardy, should consider
these facts well, and shape his course accordingly. Unquestion-
ably he has a hard road to travel, and will encounter a good deal
more thorns than roses ns he journeys onward. That he has to
fight his would-be masters at a disadvantage, is true in more senses
than one. As they are not taxpayers, and so contribute nothing
whatever towards the support of the commonwealth, they are not
moved by any personal financial considerations, and from this
stand point, can snap their fingers safely in his face. But while free
from taxation themselves, they never hesitate a moment to impose
the most severe additional burdens on the hacks of the tax-paying
laity. Their patriotism is, accordingly, a good deal like that of
the whilom humorist, Artemus Ward, who was quite willing to
sacrifice all his wife's relations, and all his cousins and his aunts,
into the bargain, for the good of his country, provided his own
personal interests were left untouched — his own skin left uninjur-
ed. Mr. Hardy cannot, therefore, reach them from the dollar and
cent direction, nor frighten them by any proposed screw as regards
their own pockets. The sort of treatment he may expect at their
hands in tlie future may be pretty accurately guaged from past
experience, and that not of a very remote date either. In the
earlier part of this year (1897) a representative Prohibition gath-
ering took place at Toronto, at which the Liquor License Bill, then
before the Ontario Legislature, came up for consideration, and was
condemned because it did not go sufficiently far to meet the views
of those present. The government as a body was roundly abused,
but the Minister of Education, who has been fond of posing as a
fierce temperance man, with a view to strengthen his political posi-
tion, was subjected to the hardest knocks. For example, the Rev.
Arthur Browning, a member of the Toronto Methodist Conference,
first assaulted and then battered him as follows : —
" But when he (Mr. Ross) appeared at our convention, made that temper*
ance speech, and now endorses that miserable, deceptive, lying, devilish Bill«
then I say God have mercy on that man."
The Christian Guardian, the official organ of the Methodist
church in Canada, is continually threatening the Ontario govern-
ment unless its policy suits it better. In one of its last March
issues it calls upon the temperance voters to turn out and defeat
50 GENERAL REVIEW
the Hardy government for loitering, and declared that one defeat
would make the politicians open their eyes. The temperance dele-
gates who waited upon Mr. Hardy, while the Liijuor License
Bill was under consideration, were so extreme, and even rude and
ill-mannered, in their language anc'. demeanor, that Dr. Carman,
general superintendent of the Methodist church, considered himself
bound to administer a public rebuke. On the 22nd of last March
he delivered a lecture in one of the London churches on " Trade
and Get Rich," and according to the Daily Advocate of that city,
used the following language : —
" No business had a right on the earth unless it, somewhere along the lino,
renders a fair account. There were inany occupations which wouhl scarcely
stand on this ground. Gamblers, "^rs, and those who dabbled in wikl
speculations were certainly not giviiig ine quid pro quo. With regard to the
liquor traffic, he thought that it could not be defended on this ground, but
still the men who were engaged in the traffic had a right to be heard. They
would generally speak like gentlemen, as they did when they waited upon
Mr. Hardy's government recency. On this occasion they presented their
claims with a dignity and firmness, which was in striking contrast to the
conduct of the temperance people when they waited on the government.
The latter deputation had conducted themselves mucli like scolding women.
What was wanted in such cases was a quiet dignitj' of manner, A few
essential points should be advanced and insisted upon. Many platforms had
come down with a crash because they were too bulky."
It is quite apparent that the Prohibitionists of Ontario, and
especially their more important Methodist section, are bound to bully
the Hardy government if possible, and to compel it to submit to
their dictation. Over-rating their influence and importance as a
factor in Dominion politics, the Laurier administration has already
made certain preliminary concessions to their demands, and prom-
ised them a Plebiscite, which will cost the country at least two
hundred thousand dollars — the first instalment of the vast sum
that the people will have to pay for Prohibition. But the state-
ment that the elector would not only be asked whether or no he
was in favour of Prohibition, but also whether he was willing to
be taxed to make good the loss which the public revenue must
sustain, has caused a serious storm in every direction, and in every
Methodist gath" Mig from one end of the I)ominion to the other.
In ordinary business methods — in the usual routine of every day
life — every honest man who undertakes to effect a purchase, or
build a house, or buy a fnrm, will, in the first place, make provis-
ion to duly meet the liability he incurs. The same straight-forward
course precisely should be pursued in the case of Prohibition ; and
if the electorate desire the measure they should provide for the
payment of the incidental expenditure. A Prohibition vote that
is not ready to pay fairly and honestly all damages, will most
certainly not be of much use in enforcing a Prohibitory law. The
agitation against the double vote is deceitful in every aspect. It
aims to lead the elector to support it by making him believe that
Prohibition would virtually cost him nothing, and that the govern-
ment in some way would meet the additional outlay, so that no
OF PROHIBITION. 51
part of that outlay would come out of his pocket. What a palpable
fraud ! Nearly all the Federal revenue of the country comes out
of custom's duties, or other indirect modes of taxation, but the
people pay the bill all the same in the increased prices of the
articles they buy, whether they be dry goods, or clothing, or
groceries, or hardware, or any other commodity they may need,
lu this connection we had better quote the opinion of that leading
Liberal light, Mr. David Mills, who is regarded as a very high
authority on Dominion economics as well as on constitutional law.
He was asked, a short time ago, if he were in favour of submitting,
in the coming plebiscite, the single question of yes or no on Prohi-
bition, without any mention of meeting the deficit in the revenue,
and replied as follows : —
" I am not. I am very mncli opposed to it. The honest thing is to put
the whole matter before the people. Of course, I do not know what line of
action the Government and Parliament will adopt, but in my opinion the
measure that is required to give effect to the decision of the public, in case
Prohibition carries, ought to be the matter upon which the vote is taken.
The Ministers must decide upon how they will meet the loss of revenue that
will be caused by the adoption of Prohibition, and the creditors of Canada
are entitled to know how the $7,500,000 of revenue that will be wiped out
by Prohibition is to be made up. It is possible that some portion of the loss
can be made up by taxes upon tea and upon coffee, but the greater portion,
in my opinion, can be made up only by a direct tax. There should be a
well-considered bill prepared, and the vote should be taken upon it. The
question is not whether the public favour Prohibition in the abstract. It
is whether they are ready honestly to carry it out in the concrete. The
abstract proposition does not mean anything, and it will be wholly delusive
to submit it, because it will be no indication of the real conviction of the
public."
Mr. Mills is an honest man, and evidently does not feel disposed
to lend himself to any act of deception in order to secure the
success of a plebiscite vote. Hence he desires that the full issue
should be squarely placed before the elector.
As regards the clerical Methodist politicians of Ontario, who .so
hunger and thirst after increased power and influence, their seat
of war has, for the present, been transferred from Toronto to
Ottawa. All the insolent badgering and bullying possible have
been inflicted on the Hardy government, and no doubt the same
policy is to be pursued towards the Federal Cabinet, should it not
prove sufticiently subservient. The proposed double plebiscite
question to the elector is fiercely denounced, threats of every sort
abound, and Sir Wilfred Laurier is to be turned out without much
ceremony, by Methodist votes, if he does not completely surrender
to the new school of clerical politicians, who claim to carry these
votes around in the pockets of their pantaloons.* But, after all,
* The Presbyterian General Assembly, which met at Winnipeg on the 17th
of last June, (1897) took the proper view of the questions which should be
submitted to the electorate at the plebiscite, as the annexed despuuch
shows : —
Winnipeg, June 17. — While the special committee of the Presbyterian
General Assembly was out of the house, deliberating, the Assembly was
52 GENERAL REVIEW
there may lie a case of false pretences, to a greater or less extent,
as regards this claim. There can be very little doubt that
when the crisis comes, the ambitious clerics will find themselves
quietly ignored by their congregations, who will not desert their
party at their behest, and will secretly vote for their political
friends. In Ireland, where the Roman Catholic hierarchy has so
long ruled supreme, the people are at last freeing themselves from
clerical bondage, and have commenced to do their own political
thinking. There Mr. John Hayden, of Roscommon, has been for
years in direct conflict with the Bishop of Meath, who has pub-
lished repeated pastorals denouncing him from the altar. The
Bishop also forbade his flock, under the pain of mortal sin, to read
the Westmeath Examiner, Mi Ilayden's paper. But, in spite of
all this the paper flourishes, and Mr. Hayden himself has recently
been returned, without opposition, as member of Parliament for
Roscommon, the clerical party not venturing to run a candidate
against him.
The victory of the Liberal party in the last Dominion general
election, in the Province of Quebec, despite the strenuous opposi-
tion of its hierarchy, and all the adverse agitation on the Manitoba
school question, was a most important one, as regards freedom of
human thought and political action ; and cannot fail to produce
the most beneficial results throughout the whole Dominion. The
Vatican has already realised the significant value of the victory,
and sent its special delegate, Monseigneur Merry Del Val, to
carry the olive branch to Canada, and to inaugurate an era of
peace — to abate undue clerical pretension, which, under existing
circumstances, could only produce fratricidal strife. It now
remains to be seen whether Sir Wilfred Laurier, after having done
so much for the people of Canada, as regards his own province ;
and having recently won fresh victories in the diplomatic field of
the Old World, will tamely bow before the clerical leaders of the
Methodist church of Ontario, and surrender his political life into
their hands, to have his head surely cut off" by hostile circumstances 1
Time alone can tell !
marked by a little breeze over a resolution broagbt in, as addendum to the
report on Church Life and Work, which had reference to the plebiscite, to
be submitted by the Dominion government.
The view t-iken by a minority of the assembly was that the court should
leave the govcnmeufc with the promise ifc has made, to go forward untram-
melled by further suggestion or resolution.
The majority thought it might be helpful to the cause of temperance, and
to the country at large, if the added taxation c'ause bearing upon the prom-
ises of the government and the expectations of the country were added in
the pronouncement of the geixeral subject.
CHAPTER V.
PROHIBITION ALL THE WORLD OVER.
"TTTHEN one examines, with any care, the social and economic
VV conditions of European nations, he will very soon become
sensible of the fact that Prohibition can never be adopted by any
of them. The promotion of temperance amongst theso nations
must always be restricted to moral and religious teaching. In
England, bread and cheese and beer form no small part of the
food of the working classes, who, with their inherited sturdy feel-
ing of independence, would promptly resent any interference with
their natural right to eat and drink as they please. Estimating
the population of the British Islands to-day at 39,000,000, the
annual consumption of beer at 28 gallons per head, the stated
average, would amount to 1,092,000,000 * The consumption of wine
and spirits together does not exceed over a gallon and a half per
head of the population. The better classes restrict themselves to
wine, and to a comparatively small quantity of brandy and distilled
spirits, and use very little beer, more than five-sixths of which are
consumed by the working classes. In all the great cities of Eng-
land extreme poverty, and the absence of good food, form the chief
incentives to intemperance among the lower classes, who resort to
drink to drown their sense of misery and want. Experience has
shown, that if these poor people were fairly well housed, and
supplied with good food, they would speedily rise to a higher social
plane, and become more sober and better citizens in every way.
But reformation must always come on voluntary lines in the
British Islands. The masses there will submit to no coercion, and
no government would dare to entertain the idea for a moment
of resorting to a Prohibitory law to coerce the people into becom-
• There were, at the close of 1895. 8,937 breweries in England, Scotland
and Ireland, whose yearly output amounted to about one thousand four
hundred million gallons of beer. The surplus over 28 gallons per head, of
the population, was exported to foreign countries. The consumption of beer
per head in England is greater than in Germany, solely because the masses
ure better off, and thus have greater purchasing power.
64 GENERAL REVIEW
ing more sober, or more moral otherwise. A moderately stringent
license law is about all the temperance coercive legislation that the
people will stand in any part of the Mother Country. Meanwhile
temperance based upon the better housing and feeding of the
working classes, and moral and religious teaching, is making safe
and solid progress there. Combined benefit and temperance
societies largely abound, and at the recent annual meeting of the
Rechabite Association it was announced that its general l>enefit
fund had risen to the huge sum of four million dollars. There
cannot be the slightest doubt that temperance benetit societies
would also be very successful in Canada. There is the voluntary
possible in this and in other sensible directions for our Canadian
Prohibitionists, wlio are now so eagerly and so unwisely seeking
for legal coercion and the impossible. Looking at the matter from
every standpoint, it may be very safely assumed that nr. Prohibi-
tory law will ever be enacted by the British Parliament-.
Let us cross the English channel from T)over to C"lais, and see
for ourselves what prospects there arc '' a Prohibitory law in
France. Here we find a quick-witted, ndustrious and money-
getting people. The French revolution almost entirely extinguish-
ed the landlord class, as regards the property of the soil, and the
peasant farmer straightway became the owner in fee .simple of
his holding. It might naturally be supposed that this condition
of things would supply the highest social ideal for temperance
progress. But Prohibition is never heard of in France. Whatever
temperance exists there is based solely on the voluntary principle
resulting from moral forces. The masses are enormous wine-
drinkers all the time, and yet drunkenness, although now becoming
more common in the cities, owing to the increased use of distilled
spirits, is a rare thing in the rural districts. More than thrf,e-
fourths of the soil of France are grape lands, and the quantity of
wine produced annually in France is very great. A few years ago
the annual output was almost two thousand million of gallons, bu t
the ravages of hostile insects have largely reduced the vineyards in
recent times, and in 1895 their total production did not much exceed
one-third of the former yield.* Three-fourths of all the wine pro-
duced in Fi'ance are consumed at home, and her exports now,
including champagne, are worth some forty millions of dollars
annually. Of cogniac and other brandies, and spirits, she exports
about sixteen million dollars' worth, France, accordingly, will
never see her Parliament pass a Prohibitory law, or preventing the
production and exportation of fermented liquors. Her interests
in the other direction are too great.
Let us next cross the Rhine into Germany, and examine the pros-
* The report of the French Minister of Agriculture for 1895, puts the wine
production for that year at 587,127,000 gallons. In addition to her distill-
eries for the manufacture of brandies, &c., France has 2,627 breweries,
which have an annual output of 8,867,320 hectojiters of beer. A hectoliter
s equal to 26.414 gallons.
/.. <^'
OF PROHIBITION. 66
poets of a Prohibitory law there. Prom the Kaiser down to the
humblest peasant, the Germans may be safely said to be a beer-
loving people. They drink beer morning, noon and night, and
whenever they can get it — men, women and children. Their
passion for this national beverage is only restrained by their
inability, as regards the working classes, to purchase it. The
Englishman consequently drinks more beer on the average than
the German, but the Scotchinan and Irishman drink much less.
The latest reliable statistics show that each German consumes
almost as much beer as the average Englishman, and twenty-six
gallons per head per annum is not l)y any means too high an esti-
mate. Let the reader multiply for himself fifty-three millions of
population by twenty-six, and he will realise a prodigious total.*
The (rerman may submit to be dragooned by his despotic Kaiser,
and to be drilled to death in the huge army of father-land, but let
any one in authority touch his beer, and such a rebellion will at
once arise as must overturn every govei-nment in the country.
There can be no Prohibition there.
Austria-Hungary, with a population some ten millions less than
Germany, has 1.747 breweries within her borders, which produce
19,488,993 hectoliters of beer annually. Her wine production,
like that of Germany, has increased in rf ?ent years, and in 1895
reached 129,030,000 gallons. Ihere is not a shadow of Prohibition
sentiment in Austria, and voluntary temperance is alone possible
there. Italy does very little in the way of beer, and has only 113
breweries, with an annual output of 96,750 hectoliters, but she is
one of the chief wine-making countries of Europe. Like the other
great vine-growing countries of southern Europe, the insect pest,
phylloxera vastatrix, has been terribly destructive in Italy, and in
1895 her wine production had fallen to 469,555,000 gallons. The
Italian is not much of a beer drinker, and when he cannot get
wine takes to whiskey very readily. There is no Prohibition senti-
ment in his bosom. The dignified and sedate Spaniard is temper-
ate from nature and habit, and owns only 49 breweries, which
produce annually 128,375 hectoliters of beer. But Spain is a
great vine growing country, and a few years ago produced a vast
quantity of fine wines, But the insect plague has caused her
enormous loss, and in 1895 her wine production only reached
379,500,000 gallons. All the small states of Eastern Europe
are wine producing to a large extent ; and while Turkey has no
breweries, it produced nearly .sixty million gallons of wine in 1895.
Russia has only 1,148 breweries, with an annual output of 4,578,-
* In the German Empire there are 21,395 breweries, with a total annual
output of 55,243,753 hectoliters, nearly all of which may he said to be con-
sumed at home. The wine production of Germany has greatly increased in
recent years, and in 1895 rose to 80,190,000 gallons. During the last decade
the Germans have commenced to turn their attention to the manufacture of
brandy, but mostly for export. Beer continues to be their one great
beverage.
56 GENERAL REVIEW
260 hectoliters, but is fast becoming a great wine-producing
country. Her wino harvest in 1895 amounted to about one hun
dred million gallons. Her poorer classes use little beer or wine,
but like other natives of cold countries are addicted to the use of
spirits, for the manufacture of which ilistilleries everywhere
abound. Russia still continues to import fine French brandies and
rich wines for her upper classes. It is scarcely necessary to say
that there are no Prohibition societies throughout her broad
domains, and outside her Mahometan population little temper-
ance sentiment of any kind exists. From the brief statistics we
have now supplied, it will be seen that all Europe is largely given
up to beer and spirit making, and to the wine industry ; and that
no strong temperance sentiment exists anywhere among the masses
of its peoples outside of Great Britain. Prohibition legislation is
everywhere an impossibility just now, and there is not the remot-
est sign of any change, as regards the future, in any European
country.
Let us now recross the Atlantic, and take a good look at the
Prohibition of the United States, the principal source of all the
agitation that is at present disturbing our own country. The total
number of breweries there, at the close" of 1895, stood at 2,112,
and their output for that year amounted to 38,500,000 hectoliters.
The production of wine in the United States has increased prodi-
giously during the past decade, and has risen from about ten million
gallons in 1885 to 89,700,000 gallons in 1895. Nearly all of this
was absorbed by home consumption, and in addition over three
million gallons of champagne and other fine wines were imported
from Europe. The distilleries of the United States produced in
1894 92,153,650 gallons of spirits, of one kind or another, and the
total consumption of wine and spirits for that year amounted to
1,148,153,155 gallons, against 506,076,400 gallons in 1880, show-
ing that the consumption had more than doubled in fourteen years.
It will thus be seen that the Prohibition sentiment in the United
States has not afiected, from a general standpoint, the consumption
of liquor there, and that they are fast becoming a great wine-
producing, spirit-distilling, and beer-making country. Our thin
ribbon of population scattered along a frontier line thousands of
miles in extent, would, in the event of our adopting Prohibition,
be simply deluged with smuggled liquor at every point. We would
soon get all the benefit, with a vengeance, of the surplus stocks of
all Yankeedom, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and would be
merely destroying important industries of our own to benefit our
grasping neighbours. That result, considered by the light of all
the facts we have already presented to our readers, can hardly fail
to be regarded as a matter of undoubted certainty.
Having shown, from ofllicial statistics, how little Prohibition
sentiment has accomplished in the United States as a whole, it
remains for us to enquire what it has done for that particular
exemplar state, Maine, where it has been so long adopted. Here
OF PROHIBITION. 57
we have at hand most valuable assistance, in a book published in
Boston during the earlier part of the present year (1897), termed
" The Liquor Problem in its Legislative Aspects." While this
work is written from a temperance sfeindpoint, it is so fair in its
presentation of tacts, and so just in its conclusions, that one can
accept both without the slightest hesitation. We may state, how-
ever, by way of explanation, that during the present decade a
society of eminent literary men, clerical and lay, hailing from all
parts of the United States, with their headquarters at New York,
was formed for the purpose of enquiring into leading social prob-
lems of the day, ancl publishing, for general information, the
conclusions arrived at. At a meeting of this society, held in New
York in October, 1893, four sub-committees were appointed to
investigate diiferent aspects of the drink problem — physiological,
legislative, economic and ethical. A considerable sum of money
(S6,500) was raised to pay expenses, and in April, 1894, Dr.
Wines, of Springfield, Illinois, and Mr. John Keren, of Boston,
were charged with the duty of personally investigating the work-
ing of the liquor legislation in eight states of the Union,where that
legislation has been of a special character. As the result of their
most impartial and straightforward investigations, " The Liquor
Problem in its Legislative Aspects," has been given to the public.
This book should be read carefully by every person who desires to
arrive at right conclusions, as to the true value of Prohibition in
the United States.
What is known as the Maine Law has been in force in that
state, with a short interval, since June 2nd, 1851. This measure
was drafted by Neal Dow. It prohibited the manufacture of
intoxicants, and their sale, except by agents authorized by munici-
palities to sell for medicinal and mechanical purposes only* ; pro-
vided for the punishment of first oftence by fines, subsequent
offences by fines and imprisonment ; declared clerks, servants and
agents, equally guilty with the principals, and made it the duty of
the authorities in townships and cities to prosecute all violators of
the law upon the information of competent persons. The legal
machin;pry which had been created for its enforcement not being
found sufficient, more stringent provisions were enacted in 1853.
Great riots followed the attempt to enforce the law, and in 1856 it
was repealed, and a limited license law adopted, which remained
in force until 1858, when a fresh and more stringent Prohibitory
law was enacted. Meanwhile, the law had become a mere political
football, as shown by the election returns.! But the Prohibition
* No importation, nor manufacture of wine for sacramental purposes was
permitted by this law. The religious condition of the State of Maine was
never at a lower point than it is to-day. Infidelity abounds there as it does
in all the northern New England states, and the churches are so poorly
supported in the rural districts that they have to be formed into groups so
that the minister may be paid.
t See The Liquor Problem, p. p. 25, 26.
58 GENERAL REVIEW
party was constantly crying for more stringent laws, and since
1H58 nearly fifty anieritlmonts luive been enacted ; and the most
strenuous efforts were made to enforce the law, especially in Port-
land. Nevertherless, in 1886, at least 158 liquor shops existed in
that city. Men who abstained did so voluntarily, and not because
of the law ; drinking clubs sprang up in every direction, and
although there were no distilleries, the supply of liquor was unfail-
ing, but the (juality was worse. Open bars existed on side streets,
and those who shunned these resorts obtained their supplies from
the drug stores. In 1892 great efforts were made to enforce the
law, and the open sale of liquor was stopped, but this only set a
regiment of pocket peddlers, estimated at 200, in motion, and so
the last state of things became worse than the first. The history
of Prohibition in the state of Maine fills 95 pages of The Licjuor
Problem, and the miserable story of political and official back-
slidings must be read in full there, as we have not space to even
sunnuarise it. We may state, however, that the report of the
state liquor commissioner showed that in 189;{ there were sold in
Maine, presumably for mechanical and medicinal purposes, 34,348,-
gallons of licjuor, of the value of $130,812, independent of the
large illicit sales by individuals. According to the special United
States tax payments the sale of liquor existed, in 1895, in 87
places in Maine, containing 407,925 of the 661,086 inhabitants of
the whole state, or about 61 per cent, and many liquor dealers
evaded the payment of this tax altogether. At every session of
the United States court, said the presiding judge, from eight to
ten cases are tried for violation of the United States revenue law
— that is for failure to pay the Federal special tax.* But for the
liquor cases the criminal docket, in Maine, would be reduced to
less than one-half of its present proportions.! After an exhaustive
review of Prohibition in that state, which occupies nearly a third
of the book. The Liquor Problem sums up as follows : —
"How far Prohibition has fostered sobriety in Maine must be inferred
from the manner of its enforcement and the extent of the illicit trathc. The
question is at bottom one of consumption, not whence come the supplies, and
how they are delivered to the customer ; but data of consumption are
unattainable, although positive statements relative to its amount are as
frequent as they are untrustworth}'. Furthermore, in measuring the benefits
of Prohibition, a completely unregulated traffic cannot be taken as a stand-.,
ard of comparison. Neither can it be taken for granted that the good results
of a prohibitory regime in semi-rural communities are due to prohibitory
legislation. In Massachusetts, for instance, the number of towns outlawing
the saloon, previous to the enactment of the local option law, far exceeded
the number of towns in Maine where, at the same time. Prohibition was
partially enforced. And there are other considerations to be weighed
carefully.
* The Liquor Problem, p. 86. The United States revenue officers com-
pelled all litjuor dealers, whether illicit or otherwise, to pay the Federal tax,
but never aided in any way to enforce the state laws. That duty was invar-
iably left by them to the local officers.
t The Liquor Problem, p. 88.
OF PROHIBITION. 59
"Tho fact that Prohibition has so long had a place on the statute books,
and latterly in the Constitution, has fostered a feeling of security detri-
mental to the cause of temperance pure and simple. Men in sympathy with
tiie aim of Prohibition complain that the temi)eranco work which formerly
reached the masses has degenerateil into meetings for political purposes, or
that the agitation for abstinence has become a cry for police and detective
methods. The identification of great teuiperance organizations with party
politics has crippled tlieir inHuence as popular moral agents, however much
it may have aided tlio election of otHcials chosen for prohibitory purposes.
" As to the relation of politics to Prohibition, it is a pertinent remark that
" politics have a double eH'ect in Maine, weakening the opposition to tlie law
itself as well as weakening its enforcement." In other words, whether to
win favor or because of fear, many men assume a friendly attitude toward
the law in which they disbelieve. The ([Uestion of enforcement depends
mainly upon political exigencies, which, again, depend on the state of public
opinion. A full-blown hypocrisy must result from tliis method of dealing
with Prohibition. Nowhere is it so blatant as in tlio legislative halls, where
men lend their votes in support of restrictive measures of which they not
only disapprove, but violate openly and even grossly. The corrupting
influence of a Large social element thriving in defiance of all law needs no
further elucidation ; bribery, perjury, and official dishonour follow it."
These extracts will enable our readers to form, for themselves, a
correct estimate of the most unsatisfactory character of the history
of Prohibition in the state of Maine, where it has been in opera-
tion for over forty years ; and that, too, under the most favourable
circumstances, as regards legislation and general public sentiment,
as told by honest friends of temperance. We shall now proceed
to add some further facts, in the same direction, gleaned from
other authentic sources.
The claim, so frequently advanced, (but never sustained by
satisfactory proof) tliat Prohibition promotes the healthy increase
of population, and general prosperity, does not appear to hold good
as regards the state of Maine. In 1880 it had 64,309 farm home-
steads, and 3,484,908 acres of land in pasture, or under crops of
one kind or another. In 1890 its farm homesteads had decreased
to 02,013, and its tillable land to 3,044,606 acres. These figures,
taken from the United States census returns, show a loss to
Maine, in a single decade, of 2,296 farm homesteads, and ^440,242
acres of land gone out of cultivation, and relapsing into ,a wilder-
ness condition. The population of the stat(!, including towns and
villages, which stood at 048,930 in 1880, had, in 1890, only in-
creased to 001,080, or 12,150 altogether, or a fraction over two
per cent. It should not be forgotten, at the same time, that Maine
is comparatively a nev/ state, and still owns a large amount of wild
laud. The little state of llhode Island, which has always been
under a license law, has a population of 34o,.")00, or somewhat over
half that of Maine. Let us compare a few of the health statistics
of these two states. In doing so, however, it should be borne in
mind that Rhode Island has mostly a factory population, which
* In order to make our readers more fully actpiaiuteJ with the character of
the information supplied by "The Liquor Problem," we copy in the appen-
dix editorials from the Toronto Globe and Montreal Oazeitc.
60 GENERAL REVIEW
should not be at all as healthy as the chiefly agricultural popula-
tion of Maine : —
Maine, 18%. Rhodo Island, 189G.
No. of Insane persons 1 299 .... 792
•« Idiotic " 1591 .... 488
" Deaf and dumb persons . . 627 .... 162
" Blind persons 672 :J07
4189 1749
Leaving out small fractions, these figures (taken from the last
state census) show 63 afflicted persons to the tliousaiid of popula-
tion, or about six and a quarter per cent. Rhode Island ordy
shows 50 persons to the thousand, in the same unfortunate condi-
tion, or live per cent, of the population. Ontario statistics in the
same direction, for the year ending September 30th, 1896, give the
following results : —
No. of In.sane persons in the Province 4118
" Idiotic " •' " 605
" Deaf and dumb " " 310
'• Blind " " " 141
5174*
Tho population of Ontario, according to the last census, was
2,114,821, so that we average about 25 afflicted persons to the
thousand, or two and a half per cent, under a license law, to the
63 per thousand, or six and a quarter per cent., in the Prohibition
State of Maine. The unusually large number of idiotic persons in
that state, is said to arise from the fact that its people have
largely betaken themselves to alcoholised patent medicines, and
other kinds of pernicious stimulants, as substitutes for distilled
and malt liquors.
As Prohibition orators usually tell us so much now-a-days about
the terribly fatal effects of alcoholism on the public health, we
concluded that we had better ascertain how far their statements,
in this direction, were justified as regards our own Province. We
accordingly consulted the Annual Report of the Provincial Board
of Health, for the year 1896, in the expectation of finding there
the precise information needed. We regret, however, that this
Report is very defective, and that in a few instances only does it
give tables showing the causes of deaths. The report of the
Medical Health Officer of the city of Ottawa, which has now a
population of over fifty thousand, gives the total number of deaths
there for the year as 896. Among these was only one death from
alcoholism, while consumption claimed 92 deaths, and diarrhoea
(mostly children no doubt) 137. Nor has Ottawa ever been
famous for the strict temperance habits of its people. We might
state that the I'eturn also shows, that during the year there were
* Official Annual Report for 1896.
OF PROHIBITION. 61
46 dentliH from hoarfc failure and heart disoase ; and as it in well
known that many d«!athH of this kind i-psuit from tho excessive use
of tobacco in Home shape, it is plain that the nicotine of that weed
kills a good many more people than alcohol, and just as gluttony
does also. In the city of St. Catherines the total deaths during
1H96, were 137, not one of which is charged to alcoholism, but ten
go to heart disease. In the city of Windsor there were 147
deaths in 1896, one only of which resulted from the use of liquor,
but 9 are charged to heart disease. Thus we see that out of a total
of 1180 deaths in these three cities, situated in the east, the west,
and middle of Ontario, only two are laid at the <loor of alcoholism.
It is a pity that the Report is not fuller in this direction, so that
we might pursue this interesting study at greater length.
During 1894, the last year for which we have any government
otKcial returns on this head, the convictions for drunkenness, in
the Province of Ontario, fell to the lowest point recorded, antl
stood at 3267, or one to every 667 of the population. It may be
safely assumed that the number is still less in the two succeeding
years. During the Scott Act years, that is from 1885 to 1889,
the convictions for drunkenness averaged annually 6243, or nearly
double the number in 1894. In 1889, the last year of the Scott
Act in the Province, the convictions stood at 7,059. These figures
sliow, beyond all cavil, that the people of Ontario are much more
sober and orderly under a good license law, than they were under
Prohibition. In the Province of Nova Scotia, 11 out of her 18
counties, and representing considerably over half her population,
are under the Scott Act. If Prohibitionist nostrums were good
for anything, the people down there by the sea would be much
more sober than those of Ontario. But, lo and behold, the total
convictions for drunkenness in 1894 footed, up to 1258, or one to
every 361 of the population. In 1884, before the Scott Act
became so generally in force in Nova Scotia, the convictions
for drunkenne.ss stood at 501, or one to every 751 of
the population, thus showing, in the plainest manner that the
Scott Act has greaoly increased, instead of diminishing intemper-
ance in that province. In New Brunswick, out of 14 counties, 9
are now under the Scott Act, and also two towns (Fredei-icton and
Yarmouth) representing altogether about three-fifths of the whole
population. In 1894 the total convictions for drunkenness in that
province stood at 1227 (about the usual previous average), or one
to every 262 of the population.*
• See the Dominion Statistical Year Book for 1895, pages 901 to 908.
CONCLUSION.
The great majority of Canadians have only a faint idea of the
condition of the liquor traffic in the United States, or what an
enormous political engine it has become, especially in the case of
large cities. There it is chiefly in the hands of the most danger-
ous and unscrupulous of the foreign population, who have little or
62 (iENEHAL HEVIKW
no rolijj[ious principit! amongst thoiii, and indndd vory little princi-
plo of any kind. As a ruUt tlittir liconHon am obtaintMl tliroii^h tlio
inrtuencH ot" lotial politician.s, or ward hossos, to whom thoy pay a
tax in onu way or aiuitluM-, wliih^ thoy hav»> also to pay tlu^ police
for protection in curtain contingenciuH, and for ptirinittin^ tlitun to
evade the law at times witli inij)unity. A few years ago the
I)(Mnocratic Legislature of New York passed a Sunday closing law,
for the express purpos«s 'i*i it was aft(!rwards proved, of l(!vying
blackmail, on the li(iuor dealers of the state, for political and oth(M'
purposes. If timy refused to support the Democratic party by
contributing to its fund, and also by voting for it, the police closed
their bars on Sundays, and had them punished for violating tlni
law in any sha{)e. liut if they proved tluMuselves good Democrats
they were not interfenMl with. In I HOT) the llepublican party got
control of the Ijegislature, and of New York city as well, and
retaliated on their ])oliti(;al opponents, who had so long been
their masters, by enforcing the Democrats' Sunday closing law
against their saloon supporters, to their great consternation and
disgust.* In nearly all the largo cities the foreign element has
nt)W obtained complete mastery, and these cities literally seethe
with police and other municipal corruption, of one kind or another.
Evidence which has at tinuis cropped up in the courts, aiul during
the investigations of occasicmal commissions of eiujuiry, as well as
now and then exposure by independent newspapers, here ami
there, prove all this in the fullest manner. The writer occasion-
ally spends his summer vacations in lirooklyn. At one time cir-
cumstances rendered it necessary that he should visit various
public offices in New York City in seardi of special infonnation.
On no occasion did he meet a single genuine native American in
these offices. Everywhere the foreigner or his son, or some other
relation, held the fart. In this connection a New York journal
uses the following plain and true language : —
" What wo have got in this country is a colluction of the dregs of a hun>
dreil races, with all tlieir ignorance and passion. Anybody wlio liaa taken
the trouble to watch tlie course of most of the liCgisLatures of this year -or
even to notice the kind of persons that are now selected for (Jovornors will
be an unwilling witness to a progressive degeneration of public intelligence
in the United States. You can go down into the country or on the sea*
shore and yon will lind Americans yet. You will find guides for instance,
fishermen and woodcutters and all the great and noble race of God's gentle-
men that live outdoors. But around New York and in every other place
which has the misfortune to be a city in this country, you find this mixture
and crazy conglomeration of races, unblended and incapable of lieing blend-
ed; and Mr Hearst and Mr. Pulitzer exist for the purpose of faiuiing into a
hotter Hame the crude heat of these barbarians."
It may very safely be said that all municipal power, in the great
cities of the Union, has passed into the hands of foreigners ; and
that the genuine American eleinent is nowhere apparent. Little
wonder that it developed into Knownothingism and other secret
* See New York Tribune of July 19, 1895, and the Wiiie and 6'pirU Oazctte
about same date.
OF IMIOHIHITION. <)3
Hoci«^tioH for its own protoction, l)ut i\w forco of nirouinNtnncoa
was too imicli for <w(iii tlnme. HiiiHi'tiiig uiider i\w fon'ij^ii iiiIv(m'H(«
iiilluciKU', whirh flopriv^ts tlio imtivi* Ain<<i'iciiri of all iiuthority in
lii.s owri citit'H, and cfU'ctually burs liiin out from <n'ery niuni(;iptil
post, from tlu) baton of the policfuniin to the chair of the Ahlcnnan
or the Mayor, the saloon keeper, as the foundation of all liis
woes, and all his civic defeats, is hated with an intensity of hatred,
beyond the power of language to describe, by disappointed place-
less politicians. Not a few of these, as a (h'lniei' resort, presently
dov<?lop into temperance lecturtsrs, and love t(» invade our fair
hominion, especially \vhenev(;r thei-e is a little money to l)e madii
by th(! movement, and there vent all thcur pent-up wrath, prcwluced
l)y tli(i vicious state of things (»n their own soil, upon such hai)les8
Canadian audi(Mices as ar(Mlis[)osed t<j listen to them, and to their
extravagant statennints which usually have v«^ry slender aj)plicu-
tion to tiiis country. The retail litjuor vendor in Canada is no
foreigner. As a rule he is a loyal subi«!ct, born and bred, of her
majesty C^ueen Victoria. He is neither a .socialist, nor an anar-
chist, nor an intidel ; but, on the contrary, is usually a (juiet and
unobtrusive oiti/.en, and not infi-eijuently a liberal supi)orter of
one church or another, lieyond the fact that he .sells li([Uor, and
occasionally violates the law, which he has no business to do, (for
he can get no corrupt police protection in Canada) there is scarcely
any re.semblance between him and the saloon keeper of the; United
States. When his t(unperance political foes there get the upper
hand of the latter they plunder him without mercy. Lynch-
law is then applie<l to every adverse interest without compunction,
and without even a hint as to compensation ; and no matter
whcitlMM' their owners are ruined or otherwise, down go breweries,
and distilleries, and .salo<ms in (!very direction. That is the sort* of
moial Lynch-law which our Prohibition cousins over the way
administer on their own soil, and that is the sort of moral Lynch-
law which their prototypes in Canada, led by Methodist
I). D.'s, id (/enus onaip, now seek to appiv at their will, in
this presumed land of Britisii law and order an- ""nuine fair play,
to their neighbors. In the ten years ending w i December 31st,
1895, there were 50,489 murders and homicides committed in tlu!
United States, 1,G55 of these were lynchings, which in some cases
were intlicteil with a devilish spirit ecjual to the worst refinements
of Indian cruelty. For all the.se nmrders, .scarcely equalled in
number by the aggregate in all the other Christian countries of the
world, only 1,030 of the murderers were executed.* The year 1895
shows the heaviest record of murders in any year in the United
States, the figures being H,060, of which 160 were lynchings. For
these murders otdy 113 paid the extreme penalty of the law. In the
the single state of Ohio, which lacks a full million of the population
of Canr.da, the number of Divorces granted by the courts in 1896
was 2,973, out of 7,157 cases standing for trial. Decrees were
* See the New York IVorkl Almanac, page 216,
64 GENERAL REVIEW
refused in 1,021 cases, and 3,163 cases are still pending. *In the
whole of Canada, during the same year, only one Divorce case was
adjudicated upon. At least twenty thousand Divorce decrees
were made in the whole United States in 1896. With what
justice may it be said to the Prohibition lecturers, who come
from this land of murder, and spoliation, and wrong-doing, that
their services are required to an infinitely greater extent in their
own country, than in our law-abiding land, where so far there
have been no lynchings, few murders, and no Lynch-law plunder-
ing of brewers, or distillers, or wine-making agriculturists. " The
Liquor Problem " iterates and reiterates the fact, that Prohibition
in the United States is merely the football of politicians. The
figures of almost every elelstion, Presidental, State or Municipal,
are amply corroborative of this statement. In the Presidential
election of 1896 the total vote cast was 13,579,638, out of which
the vote for the Prohibition candidate was only 80,160, against
262,799 in 1892. In Maine, out of a total Presidential vote, in
1896, of 115,153, only 1,570 were cast for the Prohibition candi-
date. In Iowa, the exemplar Prohibition state of the south-west,
the total vote at the last Presidential election was 521,547. The
Prohibition candidate received 3,192 votes against 6,402 in 1892.
In Kansas, another Prohibition state, the total Presidential vote
was 336,124 ; the Prohibition candidate got 1,921 votes. In South
Carolina, where the state government seeks to promote temperance,
by taking the sale of liquor into its own hands under what is termed
the Dispensary System, the total vote cast at the Presidential elec-
tion of 1896 was 68,907. The great majority of this vote went to
Bryan and free silver, and not a single vote was polled for the
Prohibition candidate. In New York State, which is all under
tHte license system, the whole vote at the la.st Presidential election
was 1,423,896, out of which 16,052 were cast for the Prohibition
candidate. These figures show, in the most conclusive way, the
small amount of true temperance principle existing in the United
States, and how completely Prohibition is made the tool of politicians.
With all these incontrovertible facts and figures before us, the
conclusion must irresistibly force itj^cii upon the minds of every
thoughtful and impartial person, that Prohibition does not prohibit
to any beneficial extent. They also show that Prohibition does
not educate the masses to be more sober, or more moral otherwise ;
but, on the contrary, increases intemperance at every possible
opportunity, and is promotive of perjury and contempt for t!:e
law. They further show that the morality, the true temperance
principle, the social comfort, and the general happiness and pros-
perity of the people at large, are much more secure under a good
license law, honestly administered, than under Prohibition. What
supreme folly, accordingly, would the people of Canada be guilty
of, were they to place themselves under a yoke which must bring
to them infinite disaster and woe, socially, morally and financially.
* Appleton's Cyclopiedia for 1896.
OF PROHIBITION. 65
A few words more ere we lay down our pen. We do not ask our
readers to take the facts and figures, which we have submitted for
their consideration, witliout a complete scrutiny on their part. Our
chief object is to stimulate the fullest enquiry into every branch of
the Prohibition question we have discussed in these pages, and to
help them to form their own sober conclusions thereupon. Did we
desire to make money, we could easily have expanded this pamph-
let into a good-sized volume, but as our chief object is to educate
the people generally upon a large and vital question, as regards
their future well-being, we prefer to condense our facts and argu-
ments into the smallest possible compass so that they might be
well within reach of everybody. We now leave the case we have
presented for consideration to the impartial verdict of the Public.
APPENDIX.
(From the Toronto Globe of March 17th, 1897.)
About four years ago a " Committee of Fifty," a voluntary
organization of public-spirited men, began a scientific investigation
of the liquor problem in the United States. The committee was
the outgrowth of an organization called the " Sociological Group,"
which had been for about eight years investigating various problems
of social welfare. The liquor traffic is so entangled with com-
mercial interests, Governmental finances, national prejudices, social
usages and religious opinions, that an investigation could be
carried on only by the voluntary effort of men of independent mind
and high character. One of the principal lines of iuquiiv was the
result of legislative interference and regulation. It was undertaken
by President Eliot of Harvard University, President Low of
Columbia University, and Mr. James C. Carter o^' New York. In
1894 this committee sent out a number of trained investigators
who worked for two years in eight States, each of which has
different liquor laws. Their report has been published by Houghton.
Mifflin & Co., and will no doubt be studied by all who take an in
telligent interest in liquor legislation. The fact most strongly
emphasized by the investigators is the corruption everywhere
brought into local politics by liquor laws. The corruption is not
always in proportion to the severity of the laws, but often in pro-
portion to the complexity of the legal machinery for their enforce-
ment, and always in proportion to the laxity of public sentiment
behind the laws. Maine has the worst record in political corrup-
tion in communities where public sentiment has not supported the
prohibition amendment to the constitution. One result recorded
by the investigators is *' a full-blown hypocrisy," which is " no-
where so blatant as in the legislative halls." The law has banished
breweries and distilleries from the State, but the report says
"there is no evidence that it has diminished the consumption of
alcoholic drinks." Among the evil results of the prohibitory en-
actment are " bribes, hufeh-money and assessments for political
66 • APPENDIX.
purposes," " used to corrupt the lower courts, the police aclminis-
tration, politicul organizations and even the electorate itself," " a
whole generation of habitual law-breakers, schooled in evasion and
shainelessness," " officers of the law double-faced and mercenary,"
" office-holders urifaithful to pledges" and " courts ineffective
through fluctuations in policy, delays, perjuries, negligences." The
same phenomena were found in Iowa under prohibitory laws. On
the other hand, it is pointed out that the motives of the prohibi-
tionists were good, and that many benefits have resulted from
prohibitory enactments.
Under the State dispensary system of South Carolina another
kind of political evil has developed. An army of State constables
and storekeepers has been created, and lias naturally developed into
an almost invincible party machine with all the evil influences of
machine political elements. As is common with such legislation,
the results were diametrically opposite to the expectations. It was
thought it would restrict drinking in rural districts, though per-
haps not in towns ; the result was a distinct lessening of drinking
in towns, while intemperance increased in the country. Tiie report
declares that no American legislation has been effective in remov-
ing the motive of private gain from the traffic. Measured by
freedom from political corruption, the simple tax law of Ohio was
found the best of the eight States investigated. Under that law
the traffic is not licensed but simply taxed. A man's opportunity
for engaging in the traffic does not depend on favors bought or
obtained, but simply on the payment of his tax. There are few
chances for political corruption, and no false sentiments can creep
in where the revenue feature is treated with so much frankness.
With regard to the promotion of temperance hibits, the committee
has not found that " any one kind of temperance legislation has
been more successful than another." Different conniiunities achieve
success with different systems, much depending on local public
sentiment and sincerity in the execution of the law. It has been
found that in very few towns and cities has the economic limit of
license fees been reached. In Boston the fees were doubled, and
again increased within a period of Ave years, yet there was no dimin-
ution in the number of applicants for licenses. A wide margin
between the economic value of a license, due to restricting the
number issued, and the fees charged is a fruitful source of corrup-
tion. The revenue-producing capacity is enormous before the limit
is reached at which illicit traffic becomes a serious encroachment. —
The report asserts thajb attempts at prohibition^ have proved vicious
failures, except in small towns adjacent to great cities, and in small
conununities in which pi-ohibition sentiment was almost unanimous.
The best results have been secired by restrictive laws, which impose
heavy taxes and reduce the number of saloons, confining them to
certain localities, separating them from other lines of business and
imposing all possible publicity, such as the anti-screen law of
Massachusetts. Local enactments fully 'supported by local senti-
APPENDIX. 67
mont are rogardod as the most effectual method of imposing re-
strictions on tlie traffic.
(From the Montrml Gazette April 17th, 1897).
In the year 1 889 a number of American students of social questions
began the prepai-ation of papers or essays dealing with sociological
subjects. There was at first fifteen thus engaged, and in order to assure
the accuracy and increase the value of the studies, whatever was
written by any member of the quindecemvirate was submitted for
comment and, if necessary, for revision, to all the rest. They were
then published in reviews or magazines for the benefit ofthe public
at large. Among the subjects discussed by the original group were
labor reform, church unity and the government of cities, and among
the writers were Prof. Richard T. Ely, Dr. Charles W. Shields and
President Seth Low. The members were all of national, state or local
prominence, and the subjects were all live topics that had a practical
interest for millions of men. This fact having been recognized by
the attention which the successive publications attracted, it was
thought advisable, four years after the primary organization, to en-
large the membership by the admission of 3") other students of prac-
tical sociology. The group, having been placed on this enlarged basis,
determined to concentrate all its ititellectual and moral energies on
the same theme, instead of dividing its forces. The first enquiry that
the group o^ fifty undertook was a thorough examination of the
liquor problem. First of all, the whole membership was consti-
tuted a committee. The majoi'ity consisted of residents in the
Eastern States, but the West was not without representation, and
tlie South had cor' 'buted a small but influential delegation. The
entire committee first met in New York on the 20th October, 1893,
and appointed four sub-committees on different aspects of the drink
problem — physiological, legislative, economic and ethical. Each of the
sub-committees at once set to work on j;he investigation committed to
it. On the lOtli of January, 1896, it was voted in committee of the
whole flfty, that the reports of any of the sub-committees might be
published, but always on the express condition that it should be
given to be understood that such reports were preliminary in
their nature and only contributory to the general discussion to
be undertaken afterwards by the committee in its entirety. The
flrst sub-committee to avail itself of this permission is that on the
legislative aspects of the liquor problem, the report of which has
just been published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. We are
told at the outset that the sub-committee, having received from the
committee of fifty appropriations, amounting to $6,500, engaged
Dr. Fred. H. Wines and Mr. John Koren to investigate the work-
ing of the liquor laws in several states of the Union. In the State
of Maine, where prohibition has existed since 1851, Mr. Koren be-
gan work in May, 1894, enquiring into the operation of the law
68 APPENDIX.
and its results. He then studied the working of local option in
Massachusetts ; that of the license l;uv of Pennsylvania, and that
of the dispensary system in South Carolina. Then, having care-
fully written out his notes in four separate reports, he devoted six
weeks to a supplementary survey of the field in Pennnsylvania, —
Dr. Wines began his enquiry in August, 1894, in Missouri, mainly
in St. Louis, he then went to Iowa, and afterwards to Ohio, where
the so-called mulct law is in force, and finally gave considerable
attention to the operation of the liquor laws of Indiana. Altogether
the enquiry thus conducted by these well known experts covered
eight types of liquor legislation. * *
It is conceded that prohibitory legislation has failed to exclude
intoxicants completely even from districts where public sentiment
is favourable to it When public opinion is adverse to prohibition,
or strongly divided, the traffic in alcoholic drinks, though some-
times repressed or harrassed, has never been exterminated or
rendered unprofitable. In Maine and Iowa there have " always
been counties and municipalities in complete and successful re-
bellion against the law." As for the passion for drink, it has
remained unsubdued — and the resentment of interference thence
arising " will forever prompt resistance to all restrictive legisla-
tion." Nor does prohibitory legislation fail to be attended by
conditions that have an evil effect on public opinion by diminishing ^^^f
" respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths, and law in general,"
as well as for the "officers of the law, legislators and public servants."
The following passage is full of significance : " The^ public have
seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual law-breakers school-
ed in evasion and sharaelessness, courts ineffective through fluc-
tuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligences, and other
miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double-faced and mercen-
ary, legislators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypocritical
and truckling, and office-holders unfaithful to pledges and to
reasonable public expectation. * * * The liquor traffic, being
very profitable, has been able, when attacked by prohibitory legis-
lation, to pay fines, bribes, hush-money, and assessments for political
purposes to large amounts. This money has tended to corrupt the
law courts, the police administration, political organisations, and
even the electorate itself." The result of yielding to these tempta-
tions by candidates for and holders of office is " a general degenera-
tion of public life," " a contempt for the public service," which is
thus made " less desirable for upright men." In fine, the spectacle
of certain conspicuous details of the operation or quasi-operation of
the law is " demoralizing to society at large."
But have not the " efforts at prohibition reduced the consumption
of intoxicants and diminished drunkenness ?" In seeking an answer
to these questions it was found that " opinions differ widely," and
that no demonstration on either of these points has been reached
or is now obtainable, after more than forty years of observation
and experience."
I
/