in every 100lbs, while the substances adapted to support the body "amounted to 68 lbs in the 100. Barleymeal is, therefore, more nutritious "than the same weight of oatmeal.'

"It is, therefore, of the first importance, under present circumstances, to prevent the employment of a valuable article of food in processes which can be effected with equal advantage by other means. By a temporary prohibition of malting, and the admission of colonial sugar and molasses into the manufacture of beer and spirits, we shall attain two very desirable objects the one, the preservation of barley for food; the other, the relief of the sugar growers in the colonies, whose interests are affected by the measures for the equalization of the duties on this article.

"With respect to the quality of beer from sugar, all who have tried it declare that it possesses the same qualities as the beer from malt. By some it may be supposed that the working man will lose a nutritive beverage; but this is a misapprehension of the subject.* After fermentation, no albumen or flesh-forming principle remains in the liquor, which has now become vinous, and by another simple process [distillation] may be converted into alcohol; besides, whatever of this principle is found in malt-beer, must also be found in sugar-beer. There may be some difference in the flavor, to which use would reconcile the palate; but A MATTER OF TASTE CANNOT BE ALLOWED

TO COMPETE AGAINST SO IMPORTANT AN OBJECT AS PRESERVING THE

FOOD OF THE MULTITUDE; and we can see no other objection to the proposed substitution.+ As to spirits, those produced from sugar are well known; and no question can be raised in regard to comparative properties of nutrition, since all kinds are equally deficient. The double object of saving an immense quantity of grain for human food, in a time of scarcity and dearth, and of compensating the colonies, by furnishing them with a large consumption for their produce, is highly deserving the attention of the legislature."

Writers on Moral Philosophy, and Jurists, have uniformly contended for the right of the State to prohibit that which directly tends to impoverish it. Amongst the ancient Hebrews we find this declaration :-" He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him." The same instinct of truth is at bottom displayed even in a Bread riot: "We have a right to live; and therefore to the means of living❞—which is perfectly true, if the word 'natural' is inserted before the word 'means.' If a man himself throws away his means, that is another question. An early law of England sternly prohibited the conversion of corn into spirits for the purpose of beverages. Queen ELIZABETH strictly enforced this wise old statute, and treated its infringement as a social offence. Sir MATTHEW HALE earnestly supported it, and opposed any attempt at its abrogation, predicting that millions of people would destroy themselves by such fatal liquors. When the act to encourage distillation from corn was passed, WHISTON

66

*Whilst an anonymous writer in the Westminster Review is sophistically teach ing that Alcohol is Food, Professor MOLESCHOTT, in his Theory of Food (877) even though no teetotaler, is compelled to admit that Spirits, in their propor tionate amount of nutritious matter, do not even bear comparison with sugared water. Alcohol, their essential element, and the most important substance in "beer and wine, is not transformed into any blood constituent. IT DOES NOT, "THEREFORE, DESERVE THE NAME OF AN ALIMENTARY PRINCIPLE." (See Works "of Dr Lees, vol. i. Appendix, p. cxcix., for further remarks on MOLESCHOTT.).

We object, not to the 'substitution' of a less bad process for a worse, but to all bad processes.

K

66

wrote thereon: "Parliament has abrogated a very good law: nay, they have in reality encouraged the people to drunkenness, and to the murder of themselves." PALEY has these admirable words: "From reason or revelation, or from both together, it appears to "be God Almighty's intention that the productions of the earth "should be applied to the sustenance of human life. Consequently, "all waste and misapplication of these productions is contrary to "the Divine Intention and Will, and therefore wrong, for the same reason that any other crime is so,—such as destroying, or 66 suffering to perish, great part of an article of human provision, "in order to enhance the price of the remainder,* or diminishing "the breed of animals, by a wanton or improvident consumption "of the young. To this head may also be referred what is the 66 same evil in a smaller way, the expending of human food on "superfluous dogs or horses; and lastly, the reducing the_quantity, in order to alter the quality, and to alter it generally for "the worse,-as the distillation of spirits from bread-corn."

§ 85. It has been sufficiently shown, we hope, that 'liberty' is not right;-that the only just liberty is 'rational liberty'; and that amongst just examples of rational liberty, actions which are socially evil, whether evil in their issues or tendencies, cannot be fairly included. In the case before us, the evils are confessedly COUNTLESS and UNPARALLELED. If society, then, does not infringe a rational liberty by proscribing and destroying the mere instruments and facilities of crime-as the coiner's die or gambler's dice, how can it be alleged that we trespass upon a just liberty in prohibiting the active, unscrupulous, and organized System which nourishes and conserves three-fourths of the crimes and calamities of the nation? There is no objection that can be framed to a Maine Law on the ground of 'liberty," which will not hold good equally against all law, and especially against the law for interference with drunkenness. Judge BLACKSTONE, in his Commentaries, states the case very plainly : "Let a man be ever so abandoned in his principles, or vicious "in his practice, provided he keeps his wickedness to himself, and "does not offend against the rules of public decency, he is out "of the reach of human laws; but if he makes his vices public, 66 though they be such as seem principally to affect himself, as "drunkenness and the like, they then become, by the bad example "they set, of pernicious effects to society, and therefore it is then "the business of human laws to correct them." If this correction can (as we have attempted to show) be really administered

*The intention makes no difference in the effect of an action; and Society has to do only with tendencies and results.

+ Moral Philosophy, book ii, ch. 11.

Commentaries on the Laws of Eng'ani, i. p. 124. There are other reasons for locking-up a drunkard: as, to preserve himself from harm; or to avoid accidents to which he is expose, lest his family should become public burdens; or, by puni-hment, to reform him and avert those evils in the future; or, if he be excited, to prevent his doing mischief.

only by proscribing the Traffic, then it becomes our duty, and therefore our right, to proscribe and suppress it. With these views, we have little tolerance for the present system of Legal Licence-a system which, in simple truth, as the Judges confess, consists in the Government first planting a hundred thousand Seminaries of Sin throughout the land, and then, second, commissioning its Judicial officers to take their stated circuits," and adjudge to the most advanced Students the penalties of proficiency. Worse than the Fate of Penelope this! It appears as if we were doomed in our legislation to exemplify the darkest parts of classical mythology; for, like Jason, we sow our dragon's teeth, and, like Chronos, we strangle the offspring of our own laws :—may we hope that the remainder of the fable will yet fit us; that, flying from the Saturnine past, instead of teaching intemperance to our people, we may inaugurate those arts of Industry and Peace that shall usher in the golden age.'

§ 86. Attempts have been made, by the cry of Rights and Liberties,' on the one hand, and by mystico-metaphysical Sphere of Government' jargon, on the other, to instil prejudices into the popular mind.

SMOLLETT, writing of the year 1730, furnishes an illustration of the strange lengths to which phrases will sometimes carry Society, when it abandons its faculty of thinking :

"England was at this period infested with robbers, assassins, and incendiaries, the natural consequences of degeneracy, corruption, and the want of police in the interior government of the kingdom. This defect, in a great measure, arose from an absurd notion, that laws necessary to prevent those acts of cruelty, violence, and rapine, would be incompatible with the liberty of British subjects;-a notion that confounds all distinctions between liberty and licentiousness, as if that freedom was desirable, in the enjoyment of which people find no security for their lives or effects."

BENTHAM, long ago, characterized and confuted this style of thing. "With men of the same party [and interest], with men whose affections are already listed against the law in question, anything will go down; any rubbish is good that will add fuel to the flame ;-but with regard to an impartial bystander, it is plain that it is not denying the right of the Legislature or any discourse verging that way, that can tend to give him the smallest satisfaction. Grant even the proposition in general-what are we the nearer ? Of what use is it to say so, when these bounds are what nobody has ever attempted to work out to any useful purpose? Either all rests in vague assertions, and no intelligible argument at all is offered; or, if any, such arguments as are drawn from the principle of utility; arguments which, in whatever variety of words expressed, come at last to neither more nor less than this,-that the tendency of the law is, to a greater or less extent, pernicious. If this, then, be the result of the argument, why not come to it at once? Why turn aside

into a wilderness of sophistry, when the path of plain reason is straight before us?"*

§87. Reflecting and influential writers of the day have already, we rejoice to see, admitted the harmony of the principles of government for which we contend with a prohibitory Liquor Law. They could not fail to perceive that the right of prohibition was virtually admitted in the Licence system, and, as we have before observed, the right to interfere at all carries with it the right to interfere effectually. Moreover, these publicists have seen: that the Licence system was prohibition-partial prohibition, as regards places, but still real prohibition in respect of persons. Can anybody, anywhere, anyhow, sell strong drink? No. Only certain persons are permitted to do this, and even they are pro-hibited as regards the person to whom, the measure which, ther place where, and the time when, they shall sell. I and you, reader, are not permitted to sell it. In the village where we write, only three persons out of the whole are licensed to do this; the rest being prohibited from doing so; and those three ought to be. To talk about another step in that direction being an infringement of 'right,' is not to reason, but to rant. Do they grant 'natural rights' at a Brewsters' Sessions ? A whole Alphabet of Applicants are there; but the Magistrates refuse all the Consonants, and empower only the Vowels to be Vintners. If A, E, I, O, and U are certainly privileged to sell: B, C, D, and the rest down to Z, are certainly prevented from selling.

Why don't the unsuccessful applicants make an outcry about their rights being invaded,' and, copying the Bonifaces of Birmingham, call upon the people to make a stand'? Nothing can be more palpable than the fact that prohibition, in some shape, is of the essence of the present system; and hence the futility and falsehood of the cry, that Anti-Liquor-Laws are a novelty in legislation. They are simply the historic development of a power and a principle already in being, to the point of effectuality.

Mr CONYBEARE, in a generally excellent article in the Edin burgh Review, thus ably justifies the expediency of total prohibition :

"There are some trades to which the state applies, not restriction merely, but prohibition. Thus the business of coining money is utterly suppressed by law in all civilized states; thus the opening of lotteries is a commercial speculation forbidden by the law in England. If it be asked on what

*Works, vol. i. pp. 288.9.

In fact the theory of Licence' is virtually based upon the right and fact of universal Prohibition. The Law first imposes a general prohibition of the Traffic, and then provides for particular exceptions, under the plea of convenience' and the name of 'Licence. The Maine Law does not differ at all in principle from this theory-it but further reduces the convenience to that of one or two Munici pal Agents, in a district, selling for medicinal, artistic, or non-dietetic uses, that is, for socially safe uses

# July 1854. For a criticism on some of its parts, see Works of Dr Lees; is

grounds the state is justified in annihilating these branches of industry, it must be answered, that society may put down what is dangerous to itself,SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX. Any trade, employment, or use of property, detrimental to the life, health, or order of the people, is by English law a public nuisance; and in suppressing it, the state assumes the right of sacri fieing private interests to the public good: and this not only when the detriment is physical or economical, but also when it is moral. Thus unwholesome grave-yards are shut up, and noisome vitriol works pulled down, for their physical noxiousness; private coining is made illegal for economical reasons; slave-trading, lotteries, cock-pits, bear-gardens, gambling-houses, brothels, and obscene print-shops, are prohibited on moral grounds. Now the liquor traffic, and particularly the retail branch of it, is a public nuisance in all three respects, both physically, œconomically, and morally. By its physical consequences it causes death to thousands, reduces thousands more to madness or idiocy, and afflicts myriads with diseases involving the most wretched forms of bodily and mental torture. Considered in its economical results, it impairs the national resources by destroying a large amount of corn, which is annually distilled into spirits; and it indirectly causes three-fourths of the taxation required by pauperism and criminal prosecutions and prison expences; and further, it diminishes the effective industry of the working classes, thereby lessening the amount of national production. Thirdly, viewed in its moral operation, it is the cause of two-thirds of the crime committed; it lowers the intelligence, and hinders the civilization of the people; and it leads the men to ill-treat and starve their families, and sacrifice domestic comfort to riotous debauchery."

§ 88. As to Trade, none of its legitimate claims can be infringed by a prohibitory law. Free-trade is a eulogistic phrase only so long as it is confined to good things. A commerce like the Slave-trade can be free only in a dyslogistic sense-the freer it is, the worse it is. Once, as SMOLLETT shows (§ 69), the Traffic in gin was impudently demanded as an aid to the traffic in menand, in sooth, the two trades may fitly go together: one enslaves the brutalized children of Ham; the other brutalizes the civilized sons of Japhet. Besides, no argument can be set up for saving the vats of the Brewer, or the stills of the Distillery, by way of objection to an Anti-Liquor-law, which does not equally hold against moral Temperance. But who was ever fool or knave enough to drink the toast-"May Commerce florish on the drunkenness of our country"? Bishop BERKELEY, whose whole life was spent in the love of truth and in. labors for humanity, emphatically condemned the Distilleries as a curse :-"Better by far the whole present set of Distillers were pensioners of the public, and their trade ABOLISHED BY LAW, since all the benefit thereof put together would not balance the hundredth part of the mischief."

A Maine Law, instead of crippling our commerce, or injuring legitimate Trade, would not only send our Temperance Vessels with augmented safety and diminished risk to their destined ports, but multiply their number and increase their profits beyond all parallel,—and Britain would not simply maintain her old position amongst the commercial nations of the world, but attain to a higher destiny, and wield a purer influence, than