pointed the philanthropic expectations of their authors.

The laws have clothed an illegitimate and dangerous business with the garb of respectability.

A licensed liquor seller is a civil functionary as much as a Justice of the Peace, and is a conservator of the morals of society.

If decent and respectable persons are not tempted to enter the paths of vice it is not his fault nor the fault of the State for both have exerted themselves to make the way inviting.

Neither the good character of the saloon keeper nor the good intentions of the State will lesson the pernicious consequences. In investigating the license system we must not lose sight of the influence of the traffic upon those who are selected to officiate in the temples of Bachus.

No man can long serve his country in ministering to the vicious and depraved appetites of his neighbors, see his patrons gradually

but surely becoming victims of vice, without his own moral sense becoming blunted and his own self-respect weakened. Hence it is that so large a proportion of these authorized agents of the State fall into the snare set for others. "Wo unto him that giveth drink to his neighbor, that putteth the bottle to him and maketh him drunken," is a divine denunciation which human government cannot render inoperative or void. If "there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, and the end thereof is death," this is preeminently the way. If as many carpenters or bricklayers fell from scaffoldings and broke their necks in proportion to their numbers as there are liquor sellers ruined by their business, very few would engage in those occupations. If a proportional number of m sionaries who go forth to proclaim the tidings of salvation to the heathen, would fall victims to diseases of climate, the missionary field would be abandoned as if God had withheld his smile and his blessing.

GOVERNMENT GUARDIANSHIP OF WRONG.

When the State assumes to regulate this universal evil, it attempts to do an impossibility. The liquor traffic is in itself an irregularity and cannot be regulated. A whirlwind or tornado is not the subject of regulation! His traffic is a simoon making all effort to divert its deadly course. The traffic is a cancer eating into the very vitals of society, a cancer upon the individual and social interests, and a license law is only a poultice aggravating the evil and giving to it a more deadly power. Heroic treatment, looking to its extinction, is the only remedy. License men to do what?

To make the strong man weak,
To lay the wise man low.
To do his neighbor harm,

To nerve the robber's arm.

Provided always that the applicant has a good moral character and is otherwise well qualified!

The license system is a sad commentary upon the character of a savage, but much more of a civilized and Christian state.

THE REVENUE MOTIVE.

Many who recognize the liquor traffic as a great wrong, defend a license sytem on the ground that it brings a revenue to the State. This motive greatly enhances the shame and disgrace. A revenue derived from widow's tears and orphan's groans, and drunkard's blood! Is it the business of the State to build poor-houses, lunatic asylums and prisons, and then authorize a select few to have the exclusive privilege of filling them if they will pay a stipulated sum? Establish legislatures, courts, excise commissioners, to grant indulgencies, and give refinement to the outrage by requiring the wrong doer before entering upon his work to prove a good moral character!

Whiskey is one of Satan's whips; beer is his kennel and wine his bait.

The immortal Cowper, more than a century ago, said in his inimitable verse:

"The ten thousand casks, forever dribbling out their

base contents,

Touched by the Midas finger of the State;

Bleed gold for Parliament to vote away;

Drink and be mad, then, 'tis your country bids,
Gloriously obey the important call:

HER cause demands the assistance of your throats,
Ye all can swallow and she asks no more.'

93

Appoint justices of the peace and constables, enlist an army of policemen, and then in order to find them employment, commission good, discreet men to furnish tramps, vagabonds, thieves, highwaymen and murderers to arrest, try and punish.

The theory is that the iniquitous and destructive traffic will exist in spite of all that can be done to prevent it, and it should be made to bear a part of the burden it imposes on the State, by authorizing responsible agents to conduct it if they will pay for the privilege.

Why not for the same reason undertake to