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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche d droite. et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n^cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. errata I to t ) pelure, on d D 32X 1 2 3 : t : 2 3 ' 4 5 6 ^fS5 "=^^ PRICE 10 CENTS. FREE TEMPERANCE »M VERSUS FORCED ABSTINENCE. COMPILED FROM " Tfl^ WEEK." TORONTO: PRINTED BY 0. BLACKETT ROBINSON, 5 JORDAN STREET. iry, 1885. h:i ■ i ■4 ? ..j FREE TEMPERANCE versus FORCED ABSTINENCE. COMPILED FROM "THE WEEK." People hardly know what there is in the Scott Act. If they will look into it carefully they will find such provisions as nothing could justify but the persuasion that Canada was given over to drunkenness and sinking into a gulf of perdition. Bent upon securing convictions at any cost of what they havg lashed them- selves into regarding as the most heinous of all offences, its framers set at naught the first principles of justice. The 89th clause directly violates the fundamental maxim of British law that no man shall be compelled to criminate himself. It gives, it is true, a formal protection against the use of evidence extorted from the accused in any criminal proceedings which may be taken against him ; but no formal protection can prevent the evidence from becoming known and producing its inevitable effect on the mind of the jury or the tribunal whatever it may be. Even this subter- fuge is cast aside and the face of iniquity is openly disclosed in clause 122, which enables the magistrate to put to the accused the question whether he has been previously convicted, and, if he con- fesses that he has, '♦ to sentence him accordingly." In the previous clause, which defines the evidence necessary for conviction, there is a subversion of fundamental principles still more flagrant. It is there enacted that in any prosecution for the sale or barter of liquor " It shall not be necessary that any witness should depose directly to the precise description of the liquor sold or bartered, or the precise consideration therefor, or to the fact of the sale or other disposal having taken place with his par.ticipation or to his own personal and certain knowledge, but the justices or magistrates or other officers trying the case, so soon as it appears to them or him that the circumstances in evidence sufficiently establish the infrac- tion of law complained of, shall put the defendant on his defence, and in default of his rebuttal of such evideixe shall convict him accordingly. The witness, who be it remembered may be a pro- fessional informer, is not to be required to depose to the facts as of his personal or certain knowledge ; any hearsay which satisfies the mind of a country justice, perhaps a violent Scott Act man, is enough ; the guilt of the accused is then to be presumed, and unless he can rebut what the framers of the Act are pleased to call the evidence, he is to be convicted and sent to gaol. Let the crime against which the Act was directed be what it might, supposing it were the most dangerous of all offences, instead of that of selling or bartering a glrss of ale, every citizen who cherishes those rules whicl- -e the only securities for personal liberty and safeguards of innocr.oe would be bound to vote against such a measure. If b<^ aciies of principle are allowed in one case they may be allowed in all ; ^ - ' to the plea that there is a strong motive for obtaining convic. "• . at any cost in the case of liquor-selling, the answer is that it is seldom without a strong motive that gross injustice is committed. But it is not only on the principles of justice that the Scott Act tramples ; it tramples also on the laws of domestic affection. Its 123rd clause impels the husband to give evidence against the wife and the wife against the husband. After this, what would their wedlock be ? We have the greatest respect for the Methodist Church, which is believed by its authority to supply the chief motive power of the Scott Act agitation. Is it possible that the heads of the Church can have considered the provisions of the Act which we have mentioned, and that they can regard them as consistent with Christianity ? Consistent with Christianity they cannot be if they are not consistent with the laws of justice and affection. s i"'-- It cannot be too often repeated that the question is not whether drunkenness is sinful and ruinous, which nobody doubts, nor whether wine is wholesome, but whether coercive legislation is wise and just ? If, indeed, wine or beer were literally poison, it would be necessary and right to suppress the sale. But who believes that wine or beer is literally poison, either to body or to mind ? Certainly not Canon Farrar, since he admits that they are drunk by millions who not only continue to live, but remain wise and virtuous. Whole nations drink the so-called poison daily without feeling themselves the worse for it. Regular wine-drinkers often ^- J. lE 1, live to patriarchal ages. We could ourselves mention some who have reached their hundredth year. Cornaro, the famous dietist and centenarian, drank the light wine of his country. Mr. Glad- stone is an illustrious proof of the truth of the opinion pronounced the other day by Dr. Andrew Clark that a glass of wine at the principal meal hurts no man in body, mind or spirit. The man who governs England and leads the House of Commons at seventy- six with unimpaired, it might almost seem with ever-increasing, vigour drinks wine, as is well-known, every day with his dinner, and, as we may venture to say that he has never been guilty of excess in his life, he is also a disproof of the preposterous assertion that temperate use must lead to abuse. The finger of reprobation is always pointed by Prohibitionists at England as the great beer- drinking country ; but, if beer is the beverage of a nation which in almost every line of greatness leads the world, it seems to follow, however scandalous to the Prohibitionist the inference may be, that there is no great harm in drinking beer. The English navvy, who always drinks beer, can do a harder day's work than any other man in the world. What people really mean when they say that wine or beer is poison is only that in their judgment it is unwhole- some, just as in the opinion of many are tobacco, green tea and pastry. They speak, in short, figuratively, and penal legislation cannot be based on figures of speech. After all, ought we not in this as in other questions of diet to make allowance for differences of climate, individual temperament and occupation ? The preachers and the ladies who are the most earnest workers in favour of Pro- hibition, being sedentary in their habits and not using much bodily exertion, are naturally drinkers of tea. Is not the navvy, the miner or the stevedore just as naturally a drinker of beer ? Our simple expression of an opinion that the Licensed Victuallers are justified in the demand which they have made for legal protec- tion against improper influences in Scott Act Elections, similar to that provided in the case of Parliamentary Elections, can hardly have been twisted by any candid reader into an accusation of mal- practices brought by us against either party. Nothing is more notorious than the effect of enthusiasm, even honest enthusiasm, in distorting the moral vision and leading men to act upon the prin- ciple that the end justifies the means. It is difficult to say what means would not become justifiable in the eyes of a man who had been persuaded by Scott Act lecturers that if the Act were passed prisons and hospitals would be no more. We are aware that this journal has almost alone been guilty of refusing to succumb to the violence of the agitation, and we are perfectly prepared to hear that our course is determined by our desire of pleasing •• our patrons in the liquor traffic." There is probably not a journal in the country less beholden to the liquor trafi^c for its circulation than The Week. We wish to promote temperance ; and we be- lieve that, the immemorial habits of mankind almost throughout the world being what they are, the only temperance practically attain- able is the moderate use of wholesome, or comparatively whole- some, beverages, such as light wine and beer, which are known to form a regular part of the diet of nations among wl ich drunkenness is extremely rare. It is the proved tendency of tht Scott Act, and of other legislation of that class, to put a stop to tl'e use of such beverages as light wine and beer, and practically to drive the people to drinking ardent spirits of the most deleterious kind, at the same time substituting for the regulated hotel or tavern the unlicensed drinking-shop, and teaching citizens to despise the law. To the argument that if Prohibition does not prohibit there can be no claim to compensation, the answer is that Prohibition does pro- hibit the respectable trade while it fosters the contraband. We are glad to learn that upon this question of conpensation Prohibi- tionists hold themselves open to conviction ; it might be imagined that they did not when they proposed to treat the Licensed Victual- ler like a dynamiter or bed-bug, and when they identify his case with that of the slave-dealer, the highwayman, and the brothel- keeper, as they do in pamphlets which they are now distributing by thousands. Drunkenness is bad, but it is not worse than iniquity. Nor do we see how a journal, which professes indepen- dence, can better redeem its pledge than by refusing to follow a multitude, however large, when there seems reason to fear that iniquity will be done. : ■ i Exceptional legislation, interfering with private liberty, can be justified only by extraordinary need. So much, we presume, will be admitted on all hands. It has nefver been proved, or even deliberately stated, though it is constantly assumed on Scott Act platforms, that the Canadians are a drunken people. Inquiry on this subject, by means of a Royal Commission, has been challenged on behalf of the Licensed Victuallers, and we do not see why the challenge should not be accepted. An Englishman, on coming to s Canada, so far from being struck by the prevalence of drunkenness, is agreeably impressed by its absence. There are in our cities drinking places which ought to be, and if the ordinary law were administered with vigour probably might be, suppressed ; out of these a drunkard too often is seen to reel. But there is nothing like the scenes which present themselves in the low quarters of British cities, or even in the village ale-houses, and which have led steadfast friends of liberty to doubt whether in that country extra- ordinary measures might not be required. Such statistics as are available seem to show that Canada instt vd of being drunken is one of the soberest countries in the world. This, at least, is the result of a comparison of the amount of alcoholic drink consumed here with the amount consumed in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and the United States. It would appear that moral and sanitary opinion, instead of being powerless, and needing to be supplemented by despotic laws and an inquisitorial police, is operating among us with the happiest effect. The facts, with regard to this as well ^s all the other aspects of the question, are exceedingly well marshalled in the pamphlet entitled " Ought I to Vote for the Scott Act ?" which we commend, if it has not already commended itself, to the considera- tion of open-minded men. It is anonymous ; but we believe we are warranted in saying that its author is unconnected with the Liquor Trade. ,, * ; -, , .j,.,. Let the Scott Act organization be as strong and as victorious as it will, its mechanical force is a widely different thing from reason, and reason alone will make us alter our opinions. Yet with regard to a moral question, and knowing that many of the clergy, though not those of the Church of England, are against us, we are specially anxious that there should be no mistake as to the ground on which we stand. Drunkenness, we hope, is as hateful to us as to the loudest professor, and we are willing to concur in any movement or measure, not involving tyranny or iniquity, by which the vice can be diminished. Our objection to such measures as the Scott Act is that by them the vice, instead of being diminished, is practi- cally increased. While they create a dangerous precedent of legis- lative interference with private habits, fill society with bitterness, set up an inquisition in every village, wreck great industries and occasion a heavy loss of revenue, their practical effects, as regards the question of temperance, are the universal substitution of ardent Li' spirits, which being small in bulk can be easily smuggled, for milder beverages, and the transfer of the trade from responsible and regu- lated to unlicensed and unregulated hands. The proofs, the over- whelming proofs, of this have been published in our own country even by journals which, bending to the popular gale, now effect an ecstasy of joy over every victory of the Scott Act. Neal Dow himself complains that Maine, where Prohibition in its most strin- gent form prevails, is full of low places n which ardent spirits, and ardent spirits we may be sure of the worst quality, are sold. From Iowa, Nova Scotia, from every prohibited or Scott Act district, testimonies to the same effect come in : nor does it appear that the introduction of these laws has at all decreased the manufacture of ardent spirits. From the very earliest times the use of stimulating and cheering beverages has been the universal habit of mankind. The fact is attested by the Hebrew records, by the Greek myth- ology, by those Vedic hymns which most authentically present to us the habits of man in his original seat ; and if the use of fer- mented liquors is in itself a sin, all humanity, including Christ and his Apostles, has sinned till now. Is it likely that by the fiat of any legislator, a particular section of the race, in close communica- tion with the rest, can be made suddenly to change that which has become a second nature and submit at once to total abstinence? You cannot extirpate the taste for stimulants by force ; you may turn it into other channels and perhaps in doing so deprave it ; you do deprave it when from beer and wine you drive men to ardent spirits, or possibly to opium. The minister or the philanthropist sipping his tea or coffee feels that he has done a very good work in cutting off from the labourer on the Pacific Railway his cup of beer ; but, as we saw the other day, the labourer in place of his cup of beer is supplied by the smuggler with spirits which may truly be said to be poison. Dram-drinking is the real evil ; what- ever can be done to discourage it and promote the taste for milder beverages let us do, and with that let us be content. Moral in- fluences have been working a happy change in the habits of our people : Prohibitionist journals themselves admit it ; and those in- fluences can only be weakened by an attempt suddenly to force upon the mass of the people an impracticable asceticism. Puritan experience has taught us that after a reign of Blue Law comes a revolt against morality. I I 1 The political moral deducible from the history of the Scoft Act is not confined to the case of that Act : it is far-reaching as well as of great importance. A new source of peril in the working of our institutions has been disclosed. The question which party takes up and on which it exacts the allegiance of its adherents are limited m number, and not always of first-rate magnitude. Other questions, especially social questions, though of the most vital importance to the community, are sometimes left open so far as party is concerned. With regard to the first class of questions, those on which party puts its stamp we are at all events governed by a majority, by whatever means that majority may be obtained. With regard to the other class we have not that assurance. A minority, may, by threatening each legislator and both parties collectively with its vengeance at the next election if they refuse to bow to its command, be enabled, especially when parties are nearly balanced, to force its hobby on the legislature and the nation. To the existence of this fell power crocheteers are becoming daily more alive, and a vista of cliquish legislation opens before us. ^ *' Is it expedient," asks the author of a pamphlet already cited, " or in accord with the spirit of our representative institutions, that Parliament should abdicate it functions and delegate to the county electorate in detail the determination of a question with which in its representative capacity it dare not deal ? " Assuredly it is not ; and attention has more than once been called in these columns to the dereliction of duty of which the representatives of the nation are guilty in turning us over to such a substitute for national legis- lation as the Scott Act. Whatever may be the ultimate effect of the Act, nobody can doubt that its immediate effects must be commercial havoc. In Toronto its adoption would destroy the value of property in the shape of buildings, machinery and estab- lished business to the amount of millions ; it would throw out of employment, and deprive of their bread a number of workmen, estimated at two thousand, against whom at all events no criminal charge can lie ; it would render worthless a mass of securities in . the hands of banks, and ruin or seriously injure more than one auxiliary trade. Whether this shall be done is a question which Parliament itself is bound to determine, and to determine at oi. j, that uncertainty, at all events, and the evils connected with it, may be at an end. At present the blow is always hanging over us, and we cannot tell when it may fall. A conclave of private agita- 8 tflrs sit watching for an opportunity to spring its mine, which may come to-morrow, or one or two years hence. When the Prohib- itionist leaders think they have found it, they will concentrate ail the forces and funds of an organized agitation upon the point of attack, while the community at large is unorganized and unpre- pared to encounter the assult. In the meantime uncertainty and confusion reign. Nor, supposing the assailants to be defeated, will the vote be final, or the commercial community be at rest. Another petition will be got up, and in three years the attempt will be renewed. The threatened interest and all the interests involved in its fate may be almost ruined by protracted menac without bring- ing the question to a vote. This, at all events, is not a state of things which any legislature, without an ignominious abdication of its proper functions, can allow to endure. Let Parliament muster courage and do its duty. Prohibitionism appears to be gaining the day at the polls ; nor is this at all wonuerful if the people believe what they are told by itb advocates on the platform. Some time ago the world was con- vinced by statistics which appeared conclusive that the parent of all vice was illiteracy, and that popular education would bring with it universal virtue. We know how cruelly this expectation has been belied. The fallacy lay in overlooking the fact that the same classes which were illiterate would naturally be also, from their ;?eneral circumstances, the most criminal, so that illiteracy and ; (me might coincide and yet neither of them be the parent of the other. A similar fallacy lurks in the promises made by the ":;achers of Prohibition. Depraved nat' es are disposed at once to brutal pleasures, such as excessive drinking, and to crime. But it by no means follows that if their drink was cut off their disposition to crime would cease. The Spaniards have been noted for their temperance ; they have always regarded drunkenness as deeply dis- graceful ; yet no nation has been more criminal. There are large classes of crimes such as del.oerate murder, burglary, theft and fraud of every description, which a man when drunk cannot possibly commit : burglary of the scientific kmd or forgery could scarcely be committed by a man whose wits were clouded by habitual drinking. Nothing seems more certair. than that moral agencies including those of Teetotahsm and other voluntary Reform associations are gradually prevailing over intemperance ; and their work when it is done is sure. The work of compulsory legislation is never sure. A taste which extends over the whole human race, including countries with which Canadians are in constant inter- course, can hardly be eradicated here ; and unless it is eradicated it may suddenly spring up again to its former rankness, while the moral agencies and the voluntary organizations will be no longer present to contend with it. Extirpation can be secured only by a strong government. The Prohibitionist writer who, in a recent number of The Week, boasted of the success of Prohibition in the North-West Territories, failed to see the effect of his admission that this success was due to the presence of the Mounted Police. Experience teaches that the result is very different when a sumptu- ary law passed by a bare majority is left to be carried into effect by authorities who are powerless without the concurrence of the people. The use of beer and light Vvunes which are bulky and difficult of concealment may perhaps be suppressed. Ardent spirits, which being in a small compass are easily smuggled, will then be the only drink of those who are not satisfied with cold water ^ and that the whole world will at once be satisfied with cold water is surely a sanguine anticipation. However, if the people will that the e^^eriment shall be tried, tried it must be. I It is creditable to our people, as well as natural, that they should throw themselves eagerly into the crusade when they have been persuaded that, by simply voting for a particular law, vice and all its consequences may be at once banished from the com- munity. Besides this it is especially true in the case of agitations that nothing succeeds like success : no sooner does it appear that the scale is turning in favour of the movement, than thousands hurry to the winning side. Politicians and Party organs, drawing a decent veil over their own past, ardently embrace the sacred cause which promises votes. In the present case the force of the churches is added to that of the platform. The clergy have really no choice ; any one of them who hung back would at once be made to fee the wrath of a. certain section of his congregation, comprising pro- bably some of its leading members. Even those who are under no pressure shrink from exercising their freedom of judgment when it brings them into collision with men whose motives they respect and who, in their passionate ';eal for the attainment of a great object, are apt to put a wrong construction upon difference of opinion ; as though a man might not heartily abhor drunkenness and yet doubt whether the best cure for it was the Scott Act. 10 Waves, however, even tidal waves, in time recede ; and, when the swell of enthusiasm which carries everything before it at the polls has spent itself, will come the daily stmggle to enforce the Act against multitudes wht se tastes and habits are not to be changed in a day by the vote of a majority any more than by the fiat of a paternal despot. Experience seems to tell us plainly what the result will be. Coercion will fail in the only places where it is re- quired : that is io say, where there is a prevailing taste for drink. No ordinary police will suffice, nor will any ordinary man turn in- former against his neighbours for an act which, though he may- think it very unwholesome, he cannot thi^k a crime. The licensed and regulated trade will perish, and the revenue from license fees with it; but its place will be taken by an unlicensed trade which will deal wholly in whiskey, and that probably of the worst quality,, since the risks of contrabandism must always be balanced by inor- dinate gains. Beer, especially if the soundness is secured (as it may be) by Government inspection, will be admitted by most people to be at any rate preferable to whiskey ; but beer is not easily smuggled, and therefore it will be banished from use. Cider and light wine, which share its comparative wholesomeness, will be banished with it, while the industries connected with it will be ruined. Whiskey, well charged with fusel-oil, will henceforth be the sole beverage of all who are not content with cold water. To close the distilleriei of ardent spirits, after paying proper compen- sation to their owners, would be the first measure of a reformer, as the writer of these papers has constantly maintained, and still maintains. But the distilleries are left untouched by the Scott Act. They will continue to produce the liquor ; and so long as the liquor is produced, it will find its way, openly or clandestinely, to the consumer. Tc constrain the people to drink bad whiskey in low dens is not the result which the authors of a moral crusade desire, but it would be one more added to many instances of the unexpected effects of coercive legislation, which often makes two holes in mending one. In the meantime some of the constituencies reject the Act ; and the country is becoming a chequer-board . of free and prohibited districts, while on th skirts of each prohibited district there will soon arise a frontier line of taverns. It is surely time that the Dominion Legislature should take upon itself the responsibility of settling this question for the whole country. IX The Scott Act people ask why an absolute majority of the electors should be required in a Scott Act Election more than in any other election. For two reasons, each of which is conclusive. In the first place, there can be no warrant for the sumptuary legis- lation which trenches on private liberty except a positive declara- tion of opinion on the part of a majority of the people that such legislation has become necessary. In the second place, it is notori- ous that unless the feeling, and the strong feeling, of a majority, and a large majority, of the people is in favour of th*^ measure a sump- tuary law cannot be practically enforced and general evasion with its moral consequences is the result. Neither temperance nor justice, however, is any longer the dominant object ; the dominant object is to force the Scott Act upon us. , , No plea surely can be more righteous than that of the brewers and others interested in the liquor trade for th^ requiremerr of a fair proportional majority, as a proof that the opinion of the com- munity is really and deliberately in favour of a sumptuary law. Those who decline to vote for the Scott Act must be counted against it, since they show by their abstention that in their opinion a case has not been made out for this extraordinary legislation ; and reckoning thus, it will be found that the Act has almost every- where been carried by a minority of the constituency. The result of course is that when carried it has no force of public sentiment to sustain it, and the only grant of the^ measure is the conversion of the liquor trade from a licensed and regulated business into un- regulated contrabandism. Fresh evidence appears, and in the columns of a jouriial which supports the Scott Act, thai in Maine you can have as much liquor as you please, only of vile quality, and in an illicit way ; while an English writer in the Pall Mall Gazette reports that he has been lookingin Maine for the good effect of Prohibition on the character and condition of the people, but no such effect is to be seen. The alcohol panic will in time sub- side ; perhaps it will be succeeded by an opium panic, a tobacco panic, or a tea panic ; people will get tired of decorating them- selves with the Blue Ribbon of Superior Virtue ; the political adventurers who are in that line of business will have gathered in their harvest ; and the Scott Act will either be repealed or fall into desuetude. We shall then find ourselves in face of an unlicensed liquor trade, while by the supression of beer and cider the people will have become use to drink nothing but ardent spirits, and the 13 moral agencies which are now successfully combating drunkenness will have fallen into abeyance. These adoptions of the Scott Act are ostensibly measures of local self-government ; in reality they scarcely deserve that name. Local opinion is not left to act spontaneously and with freedom. The movement is in fact carried on by a centralized organization, which brings its machinery to bear on one county after another, and some of the chief wire-pullers and stump-orators of which are now Americans, who of course have no compunction in ruining a Canadian trade. The menaced trade has not a fair chance because it may be attacked at any moment, and it cannot be always in a posture of defence or carrying on a counter agitation. It is time that Parliament should do its duty. This abandonment of legislation to agitators, local or general, is mere poltroonery. If it is necessary that a restriction should be imposed on the habits of the people, let the national Legislature impose it and see that it is carried into effect. Much of what the Licensed Victuallers ask from the Dominion Government is just and reasonable. A sumptuary law which deprives men of personal rights, in obedience to the demands of their neighbours, ought not to go into effect unless sanctioned by a clear majority ; and the resort to coercion, intimidation or bribe :y, when the vote on the Scott Act is taken, ought no more to enjoy immunity than they would in a Parliamentary election. . As the working of the Act is subject to much dispute, it would not be unrea- sonable to attempt to arrive at the real facts by means of a Royal Com- mission. There can be no real doubt that the general tendency of the measure is to substitute the secret, unlicensed sale of spirits for the legal sale of light wine and beer And there is much reason to doubt whether the quantity of alcohol consumed is lessened hy the restrictions of the Scott Act. In the County of Northumberland, New Brunswick, the Act has been in force since September, 1880, and the county council, by a vote of seventeen to seven, expresses ^ the opinion that the sale of intoxicating drink has not been lessened, • but rather increased. This agrees with what the Licensed Victual- i lers affirm. Sir John Macdonald was not able to promise that the demand for compensation for the depr'vation of business will come before the Legislature backed by the united support of the Government. The Government is not a unit on the subject. Speaking for himself. Sir John said that if Prohibition became ■ general he should favour compensation. Until Prohibition becomes 13 general, should it ever go so far, it would be difficult to measure the extent of the damage. So long as distilleries and breweries go on, the curtailing of their business would be only an imperfect measure of the extent of the injury which the loss occasions ; if they were closed altogether, the difficulty of ascertaining the damage would not be insuperable. Sir John said the question of compensa- tion had already been raised in Parliament but a money vote can only be taken on the initiative of the Executive, and this initiative will not be forthcoming. The forms of Parliament provide for cases, where the Executive initiative is absent, by means of an address to the Crown. Should Parliament pass the address, the Govern- ment would have the duty put upon it of deciding whether it would introduce a measure of compensation ; but Parliament is not likely to place itself in opposition to the current of feeling which is running strongly in favour of the Scott Act. Compensation is a distinct matter ; but the advocates of the Scott Act have given indications that they are prepared to disregard the justice of the claims which the Licensed Victuallers have put forward. To rely on the hope of compensation by Parliament is, apparently, to rely on a broken reed. What appears to be an immediate response to the liquor- dealers' claim comes in the form of a pamphlet, " The Liquor Traffic and Compensation." No light is thrown upon the contro- versy by the brochure, which consists principally of a reproduction of the arguments and denunciations smch as have been appearing for fifteen years past in the Alliance News and other paid organs of the Prohibitionists in England. To stifle the voice of equity, the pamphlet resorts, we are sorry to see, to the usual appeals to passion, comparing the case of a trade which has been licensed by the State, and is pursued by many persons of unimpeachable character, to the cases of slave-dealing, highw^/ robbery, and prostitution. When people write in this style it becomes evident that it is on violence, not on justice, that they are bent. The chief point of " W. F. C." in the notice with yrhich he has honoured the " Bystander's " comments on the Scott Act, seems to be the special temptation to intemperance involved in the habit of treating. Evidently the habit is vile. Let it then be abolished. Surely in such a community as ours there must be moral force enough to do this without the sinister aid of a sumptuary Act of Parliament. The practices of the Cample Room, says " W. F. C," are so objectionable that to get rid of them leading men of business I ^ L — 14 — All! qui seme le vent recolte la teinpete. ... Triomphe bieu ! demain, tu courberas la tete ! Pere ties trahisons, ton nom sera fletri ! Tu voulais avant tout que ce noni fut notoire ; Eh bieii, sois satisfait : tu vivras dans I'liistoire. . . Mais cloue sur un pilori ! Canada, Canada! dans cette nuit funeste, Qui fera resplendir le lambeau qui te reste De cette ardente foi qui pourrait te sauver ? Sur taut d'abaissement et sur tant de souffrance, Quand done pourrai-je voir, 6 jour de delivrance ! L'astre des peuples se lever ? O peuple, les crachats ont macule ta joue ; Un bouffon te harcelle un pierrot te bafoue ; On te hue, on te berne, on te pique, on te mord ; On t'arrache du front le bandeau de ta gloire. . . . Debout, peuple, debout ! vas-tu leur laisser croire Que le patriotisme est mort ? Ah ! montre qu'en depit de tant d'apostasie, Le courage des preux chantes par Cremazie Dans I'ame de leurs fils n'est pas encore ^teint ! Montre-leur ce que c'est qu'un peuple qui s'^veille. . . . Mais quel fracas soudain vient frapper mon oreille ? Qui gronde ainsi dans le lointain ? Plein de sombres eclats, de fanfares sublimes, Fort comme I'ouragan roulant sur les abimes, Tonnant comme la voix des vagues en rumeur, Confus comme les vents dans les grandes rainees. Quel est ce bruit puissant comme des chocs d'armees, Quelle est cette immense clameur ? 15 to |ir crusade. The politicians of the House of Commons shut up their own bar in deference to the Temperance Vote, and then run across the building to refresh the mselves at the bar of the Senate. The motion of which Mr. Beaty has given notice in the Dominion Parliament embodies what has been maintained in these columns to be the one rational, equitable and effective measure of Prohibi- tion. Beer and light wine he leaves free ; but with regard to spirits he goes straight to the mark, and proposes, instead of ineffectively meddling with the sale, absolutely to stop the manufacture and the importation, paying, as the justice on which all society is based requires, reasonable compensation to the distillers. If anything is t(5 be done — and we have never deprecated strong measures in case of real necessit}' — this is the right course. Whiskey, such whiskey at all events as our people commonly drink, may be said without great violence of language to be poison ; it may be said, at all events, to come fairly within the cognizance of sanitary police ; it acts injuriously on the coats of the stomach and engenders the dipsomanic craving which is apt to become hereditary. But it is to whiskey, as the liquor most easily smuggled, t at imperfect measures of indiscriminate prohibition, such as the Scott Act, practically drive the people. In truth they drive the people to worse things than the worst whiskey. The World gave us the other day a pleasant account of the diabolical compounds which contraband dealers, practically protected in their noxious traffic by imperfect prohibition laws, are able to sell at an enormous price to the unfortunate labourers on the railroads in the North-West. Paid lecturers are going about and telling the people that all alco- holic beverages are poison. Very slow poison wine and beer must be, since in England people live to a hundred who have drunk them all their lives. The first living authority on diet has just told us th'at wine drunk in small quantities with the meal does no man harm in body or mind. The notion that the moderate use of light -wine or beer must lead to excess, or to the use of stronger liquors, is confuted by the experience of tens of millions in the wine-growing countries, and in the countries where wholesome beer is the regular drink. When a man asserts that drunkenness is prevalent in the wine-growing countries he only shows that he can never have seen them. In Spain the sight of a drunken man is so rare that a crowd will flock to behold it. ff .'!;i i6 Senator Vidal wanted to know why, in the matter of strong drink, he and his children should not, as well as the Indians, be protected against themselves. The law may do something to pro- tect the savage from his own vicious instincts and feeble will ; pro- tection is given to him for the same reason that it is given to a child or an irresponsible person ; but the civilized man is assumed to be able to take care of himself, and when he is not his case is generally hopeless ; any law which interposes to protect him against himself he will disregard. If you drive the liquor trade into for- bidden places, the inebriate who is wanting in self-control will follow it. Professor Foster is not afraid to meet the issue which arises out of the retreat of the liquor traffic into concealed places. He thinks it a good thing to vake away the respectability of the traffic. But it cannot be a good thing to dissociate respectable men from the ^.affic, for. only desperate men will engage in a dis- reputable trade, and to indemnify themselves for the risks they run they will sell only the worst of liquor at the highest prices ; out of this no good can come *o their wretched patrons, or any one else, and it is difficult to see what is to be gained by the degradation of a trade which Professor Foster is willing to welcome. Latitude of statement in the orators of the Dominion Alliance would not create surprise ; but one would hardly expect to hear a clergyman solemnly aver, in so many words, that "the use of wine is not countenanced in the Scriptures," or a medical man protest that alcohol is not useful even as medicine. One speaker, who is Presi- dent of the West End Gospel Society, wished to " start a war against lobacco," and in doing so his intention was to invoke legis- lative aid. This is at least logical ; but why stop at tobacco ? The turn of tea and coffee has yet to come. The reaction against the contention of the elder Mill that the world was over governed has surely gone too far, when Prohibitionists and Socialists propose to substitute law for discretion in the common acts of the life of evety member of society, prohibiting the doing of things which are hurt- ful only in the abuse and indiflFerent, or helpful, in the innocent and moderate use. • • ,, At a Prohibitionist Meeting the other night it was announced t lat a number of signatures had been obtained " against alcohol £.nd tobacco." Tobacco is being more and more coupled with alcohol as a subject for Prohibition. Nor is there any reason why it should not. Whatever may be said against such use of alcoholic 1 »7 beverages as does not produce drunkenness may be said with at least equal force against the use of tobacco. Smoking does not nourish ; it only soothes ; it is capable of being carried, and often is carried, to injurious excess. A sad ir'.tance of this is now before the eyes of the public. Certainly no smoker who votes for depriv- ing his neighbours of their glass of wine or beer may be numbered among those who condemn the sins to which they have no mind. The next thing then will be a demand for legislation against tobacco, whicli will be supported by arguments analogous to those used in the present crusade. It will be proved by statistics that the criminal classes are fond, as unquestionably they are, of tobacco ; and it will be logically inferred that smoking is the source of all crime, and that if you could banish the pernicious weed you might close your gaols. It will then be the turn of the tobacconists to be classed with dynamiters and vermin. Anti-tobacconism will take the place in the minds of zealots, as Prohibitionism now does, of Christianity, and perhaps there will be the same imperfect rela- tion between the outgoing and the incoming religion. There is no limit to the principle of reforming private habits by compulsory legislation any more than there is to the passion which some worthy people have for regulating the opinions and actions of their neigh- bours. If we would submit to it, we ?.hould be governed till we became a Paraguay. One of the American ladies who came over to elevate and regenerate us, lecturing on the occasion to which we refer, exhorted her sex, as the queens of society, to mount the throne of moral rectitude and wield the sceptre of truth and purity — the report says " with no uncertain sound " — but a sceptre does not sound, though there may be sounds, and of no uncertain character, from those over whom it is wielded. Under this sway no plf asant vices will be allowed to exist except strong green tea, tight-lacing and small boots. Perhaps it will be prudent to issue a perpetual writ of ne exeat regno against all the male inhabitants,, lest any of them should be inclined to steal away from the realms, of truth and purity over which New England queens of society hold sway to the land of common humanity. Prohibitionists, if they really care to assure themselves of the soundness of their position, should read the article on " Moderation and Total Abstinence " by Mr. Sutton Sharpe in the current num- ber of the Fortnightly Review. They will find in it some reason for doubting whether the authority of medical science is really on their i side, and whether it is not rather in favour of those who believe that a moderate use of alcohohc drinks is good for the majority of mankind, especially for those who have to undergo severe labour either of body or of brain. They will at least see that the point is still debatable. The assumption upon which their action is based, and which forms their sole justification for coercing their fellow- citizens on a question of private health and taste, is that moderate ■use must lead to abuse ; and this is contradicted by the experience of hundreds of millions. They will be glad at all events to find that the truth of the hideous charges of intemperance against English- women is challenged, as it certainly may be witli good reason if the charges rest on no more trustworthy foundation than the work of the American, Mr. Gustafson, with its claptrap title " The Founda- tion of Death." While they are on the path of research, they may be induced to look back to the account of Prohibition in Vermont, given by Mr. Edward Johnson in the Popular Science Monthly of last May. They will there find that the ' 'w having been passed at first by a small majority, and having failed in operation, as under those circumstances it was sure to do, enactment has been heaped upon enactment and penalty upon penalty, till at last the exasper- ation of the baffled Prohibitionists has trampled on that which all freemen hold most dear by empowering the police, if they suspect the existence of liquor, to break without a warrant into any citizen's home. The infamous trade of the informer is of course encouraged by abundant bribes. And what is the result ? According to Mr. Johnson, the free and open sale of liquor, notwithstanding spasmodic and futile efforts to enforce the law. The number of places in which liquor is sold seems even to be on the increase. Legislation is forced through by moral violence and by the fears of politicians who stand in awe of the Temperance Vote ; but public opinion does not support coercion ; and, as Mr. Johnson says, of enforcing the law as the laws against burglary and larceny are enforced no one dreams for a moment. Unfortunately the attempt, although abortive, is not without consequences. The people learn disregard of law ; the taverns being unlicensed, are no longer regu- lated ; ardent spirits being most easily smuggled are substituted for more wholesome beverages ; and the moral agencies by whicji intemperance has been greatly diminished, are weakened by the fallacious confidence reposed in legislative coercion. But when people are careening on the wings of a supposed principle they think as little of practical consequences as they do of inconvenient rights. In Canada the wave of Prohibition continues to advance and has swept over Guelph, though the majority was far too small either to warrant the imposition of a sumptuary law or to give assurance of its enforcement. On the south of the line the wave does not continue to advance ; on the contrary it recedes, in Iowa, as we learn through the New York Tribune, seventy-five members of the Legislature have pronounced that Prohibition does not work well ; and if they are right the fact is important, since Iowa is both a law-abiding and rural State. But let people be as law-abiding and as rural as they will, they cannot, when the excite- ment of a crusade is over, be made to regard that as a crime which is none, or to help to send a neighbour to prison for preferring a glass of lager to a cup of tea or a cigar. The attempt o' the Pro- hibitionist leader to grasp the Presidency and its attendant spoils as the reward of his self-sacrificing philanthropy continues to act injuriously on his cause. The earth belongs to the Saints, but they ought not to be in too great a hurry to enter on their inheritance. Mr. St. John is loudly and circumstantially charged with having offered to "sellout"; and in reply to his fervent appeals to the Judgment Seat of Heaven his assailants persistently invite him to prove his innocence before a tribunal on this side of the grave. As he carries on agitation on both sides of the line Canada has some interest in the result. Professor Foster at the meeting of the Dominion Alliance expressed a truth to which many Prohibitionists give too little weight. " Prhibition," he said, to be successful '* must come from within and could not be enforced from without;" it was successful only when "it started in the hearts of the people." This is what any attentive observer of the Prohibition Movement might have learned from its pkst oscillation. In seven States of the American Union prohibitory laws were, after trial and confessed failure, repealed. Against this experience there is no equal body of countervailing evidence in favour of the efficiency and permanency of prohibitory laws. In Ontario the Scott Act has scored a series of successes ; but, when the last wave of Prohibition passed over the country, Canada escaped being added to the Maine Law countries only by the casting-vote of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. The most ardent jidvocate of Prohibition could not hope to secure anj'thing like so large a vote in the present House of Commons, and the Alliance distinctly recoiled from a proposal 20 to appeal to a plebiscite. From tlie floocl-tide of an equal vote on the floor of the House Prohibition receded so far as to pass out of sight and almost out of recollection. Why it so speedily and com- pletely lost all the ground it had made the words of Professor Foster best explain. A factitious movement had been sustained by an ebullition of enthusiasm in which the simulated element counted for much : politicians had seized on Prohibition as a crutch by means of which they hoped to hobble into power. The spark which kindled the enthusiasm was genuine, but much of the fuel by which the fire was kept up was contributed from sinister motives. Prohibition had but a feeble hold on public sentiment,, even when it seemed strongest and was nearest its goal ; it suffered a complete collapse on the withdrawal *" artificial support. Under what influences is tiie Prohibition wave now again rising ? As. before, it is set in motion by a genuine conviction that a necessity exists for stamping out the vice of intemperance, and the strong belief that one particular form of evil can be banished out of the world by the fiat of legislation is weakly indulged. Politicians, on. the outlook for votes, favour the delusion or quail before its pro- gress ; emotional natures are borne down by the passing wave of enthusiasm ; ministers of the Gospel array themselves on' the side of what many of them regard as the good cause, and the rest generally have their scruples quieted by the tyrannic influence of what passes for public opinion in alliance with virtue ; the masses are stunned by what they see passing around them, and are indifferent : a state of mind which persuasion has no difficulty in moulding so as to induce large numbers to give the legislative specific for the extirpation of intemperance a trial. We have here the measure of the "inwardness" of the movement on which its permanent success is admitted to depend ; and, in spite of external appearances, it cannot be said to be hopeful. Prohibitionism is not alone in the field. Recent reports frorrii England show that it has a rival in Vegetarianism, whioh is assum- ing highly respectable proportions. The leader of this crusade appears to be Mr. Francis Newman, the brother by blood and the direct opj>osite in mind of the famous Cardinal, a figure often con- spicuous in philanthropic and eccentric movements. As yet Vege- tarianism has not taken a political form, nor does it threaten the sellers and eaters of meat with extermination by the sword of the law ; but it holds language about " carnivorous " barbarism almost tl as high as that which the Prohibitionists hold about " intemper- ance." It has, Hke Prohibition, a certain amount of right upon its side. The excessive use of animal food is unquestionably a source of much disease, uf much ill-temper, and probably of many of the criminal or vicious actions to which physical derangement, extend- ing its effects to the moral character, gives birth. The error in both cases consists in the advocacy of total abstinence in place of temperance, while in the case of Prohibitionism the mistake is com- bined with the false belief that legislation has power to change the habits of mankind in a day. Excess, whether of meat or drink, is the only evil, Mrs. Youmans, on the Scott Act platform, creates, we are told, a thrilling sensation by the exhibition of physiological diagram.4, showing the effects produced by alcohol and tobacco on the human stomach. Tobacco is evidently marked out as the object of attack in the next crusade. Mrs. Youmans couples it, as a destroyer of the stomach, with alcohol, and Mr. Charlton told us the other day that whiskey and tobacco were two things in which a Christian gentleman would never indulge, a judgment which bears rather hard on Mr. Spurgeon. Mrs. Youmans, it is to be hoped, tells her audience whether the stomach taken as a specimen of the ravages of alcohol and tobacco was that of a man who had been drinking a single glass of wine or beer and smoking a single cigar a-day, or that of a drunkard and one never without a cigar in his mouth. She might complete her series of physiological illus- trations, and throw some light upon the practical question before us, if she would exhibit .a diagram showing what effects are pro- duced upon the stomach by the green tea, or the decoction bearing that name, which is daily swallowed in unlimited measure by male and female supporters of the Scott Act. In spite of all the industrial depression and distress in England, it turns out that there has been a remarkable diminution in crime. The judges dwell upon the fact as well as the statisticians. This improvement has taken place not only without Prohibition, but in the midst of a general indulgence in drink to which happily we have nothi:*^ parallel here. The certain inference is that crime may be reduced by agencies other than prohibitory laws. The probable inference is that though drink is very often the parent of crimes of the more violent kind, the connection between drink and crime generally is less close than Prohibitionists assert. That illiteracy was the source of all crime \yas once asserted just as 23 broadly, and as plausibly sustained with statistics, by the advocates of popular education. There was a limited amount of truth in that belief ; that there was only a limited amount is too clearly proved by the continuance of crime notwithstanding the extension of popular education. It is not the use of beer or wine that leads to crime ; the man who has taken his regular glass of either with his merl iL no more inclined to crime than he is to suicide. That which leads to crime is drunkenness ; of drunkenness the low whiskey saloon is the scene ; and the practical effect of such legis- lation as the Scott Act, as history has repeatedly shown, is to pre- serve and n ultiply the low whiskey saloons while it destroys the respectable trade. Prohibitionists, who sarcastically ask whether Tlie Week is a whiskey organ, may extend the charitable insinuation to the English Spectator, a journal not commonly regarded as a propagator of debauchery, which has been taking precisely the line taken in th-^se papers on the Temperance question. Admitting, as every s?.ne person does, the dangers of alcohol, and allowing that " the teetotalers have something to say for their exaggeration," the Spectator maintains that wine is not wickedness, and that theories raised on that" basis are fallacies contradicted by a glance at the history of the world. It observes that the greatest races, the Rom.an, the Greek and the Hebrew, have drunk wine, while great- ness has not attended total abstinence in the case of the Mussulman nations or of the Hindoos. The Sihks drink rum, and of all our native soldiers they are the most vigorous. It might be a Med that the Scotch have played a considerable part in history, while they have drank no inconsiderable amount of todtiy. The Spectator cites the ferocious acts of the Ba^hi Bazouks and other Mahome- tans as a proof that abstinence from drink is not abstinence from crime? of violence ; and it remarks that thieves in England are teetotalers, and all card and billiard sharpers impose on themselves the strictest moderation. Instead of being a whiskey organist, the " Bystander," for his part, has never ceased to point to whiskey, the kind of whiskey at least drunk by our people, as the real poison, and to advocate as the one honest and effectual measure the sup- pression of the manufacture with due compensation to those engaged in it. If he wanted to embitter the discussion of a public question by odious imputations he might plausibly maintain that the best friends of whiskey are the extreme Prohibitionists. They ., will not be able, without a police stronger and more inquisitorial than any free country will maintain, to compel all men, in obedience to their fiat and that of a bare majority, to drink nothing but cold water. So much seems to be clearly proved by the experience of Maine and other districts in which their system has been tried. The use of beer and light wine they will probably succeed in pnj- venting, because these beverages are not easily smuggled ; and ardent spirits, which are easily smuggled, will necessarily become the sole drink of those who are not content with water. It is cer- tain also that the denial of other stimulants is followed by an increased use of opium. Nobody questions the goodness of the end which the friends of Temperance pursue. But they must allow us freely to discuss the means which they propose, and to forecast more carefully than moral crusaders are apt to do, not only the immediate and direct but the remote and indirect consequences of their measure. They must also permit us to say that justice is .""he soul of the commonwealth, and that we cannot afford to have it summarily set aside in order to clear the way for a particular measure of sumptuary reform, however passionately desired. We cannot afford to let respectable citizens, for carrying on a trade not only lawful but licensed by the State, be treated as " bed bugs" or as '* vendors of dynamite for murderous purposes." Society has' set itself free by centuries of effort from the single-headed tyranny whose instrument of coercion was the sword : it does not want now to fall under a many-headed tyranny whose instrument of coercion will be the ballot. Intemperance in drink is not the only sort of intemperance or the only sort which produces bad effects on the health of the body and of the mind. Railway men who have employed large numbers of Irish emigrants say that thejlives of the emigrants are short, and ascribe the mortality quite as much to excess in the unwonted luxury of meat as to excess in whiskey. A man who has dined heavily on ill-cooked pork is at least as ripe for treasons as one who has taken a glass of wine. In voting for a Maine law the American farmer, for the most part, is virtuously condemning a vice to which he has no mind; but the ingredients of his own meals, his pie, and what he fondly calls his tea, would equally pro- voke the censure of a sanitary Lycurgus. Most of us, probably^ eat to much. Those whose occupations are sedentary, especiaLly, must often overload their stomachs and cloud their brains. Society 24 has fallen into a dietetic routine which leads every one to take a certain number of meals, the same in kind and quality, each day, whether he actually wants them or rot. An amount of animal food which was not excessive in the hunter state, when the man had to spend the day in violent exertion in order to catch his game, may well be excessive Tor those who have to make no physical exertion at all. Possibly the craving for strong liqueurs itself may not be unconnected with the over-indulgence in animal food. We are finding, too, that rehef hitherto sought in medicine would be better sought in abstinence. It is not improbable that in this era of general inquiry and change we may be on the eve of a dietetic revolution which through food will extend to the physical basis of character, and that Dr. Dio Lewis may be one of its precursors, though, like most enthusiasts, he is rather apt to propound his theories in extravagant and grotesque forms. The vegetarian as well as the anti-liquor men, have a good deal to say for themselves, if they would only be moderate and not imagine that they can at once change anytiiing so complex and so deeply rooted in custom as human diet. Both classes of reformers, but especially the anti- liquor men, need the warning which the Spectator gives them against fancying that by doing what they find best for their own health and most agreeable to their own taste they are raised to a height of moral grandeur, or that mere counsels of experience are to be elevated into moral laws, the least infringement of which is necessarily evil. A DELivF.r(.ANCE of Sir Andrew Clarke on Alcohol reproduced by the Mail seems about as sensible and as trustworthy as anything that has been said upon that subject. Sir Andrew tells us that he has made the question his special study. He pronounces en the one hand that alcohol is not in ordinary cases necessary to health, nor is it nutritious or helpful to nutrition. On the other hand he tells us thr><^ taken in small quantities at dinner or supper it cannot be proved to do a man any harm, physical, mental, moral or spirit- ual. " The world," he adds, " is not so full of gladness that we should refuse smiill quantities to chose who get gladness from it, though the less alcohol people take the better'" A cup of tea is not nutritious or helpful to nutrition, nor is a pipe of tobacco ; but both of then' soothe, and to vexed hum.anity soothmg is sometimes almost j.s necessary as nutrition. A glass of wine may not be a substitute for bread or meat ; but, as the Scripture says, it makes 25 { glad the heart of man. Taken in company, it gives a filip to his social feelings and disposes him to good fellowship. Prohibitionists aim, in effect, at the extinction of conviviality. Perhaps convivi- ality may be destined some day to disappear before the progress of intellectual refinement. Perhaps every stimulant, and not only every stimulant but cookery that tempts appetite and makes eating pleasant, especially at a cheerful board, may in course of time be discarded as grossness and become a memo«-y of the uncivilized past. Man may grow so spiritual as to limit him- self, like an eremite, to the amount absolutely necessary of the plainest food. Nay, the vision of the Comtist may be realized, and it may become the custom to hide as shameful the cravings of the aninirl nature and to eat only in secret. At present man, in the words of a plain-spoken moralist, requires some sensual pleasure, and if he is shut out from it by one door he will open for himself another. He is not taking it in its worst form when at his Christ- mas board he fills a temperate glass to the health of all friends, present or absent. Total abstinence, even at the Christmas board, may be the counsel of sanitary perfection ; Sir Andrew Clarke seems to intimate as much ; but we have no right, nor shall we find it practicable, to force our counsels of perfection on our neighbours. The attempt of the Prohibitionists in the United States to run a candidate of their own for the Presidency has resulted in a reaction against their cause. The Republican Party, from which most of their votes were subtracted, and which ascribes its defeat largely to the loss, has turned on them in a mood of high displea- sure. Their movement itself is now criticized with a freedom seldom exhibited while their political action hung in surpense and both parties feared the vengeance of their vote. The Utica Daily Press, for example, calls attention to the apparently adverse verdict of experience on the effiects of prohibitory legislation. The criminal record of the States in which the sale of liquor is prohibited is, accoruing to this journal, as bad as those of the States in which it is permitted under restrictive licenses. Statistics collected in Maine show that the greatest amount of pauperism prevails in cities and towns in which no liquor is sold. And now the Directors and Wardens of the Kansas Penitentiary report that in that State crime instead of dying out reached its highest mark while Prohibi- tion was most stringent. Figures are gi ^en by them to show that 26 districts where the sale of liquor was not repressed have sent to the penitentiary fewer convicts in proportion to their population than those in which repression was most complete. The crimes of violence are often committed under the influence of drink nobody can doubt ; still less can anybody doubt or be disposed to deny that drunkenness is a hideous and fatal vice which we ought all do our own utmost to restrain. Never in these editorial colums has wavering language been held upon that subject ; never have we deprecated the adoption of thoroughgoing and effective measures? in case it should be really proved, and not merely assumed by the orators of the Prohibition platform, that drunkenness was gaining ground in Canada, and there was no hope of repressing it by moral influence. But the question whether a particular law works well or ill, whether it diminishes or increases the evil which it is intended to cure, is surely one on which we may be allowed to hear the evidence of experience before organized agitation thrust the law dftwn our throats. • f I We give an extract from Canon Farrar's vehement and eloquent reply to Baron Bramwell's defence of liquor. The Baron was rather brusque, but the Canon misses the point. The question is not whether we think fermented liquors wholesome or unwholesome, but whether coercive legislation is wise and just. There are many things the wholesomene^ of which is questionable, or which may even be deemed certainly unwholeson.e, yet to which nobody would dream it either wise or just that coercive legislation should be applied. Excess is not confined to drink. In the same number of the Nineteenth Century in which Canon Farrar's reply appears, there is an article on Diet by Sir H. Thompson, who avows his conviction that more miscl ''ef in the form of actual disease, of im- paired vigour, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized men from erroneous habits in eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic liquors, great as he deems that to be. " I am not sure," he adds, " that a similar comparison might not be made between the respec- tive influences of those agencies in regard of moral evil also." Yet neither he nor any other man in his senses wrtld propose to pass an Act of Parhament regulating diet. Milk, among other things. Sir W. Thompson pronounces to be, in the case of all but infants, altogether superfluous and mostly mischievous as a drink. Parti- cularly noxious he considers it to be when taken as a beverage with meat. If he is right, and milk produces dyspepsia, we may be sure I'- n that it also produces ill-temper, and thus disturbs the peace of families. Are we, then, to pass a law prohibiting the drinking of milk and affixing special penalties to the drinking of milk after eating beef? Is not everybody in this case content to leave the matter to the teachings of individual experience combined with those of medical science ? If, as Canon Farrar avows, the total abstainer finds in his abstinence greater pleasures than the drinker of wine finds in his glass, and at the same time feels that he gains infinitely in wealth, respectability and comfort, surely he can make this apparent to his fellows and induce them to follow his example. Nature has framed her law against ii: emperance and she inflicts the penalty with perfect certainty and rigorous justice on high and low alike. Canon Farrar abjures the doctrine that drinking wine is in itself wicked, and says that those who argue against it are fighting a chimera. " For myself," he says, " I can only say that during nine years of total abstinence I have never so much as told young persons in confirmation classes, or even chil- dren in my own national schools, that it is their duty to abstain ; and as for morally condemning miilions of wise and virtuous men who are not abstainers, I know no total abstainer who would not heartily despise himself if he could be guilty of a judgment so wholly unwarrantable." The Canon speaks of the Prohibitionists whom he knows, there are some whom he does not know, and for whom, perhaps, he would not be so ready to answer. He writes very magnanimously about the duty of sacrificing private rights to the public good. But then, in the first place, we ought to be sure that it is really the public good ; and, in the second place, we ought to be sure that we are ready to sacrifice our own rights as well as those of others. Would Canon Farrar be quite as ready to sacrifice his own tea as he is to sacrifice the labouring man's beer ? He says that he has been a total abstainer for nine years. But, in all that time, has not the Canon once received the sacrament ? The first introduction of wine in Scripture, he says, is connected with the fall of a patriarch. One of the last introductions of wine in Scripture is the institution of the Eucharist. There is no limit to delusions or to the freaks of opinion, other- wise it would seem incredible that a great effect should be pro- duced, as we are assured it is, in the Scott Act controversy by the amazing theory that the wine of Scripture was unfermented. It is surely a remarkable thing that this notable discovery should have 28 been hidden from the eyes of all the learned men who have been engaged for so many centuries in the interpretation of the Scrip- tures, and revealed only when it was required to cover a weak point in the argument for the Scott Act. Very weak no doubt the point is, and pressing was the necessity of covering it. If Christ not only drank wine himself but has provided that it shall be drunk for ever by making it a part of a sacred ordinance, the Christians who denounce wine as poison and the use of it as sin cannot help finding themselves in an awkward dilemma. But no independent scholar will endorse or even treat with respect the novel hypothesis by which an escape from the dilemma is sought. Tlie word always used in the New Testament is oinos : the same word is used by all the Greek writers and means invariably fermented wine : while the cognate word vinum in Latin everywhere bears the same meaning. Does anybody suppose that when the Pharisees charged our Lord with being a winebibber they meant that he drank only the unfer- mented juice of the grape ? Is that the point of the contrast between John who came not drinking wine and Jesus who came drinking it ? The wine into which the water was turned at the marriage fe»-3t, the wine upon which, when used in the Agape, some of the Corinthians got drunk, the wine of which St. Paul advised his friend to take a little for his stomach's sake, the wine which with oil the Good Samaritan poured into the wounds of the man who had fallen among thieves, the wine which when put new into old bottles would burst them — does anybody believe tha* this was unfermented ? Would such a fancy ever have entered any- body's head if there had not been a cause to plead, and a cause which required a good deal of pleading ? Canon Farrar is strong for Total Abstinence and at the same time a learned divine : let him be asked whether he holds that the wine of Scripture was unfer- mented. . ] The Scott Act people, it appears, are circulating as a campaign document a sermon by Canon Farrar on the evils of drink. Canon Farrar is to say the least highly rhetorical, and even as regards England his language is somewhat Apocalyptic. After all, as has been said before, these beer-drinking English are not a race of valetudinarians and imbeciles : they are both in body and mind about the most energetic of all races, their greatness is the envy of other nations, and they happen to be remarkably long-lived. But when will people understand that Canada is not England, and that n ;en ip. ak he ist nk ms -IP 5nt language which may be applicable to one is totally inapplicable to the other. In England not only are the natural habits of the people less temperate than those of our people, but the Licensed Victuallers are an organization of enormous wealth and overween- ing power, pushing its branches almost by force into every corner of the country : not waiting for a demand, but thrusting its beer on the people and exerting in aid of its comrrfercial objects a political influence of the most formidable and tyrannical kind. We have nothing like this organization of evil here, and those who transfer Canon Farrar's dismal description from his own country to ours might almost as well transfer to our sanitary condition a descrip- tion of that of New Orleans at the time of the yellow fever. The people of Canada, we repeat, are on the whole temperate and have been giving daring the last half century the most satisfactory proofs of their power of self-reform. Of the cases of drunkenness brought before our police courts, the majority belong, we believe, to an immigrant nationality, and are those of people not yet assimilated to Canadian habits. But Canon Farrar, denunciatory as he is, does not go anything like v .e length of the promoters of the Scott Act. He positively repudiates the doctrine that total abstinence is a duty ; he admits that there are " millions of wise and virtuous men " who are not total abstainers ; and he belongs to the Church of England Temperance Association, of which temperance, not abstinence, is the aim. The clergy of the Church of England as a rule are hignly educated, and their high education preserves them from fanaticism and extravagance. Toronto has been enjoying almost a cataract of American elo- quence. Among other orators the Hon. John B. Finch, of Nebraska, has been delivering himself of a lengthy argument against paying any compensation to Canadian liquor-sellers for the abolition of their trade. We hope we are not guilty of any inhospitality or discourtesy toward this distinguished stranger in asking why he, as a foreigner, should feel called upon to interfere in a question of right between our Government and its citizens ? He tells us that the case of Canada is quite different from that of the United States. In the United States, he says, the Constitution provides that private property shall not be taken without just compensation, but in Canada there is no such provision ; here Parliament is absolute, and may despoil the citizen under legislative ^orms to any extent that it pleases. We beg leave to assure the Hon. John Finch that 30 though the rules of natural justice may not be formally set out in the British North America Act, or in the Canadian Statute Book, they are not the less written on Canadian consciences, and that, if he thinks that in crossing the line he has left behind all restraints on his philanthropic propensities, he never was more mistaken in his life. Of his invectives against those engaged in the liquor trade we can only say that, if a Christian church was the suitable theatre for their delivery, Christian churches in general, and those belonging to the communion of John Wesley in particular, must have undergone a great change of destination. Suppose the policy of the State requires that the calling of these men should be suppressed, and they should be deprived of their livelihood, is that a reason for overwhelming them with foul abuse, imputing to them crimes which are mere figments of a malignant fancy, and hunting them down like beasts ? Is it not rather a reason for treating them, at all events, with scrupulous equity, if not for show- ing them some consideration and sympathy ? Mr. Finch admits that not very long ago, and at the time when many of these men entered the trade, it was deemed by all persons, including clergymen, perfectly moral ; and in order to make out that the liquor-sellers are nevertheless fit subjects of penal treatment, he affects to believe that they have broken faith with the community which, when it licensed them, was led to suppose that their trade would promote happiness and virtue. Does he mean to say that the community did not know that intoxicating liquors would intoxicate ? All respectable liquor - sellers have obeyed the laws passed for the regulation of their traffic. What more could they do ? It is diflS- cult to believe that any person in that congregation not beside himself with party feeling can have thought that Messrs. George and William Gooderham, Mr. O'Keefe and Mr. Quetton St. George were with truth and reason described as men who " deliberately and maliciously buried their arms to the elbows in the blood of the best inteiests of a free people," and as miscreants " whose crimes have not been committed in moments of passion, but after coolly and deliberately figuring the profits to come from such ruin, and paying for the privilege of carrying forward such work " ? Whom did they pay ? The State, which by receiving the license fee expressly sanctioned their business and pronounced it moral. What does the Methodist Church itself say about the benefactions which it is receiving from Mr. Gooderham ? Are these the pro- ducts of social crime and tainted with human blood ? There are 31 in ok, ,if nts in luor men in the trade as respectable, as upright, as incapable of deliber- ate or wilful crime against society as Mr. Finch himself. There are some black sheep, and experience shows that the number will be increased tenfold if Mr. Finch's policy cf Prohibition is adopted; but are there not also some black sheep ir. Mr. Finch's trade, which we presume is that of a politician ? The motive for bringing against the manufacturers and sellers of liquor these charges, which no sane being even on a party platform can believe, is that, in order to get rid of the inconvenient claim to compensation, it is necessary to harden the heart and deaden the conscience of the public. A Christian Church, we repeat, is hardly the proper scene for these orgies of uncharitable invective. We will add that sins of maHce are worse than sins of sense ; bad as drunkenness is, it is not so bad as malignity and injustice. Thf. attempts to nullify the significance of a demonstration of public opinion serve only to lend emphasis to the fact that public opinion has at last begun to manifest itself with something like free- dom on the subject of the Scott Act. The great political weakness an 1 one of the greatest dangers of communities in which the will of the majority is law is the fear which everybody has of not being in the majority. Too many people bow before any prevailing gust of sentiment like reeds before the wind. They have not yet learned apparently how easy it is to manufacture sentiment by means of an active organization and an apparatus of paid lecturers, platform oratory, and campaign literature combined with social and com- mercial pressure such as the promoters of the Scott Act have employed. The Scott Act party has constantly refused the one decisive test, or rather it has virtually admitted that the verdict of the one decisive test would be against it, by resisting the proposal that an absolute majority of the electors should be requisite for the adoption of the Act. In this it has been wise in its generation ; for the fact is, that while it has appeared to sweep county after county by overwhelming majorities, it has not had one-third of the electors in its favour. In an aggregate of counties of which the total elec- torate is 398,764 the total number of votes cast for the Scott Act was only 123,588. More than two-fifths of the electors have stayed at home. Those who thus abstained from voting cannot have been in favour of the law ; at all events they cannot have reached that degree of conviction which alone will justify a man in imposing a sumptuary law upon his neighbours. The probability is that a 3« ^ great many of them were against the Act but were intimidated morally, if not in anj other way, by the overbearing violence of the movement. They were afraid of being labelled and denounced as friends of drunkenness and supporters of the Devil's cause. Every Presbyterian and Methodist minister is under pressure which it is scarcely possible for him to resist. The politicians have, of course, gone with what they have taken to be the majority, some of them, plainly enough, against their own convictions, and the political press has been compelled, to a great extent, to follow suit. While one side has been intensely aggressive on the other apathy has reigned. Resistance has been left to the Liquor Interest which was, of course, at a great moral disadvantage, though the mon- strous criminality of defending your trade and your bread against those who are trying to deprive you of them is not so apparent to the ordinary mind as ' is to that of the Prohibitionist, who seems to think that a brewer ought at once to see in him the chosen instrument of Heaven deputed to punish brewers for their iniqui- ties, and at once ^o forth meekly with his family to starve. But a blow in favour of freedom of opinion in this question seems at length to have been struck by the formation of the Liberal Ten- - perance Union, the organizers of which are entirely independent of the liquor trade. The Union is formed on the principles which its leading members have publicly maintained from the outset, and which are those of inspection, regulation, and the substitution of lighter and more wholesome beverages for ardent spirits. It thus, while keeping terms with human nature and aiming at nothing impracticable, offers a platform on which any citizen can stand without moral misgivings or fear of being branded as a friend of drunkenness. There is a prospect at all events for those constit- uencies which remain uncommitted of hearing something like a free discussion of this most important issue before they bow their necks to the yoke of the Scott Act. The Hon. J. B. Finch, of Nebraska, and his friends when they, with most Christian lips, revile the Pre- sident of the Temperance Union as a " blackguard " and an Annex- ationist, pay a tribute after their own fashion to the importance of the Association, and show themselves conscious of a turn in the tide. :-'■'■ '• ,,= -■-■•■:■ . ■•'".,