ries. It is time, however, that this cowardly attempt to make a scapegoat of one particular class was shown up in its true colours. If a saloon-keeper is a murderer because he sells liquor by the glass, what shall we say of the wholesale grocer and wine merchant, who sell it by the hogshead? What shall we say of the brewer and distiller, who manufacture and sell it by the thousand hogsheads; what of the princely grain merchant and speculator "on change," who, where the saloonkeeper makes his hundreds, make their thousands a year by speculating in barley and other grain used for the manufacture of alcohol; what of the farmers, who grow the barley and other grain, knowing for what purpose it is to be used; what of the maltster, the hop-grower, the vine grower? If the saloon-keeper is a murderer by retail, are not these people murderers by wholesale? or is the responsibility passed on from one to the other till the whole burden is finally laid on the shoulders of the retailer, as a sort of vicarious sacrifice or substitute for the rest? A brief apologue is in point here, as affording some sort of clue to the amount of genuine honesty at the bottom of this Prohibition movement. In Frontenac, the county of which Kingston is the capital, the Dunkin Act was passed some few years ago, its successful passage being mainly due to the votes of the farmers. The principal crop grown in the county is barley, the great bulk of which is sent over to the States, for the purpose, as these farmers well know, of being manufactured into alcoholic "poison." Would it not be well if some of our Prohibition writers or orators were to turn their attention in this direction? Surely there is an opening here for a little rhetoric. One promising subject, at least, could be dilated on,-the virtue of Consistency, and what a beautiful thing. it is. Something might be said, too, about "sordid greed," and "trafficking in the woes and sorrows of mankind." Perhaps, however, it is thought that, in this particular case, the desire to turn an honest penny is a nobler attribute of humanity than even honesty or consistency.

There is a family likeness among fanatics of every age. Witch-burners and Inquisitors lived and died in the odour of sanctity; and one of the most conspicuous marks of the Prohibitionists of to-day is the assumption of exalted virtue. God is on their side, and the Devil on that of those who differ from

Pharisaism is

them. This characteristic aptly dealt with by the Saturday Review, in an article on the "Absolute Suppression of Trade in Drink." It says:

"The invasion of private liberty which would be involved in such a system would be a heavy price to pay, even for increased sobriety; but the decisive argument against it is that it is impracticable. Indeed, there tempt being made to give effect to this principle has is reason to believe that the mere prospect of an atalready done a great deal of mischief. We do not mean to dispute the assertion that the number of abstainers is steadily increasing, or that this is, in ittotalers, which they are perfectly free to adopt, that self, a good thing. It is not the practice of the teeis injurious, but the spirit of self-righteous and aggressive intolerance which they are apt to assume. Teetotalism is essentially, of course, a confession of personal weakness, yet there is no class which is so intensely conceited as to its moral superiority over the rest of the community. There can be no doubt that what gives an impulse to this movement is in a large degree the gratification which the members derive from the conviction that they are entitled to set themselves up as an example to the world, and to enforce on others compliance with their rules. It is impossible to read the speeches and articles in favour of this view without being struck by the tone of bit

ter and arrogant dogmatism which invariably perharm, because it rouses a natural instinct of resentment and defiance, and rallies all those who, without any sympathy with drunkenness, are not disposed to submit to a system of administrative despotism, in opposition to the teetotal cause. Experience has shown that in such a case it is impossible to enforce a sweeping change by coercive measures which are contrary to the general temperament and habits of the population, and that some gentler and more conciliatory method must be tried."

vades them. And it is this which does so much

Moreover, after all, this claim to superior virtue is not always well founded. Most of the total abstainers with whom I am acquainted are hard smokers. Like a good many other moral reformers, they

66

Compound for sins they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." These people would, I fancy, be somewhat astonished if it were proposed that the measure which they mete to others should be measured to them again,-if, for instance, non-smokers were to agitate for the passage of an Act to prohibit the sale of tobacco in any form.

And yet I have just as much right to stop a man from smoking a cigar, as he has to prevent me from drinking a glass of beer; or rather, there is just as little right to do one as the other.

A few words remain to be said respecting the third objection to the Act,—that it legalises robbery. In places where the Dun

kin Act is not in force, liquor-selling under license is legal; as soon as the new Act comes into effect anywhere, the traffic becomes illegal; and the contention is, that when a legislature makes any traffic illegal which before was legal, it is bound by every principle of equity and honesty between man and man, to give compensation to all who inevitably, and without fault of their own, suffer loss in consequence. It is by no means contended that "the liquor-seller alone is to be protected "* in this way. The principle is of universal application, and has been almost universally acted on in modern times, except in the liquor-laws of Canada and the United States. The exceptions only prove the rule. If legislative iniquities have been perpetrated in the past, that is no rea son why they should be perpetrated now. One strong ground for protesting against the Temperance Act is, that it shall not be quoted as a precedent in justification of similar iniquities in the future. The contention that the Act is guilty of spoliation, because, from the first section to the last, it contains no word as to compensation to those whose property it depreciates in value, and whose means of livelihood it takes away, has been called "a gem of logic," and has been replied to in this fashion: "So much property is engaged in the liquor-traffic, so many people are dependent upon it. All this property is to be destroyed, all these people are to be robbed! How? By legislation? Is this legislation fair and above board? Yes. Is due notice given? Yes. Is it demanded by the majority? Yes, else it cannot be had. Where then is the robbery?" The feeble glimmer of the solitary gem is quite eclipsed. Here we have a whole cluster of gems. Their overpowering brilliancy will be made evident by repeating the questions with a different application, substituting the Act for the burning of Heretics in place of the Temperance Act: "So many people engaged in worshipping God in their own way, so many people dependent as they believe for their eternal life upon the right to do so. This right to be destroyed, all these people to be robbed of their lives?

How? By legislation? Is this legislation fair and above board? Yes. Is due notice given? Yes. Is it demanded by the majority? Yes, else it cannot be had. Where, then, is the murder?" Yes, where? Is it not plain that we have here merely the old "might is right" argument in a new dress? "Where then is the robbery?" The writer who gave the finishing polish to his cluster of jewels with that question, in seeking to bolster up his argument by instances from history, dropped the word "slaveholders."* The allusion was an unfortunate one. For myself, I say, with Gratiano,

"I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word,"

and will shew my gratitude by recalling a

fact or two which Prohibitionists find it con

venient to forget or ignore. When slavery, which up to 1833 had been legal in Jamaica and other British Colonies, was made illegal, the slaveholders were compensated at a cost of £20,000,000 sterling. Moreover, had slavery in the Southern States been abolished in time of peace, there can be no question but that similar compensation would have been made there. The rights of the slaveholders were annulled by the war; though, notwithstanding that fact, States which should re-enter the Union, and slave-masters who should return to their allegiance, before the 1st of January, 1863, were specially excepted from Lincoln's abolition proclamation of the 22nd September, 1862. Are grocers and hotel-keepers less entitled to justice than slave-drivers? Is selling a glass of beer a more atrocious act than selling a human being; or the traffic in drink blood? But, in truth, the question of better The sole consideration which a legislature or worse has nothing to do with the matter. has any right to look at in dealing with the question of compensation or no compensation when a certain traffic is suppressed, is,

worse than the traffic in human flesh and

not whether the traffic has been moral or

immoral, but whether it has been legal. If it has, its morality is conclusively assumed as against the legislature which permitted it. Of course, no one pretends that a man who had been selling liquor without a licensethat is, illegally-would be entitled to compensation on the passage of a Dunkin Act,

CANADIAN MONTHLY, November, 1877, p. 525

even though it contained a general compensation clause.

But there is no need to step aside from liquor legislation to slavery for precedents. The English House of Commons would no more dream of passing a Permissive Bill without a compensation clause, than of passing an Act to rob the Bank of England. An attempt to pass a Bill far less iniquitous in its provisions than the Temperance Act, did more than anything else to destroy one of the strongest governments that England has seen during this generation. In 1871, Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary of the Gladstone administration, brought in his famous "Intoxicating Liquors (Licensing) Bill." It provided that two classes of certificates should be issued,—a publican's and a beer-house keeper's, and that every seller should take out one of these licenses, with a ten years' title to renewal, after which he would be subject to refusal where the licenses were too numerous. In effect, the Bill sought to convert a license nominally annual but really looked upon as perpetual, into one for ten years certain. Speaking of the fate of this Bill, Mr. Arthur Arnold, a friend to Gladstone's Government and a strong temperance advocate, says: "We need not recall to mind the storm which this Bill caused. Confiscation' was the cry of the Liquor-sellers, and they drove the Bill from Parliament. The Quarterly Review, eager to make political capital out of a blunder so culpable, because the attempt was so hopeless, said of the measure, that'stimulated by an insane desire of notoriety, or pricked by furies in the shape of Welsh teetotalers, the unfortunate Home Secretary, taking counsel as is said with an

agent of a London brewery, and with some abstainers in his own office, put forth the bill.' Such was its ribald epitaph.' Mr. Bruce gained wisdom by experience, and in the following session brought in his "elastic" Bill, providing among other things, for the purchase of licenses at a valuation. The Bill became law. But the feeling created by the former one was not to be removed, and at the next general election the Gladstone administration were, by an overwhelming majority, ignominiously driven from office, where they still remain. That has been their richly deserved punishment for attempting a work of spoliation much less in iniquitous in principle than that perpetrated by the Dunkin and Temperance Acts. Mr. Bruce's unfortunate Bill gave liquor-dealers a ten years' right of renewal in lieu of a perpetual one; the Temperance Act gives them nothing. It plunders them, purely and simply.

The reply usually accorded to this plea on behalf of liquor-sellers for compensation, has been a sneer about "sympathising" with saloon-keepers. If the sneer were relevant it might be answered that, as the victims of an unrighteous law, they are entitled to sympathy; and that, if extended to them, it would be, at least, far less misplaced, far more wholesome than the maudlin sentimentalism which has no feeling to spare except for the drunkard, the man who, by his own act, reduces himself below the level of a swine. But the sneer is not relevant. Liquordealers do not ask sympathy. They simply ask for JUSTICE. And this their claim is good. SORDELLO.

Fortnightly Review, April, 1873, p. 485.

UPITER PLUVIUS forsooth! Why in days such as these Jupiter would have been fain to have "reinforced" his tumbler of hot nectar-toddy and to have foregone the pleasures of a scamper after Io, putting up instead with the "old original ox-eye (as he was once known, in a profane moment, to call Juno) at home. One can imagine the monarch, very much hipped at so

bolts, and that the powder-monkeys in his celestial armoury have been skylarking about with lucifer matches for an hour and yet have produced no more effect on his combustibles than a mere fizzle, like the spluttering of a damped squib!

Esculapius has been summoned in, has prescribed and taken his fee,- for when a man is forced to stop at home he always fancies he is unwell,—and the last refuge for ennui was exhausted, and results might have become serious, when a prodigious uproar was heard in (not to put too fine a point upon it) that department of the heavenly household that caters for the inner man, and replenishes the waste of ichor with victuals and liquor; in other words the kitchen and cellar, which (in well regulated abodes of bliss) go hand-in-hand together. Jupiter having summoned the authorities from belowstairs before him, and frowning very severely to make up for the awkward predicament he was in as to thunderbolts, demanded the cause of the disturbance. With much elbowing and jostling the two culprits were pushed to the front, The rubicund (for so I translate "rosy") Ganymede stood forth as accuser, and after one or two interruptions from Hebe, who seemed to share his not unnatural indignation, thus formulated his complaint:

"High and mighty! This blear-eyed son of nothing, this infinitesimal modicum of humanity, this addle-headed corrupter of good manners, found I in your divinity's cellar setting the best and oldest nectar a-swimming on the floor!"

"Perhaps he was thirsty," suggested Jove, amicably, wiping his mouth across the back of his hand and looking round for his goblet. "Thirsty Why he reviled at the good liquor and swore it was doctored."

"Oh! he was drunk," said Jupiter in disgust," take him away; drunk and disorderly; five dollars' fine or the lock-up."

But here the culprit gave tongue. He would not rest under such an imputation. So he lectured them chemically, till it appeared that the juice of the grape was chiefly logwood, salt, cocculus Indicus, methylated spirits, and poison, with the exception of so much of it as was made direct by fermenting rotten potatoes. Then he took them up historically and argued that, though the Greeks were a fine race of men without a prohibitory liquor law, they would have been finer with

one, unless indeed they had one, which appeared (to the lecturer) very probable, as none of their writers denied it in so many words. Of course when he came to the religious grounds he sermonized them finely. He kept on at Noah for an hour and a half, and seemed loth to quit him, when Jupiter interrupted.

"Whom have you here?"

The other culprit stood confessed. "One Vulcan, a blacksmith by trade." "Go on, brother," said the temperance advocate; confess it boldly."

So Vulcan confessed his former thirsty habits (a grin going round the circle at the word "former"), and how the shocking treatment he received from his wife (Mars remembered he had an appointment and went out at the backdoor) had led him to seek refuge in the flowing bowl (a groan from the advocate). But now,-here Vulcan began to stammer and hesitate, winding up by clasping a bit of blue ribbon to his breast and weeping maudlin tears over his new associates.

Jupiter seemed to grow a size and a half larger as he proceeded to give sentence :

"Kick me that prater down to Hades," quoth he, "and then we may expect some dry weather, not before."

So he was kicked, and the rain cleared up. "How about the reformed man?" asked one.

"Come again in a week and judge for yourself!" laughed Jupiter

-The May meetings have come back again. I say come back because they seem to me more like revenants, or returning ghosts, than anything else. The old sentiments, the old resolutions, the old foregone conclusions, the old belittling of adversaries and confident predictions of their speedy overthrow, the old unctuous phrases,-everything as of old, but ghostlier year by year. Does it never strike our friends who draft resolutions and make speeches for these meetings, how little resemblance their language has, for the most part, to that of real life? Do they never feel as if they were trying to pump up enthusiasm from a very deep well, and had an enormous amount of suction to overcome? Compare the proceedings and the tone of the speeches at a Bible or a Tract Anniversary with what we read of an ordinary meeting, say of the British Association for the

the Advancement of Science. In the one case we have the heavy iteration of worn-out phrases, speeches which any experienced newspaper reporter could have written out beforehand, the old conventional flings at Romanism and Infidelity, a most conventional thankfulness for small mercies, and everything else to match. In the latter case there is life, movement, energy, naturalness of language, and an enthusiasm which no one suspects to be simulated, seeing that the grounds of it are visible to all men in the unceasing progress and signal achievements of science. The contrast needs hardly to be insisted on. He who runs may read, and they who run, the busy men and women, the sanguine youths of to-day, do read.

One speaker at the Bible Society meeting spoke of "a great and effectual door" to the preaching of the gospel being opened by the Turco-Russian war. Now, first of all, imagine a serious and earnest man using such a phrase as "a great and effectual door," even though there be a certain amount of New Testament authority for it. Is that the language of the world or of common-sense? Doors may be " great" in the sense of large; but can a door be "effectual?" Is it to be supposed, however, that the Bible will have any more affinity for the Turkish populations as the result of the war than it had before? It has been repeatedly stated that Christian missionaries had free course in Turkey, that the government never interfered with their operations, showing in this respect more liberality than that of Russia. Surely, then, here was "a great and effectual door" already, all the door the Bible needed if it was really the thing that was wanted in that part of the world. Will the Turks be much more favourably disposed towards the Bible now that they have just been crushed by a Christian nation, and now that they have found out that the policy of the most Christian and Bible-loving nation in the world is summed up in two words-" British interests ?"

Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, thinks that we ought to give up defending the Bible, and should use it as an instrument of aggression. Perhaps the Doctor had been reading Dr. Newman's verses on "The Religion of Cain," where he exclaims :

"Brothers ! spare reasoning;--men have settled long

That ye are out of date and they are wise; Use their own weapons; let your words be strong,

Your cry be loud, till each scared boaster flies; Thus the Apostles tamed the Pagan breast, They argued not, but preached, and conscience did the rest,"

Such advice would be all very well if it were only practicable; but this is an age when people are not disposed to let debatable statements pass without argument. Even the Apostles would find that, if they were now alive; and we fancy that any who try to follow Dr. Dawson's advice, and hurl the Bible at the heads of people who are not satisfied as to its authority, will find that they are going through a very idle performance. Another speaker said that the men of France lacked manliness and the women virtue, all because of the prevalence of the Roman Catholic religion in France. This is a fair sample of the wholly uncritical and unauthenticated style of remark which is deemed. suitable to these occasions. Surely when men profess to be dealing with the most important verities, they ought to show a little more regard for accuracy and proportion of statement that such a remark exhibits. Yet it will be the same next year, and the next, and as long as the revenants pay us these yearly visits, or as long as men make it a duty to stereotype their opinions as an act of homage to a God of truth.

I was lately asked for a definition of genius, by a friend who strongly resented Harriet Martineau's dictum, that the author of "The Constitution of Man" was destitute of that gift. My friend would have it that any one who opened up a new and important line of thought, and who propounded his views with enthusiasm must be possessed of genius. From this I dissented, holding that we recognised genius in a certain mode of working of the mind, rather than in the work done. Perhaps the most conspicuous element in genius is freedom,-freedom of movement,—and next to this is power. The man of genius is less tied down to ordinary associations and ideas than the man of mere talent, whose strength generally lies in the business-like use he can make of what he finds ready to his hand. On the other hand, the man of genius responds to attractions and affinities which other men never feel. These thoughts which he pours forth in such whence are they? They were as far beyond profusion, subtle yet strong and luminous—. your reach or mine as the planet Neptune;