the most ardent of her patriotic sons has ever dreamed for her. Even the Times, in its intermittent fits of wisdom, can perceive the prodigious importance of liquor abolition to a country. Here is one of its happiest dicta. "No way so rapid to increase "the Wealth of Nations, and the Morality of Society, as the "utter annihilation of the manufacture of ardent spirits, con66 stituting as they do, an infinite waste and an unmixed evil. "* The corollary is clear-No way so rapid to decrease the Wealth of Nations as the encouragement of the Traffic.

*Times, December, 1853.

CHAPTER VI.

"THAT THE LEGISLATIVE SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC WOULD BE HIGHLY CONDUCIVE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PROGRESSIVE CIVILIZATION."

§ 89. Man, the individual and the race, is evidently formed for progression in knowledge and power. It would be a libel on the Creator, and in contradiction of our highest consciousness, to suppose that knowledge was not tributary to virtue and a moral life. The insect, the bird, the beast, are governed in their actions by an almost unerring impulse, or adaptation, called Instinct; an instinct that finds its play with a rapidity and perfection altogether unlike the labored results of human reason. It does not wait upon experience, but vaults to its maturity, so that the youngest working bee is as wise as the oldest, and the cells of the honeycomb fabricated in the last summer, are not a whit more perfect than the cells of the comb which received the honey first gathered from the thymy banks of the primitive garden. Reason, however, grows-develops, not only in youth, but throughout the whole period of human existence Intelligence enlarges, filling vaster spaces in the sphere of knowledge, and taking deeper vision and broader flights into the domain of nature: Speech, the winged messenger of Mercury, the Registrar of History and Time, the nimble, subtle Slave of Science, multiplies her powers to meet all exigencies, and stores up in Memory and in Books, the discoveries and treasures of each successive age for the service of the next. The architecture of man is progressive: the conquests of one epoch are the historic stepping-stones over which another generation walks to further achievement. and subdue the Earth! is the everlasting chime to which the world marches on its way to Industrial Conquest-the daily music of aspiration and of consolation which springs eternal from the recesses of the human soul.

Go,

But man is a being of complex faculty: physical, intellectual, moral. And there is an hierarchy of powers. As the stars of the firmament differ in glory, so do the stars of the mental heaven in dignity and in use. We tread on the earth, yet the earth is but our tent and instrument, not our everlasting home. So the body is partly the Theatre, where we have to learn our parts in the drama of life, and partly the instrument of the soul,

with which our work is to be done. Sense and the Body are means to an end higher than themselves. Intelligence comes next—which is the Intellectual faculty duly trained and instructed. This, however, in turn, must be subordinated to the Moral Will-to the uses of that Conscience which is God's secretary within us,-of those divine enthusiasms of Hope and Aspiration and Reverence, that lift us above despair, and make palpable the spiritual realities which we cannot see,—of that still more Godlike quality of Love that makes our hearts beat in sympathy with the heart of humanity, giving even life for life, and which looks in tenderness and pity upon the sufferings of the meanest things!

§ 90. CIVILIZATION, consequently, may be defined as the predominance of Humanity over Animality-the subordination and subjection, more or less perfect, of passion to principle-of impulse to thought-of selfishness to duty-of lust to love. We believe that this subordination of the lower to the higher nature, the assimilation of feeling to the Divine law of life, is the great end of being, to the race as to the individual. We believe, further, that this is strictly a course-that it must partake of the attribute of progression-be developed by degrees, not infused at once. With this faith in the destiny and possibilities of man— believing that such a civilization is capable of indefinite advancewe predicate in addition, that the Legislative Suppression of the Traffic, under the conditions proposed, would greatly conduce to 'a consummation most devoutly to be wished.'

Everybody who reflects must see that the development of the higher faculties of man are dependent on two conditions one positive, the other negative. We must secure them their approximate excitements on the one hand, and we must remove that which stimulates the lower faculties on the other; for what these gain the others lose. The rapidity of the development of these powers respectively will be in an inverse ratio, since the torpidity of the one is the activity of the other. The worst attribute of 'bloody war' is not the blood that is shed,—of revolution or riot, not the property that is destroyed,—but, in a moral point of view, it is the terrible stimulus which war and revolution give to the activity of the lower passions,-the overbearing impetus which they impart to the brutal propensities of man. This, too, is our objection to the Traffic-it is a trade that deals out the very elements of disorder and pollution-which, by necessary tendency and inevitable physical law, disturbs and depraves the community. The Times, in its article on the Alliance, regrets that the Report had not "gone a little into the physical bearings of the question." And, perhaps, the Times is not unreasonable in its regret. Without pressing too far the claims of physical Teetotalism, which is the proper business of the Temperance Society, it is quite within the province of a political disquisition to probe to the bottom the social sores from which

the body politic is suffering. When that is done, it will be found that there is a physical philosophy and law underlying the social. In sanitary and educational questions this is already perceived and acknowledged; and, sooner or later, it must be so in regard to this topic. Still, we can take our stand on the admitted FACTS of Society; and without relegating the fundamental and explanatory truth which alone accounts for those facts, press home the claims of this social movement on the common sense and patriotism of our countrymen.

§ 91. FIERY ALCOHOL, we affirm, then, by necessary law, antagonizes moral civilization, because it disturbs the normal action of the soul, diminishes the activity of the superior powers, and unduly excites the inferior propensities of our being. This has been confessed by the Legislators, the Philosophers, the Moralists of all ages: it is the combined testimony of History, of Scripture, and of Every-day life. (See §§ 13, 15, 16, 29, 69, 73.) Alcohol transforms the tender father into the ferocious savage. It steels the heart of mothers to the claims of dependent children, sears the conscience of the criminal, and by extinguishing the last spark of pity, prepares him for the perpetration of his sanguinary crimes ;-in one word, while it casts over all the highest attributes of man the mire of sensuality and sin, it provokes to ungovernable cruelty and fury, the baser and more brutal passions of his nature. It is this law, this tendency, which explains the reason of our social state of degradation, after all the efforts of philanthropy and patriotism put forth for sixty years. We have actually supplied the citadel we professed to assail, with the provisions and ammunition for sustaining the siege and protracting the struggle. Mr CHARLES BUXTON has admirably expressed this fact :

"It would not be too much to say, that if all drinking of fermented liquors could be done away, crime of every kind would fall to a fourth of its present amount, and the whole tone of moral feeling in the lower orders might be indefinitely raised. Not only does this vice produce all kinds of wanton mischief, but it also has a negative effect of great importance. It is the mightiest of all the forces that clog the progress of good. It is in vain that every engine is set to work that philanthropy can devise, when those whom we seek to benefit are habitually tampering with their faculties of Reason and Will-soaking their brains with beer, or inflaming them with ardent spirits. The struggle of the School, the Library, and the Church, all united against the beerhouse and gin-palace, is but one development of the war between heaven and hell."+

In other words, the Traffic is essentially adverse to civilization. That the world is a battle-field, on which is to be played out the contest of Light against Darkness, of Good against Evil, of Civilization against Barbarism, is a thought of the very earliest

*Westminster Review, 1855. It adds, "The fatal gift of fascination, which makes dalliance with her dangerous."

+ North British Review, February, 1855. Article, 'How to stop Drunkenness."

times.* In an age like our own, when the contending forces are more distinctly visible than at any former period, it becomes. the Captains of Humanity, not only to make a due survey of their own position and power, but to estimate with accuracy the forces of the enemy and the strength of his stronghold. Some of our allies are doing this; and they have already discovered that the great enemy is entrenched everywhere amongst us, with Intemperance for his Engineer.

"It is, in short, intoxication that fills our gaols. It is intoxication that fills our lunatic asylums. And it is intoxication that fills our workhouses with poor. Were it not for this one cause, pauperism would be nearly extinguished in England."+

It is quite impossible, within the limits prescribed to this Essay, adequately to measure and marshal the hosts of intemperance, for their name is 'Legion.' All we can attempt to do, is to open up glimpses into this wilderness of darkness, uncleanness, and horror. We may briefly look at the following, however, which stand out most distinctly from the shadowed background:

DRUNKENNESS IN ITS VARIOUS DEGREES.

POVERTY AND PAUPERISM.

IGNORANCE, WITH ITS BRUTALITY AND VICE.

PROSTITUTION AND ITS CONCOMITANTS.

ACCIDENTS AND DISEASE, ESPECIALLY IDIOCY AND MADNESS. OFFENCES AND CRIME.

These are the adversaries of Civilization with which we have to fight, the barriers we have to level with the earth, that the Car of Progress may pass on its way. It is in contending with these evils that the country is drained of its wealth, both of energy and purse, and our positive conquests over Barbarism and Nature immeasurably retarded.

§ 92. The mere Cost of all this, so far as a Prohibitory Liquor Law would be likely to lessen it, may be approximately estimated; yet that is as nothing compared with its moral mischiefsits power to destroy the great ends of human life, to mar human happiness, to break in with frightful discord upon the harmony of Society. Supposing that a Maine Law removed only threefourths of the present Drinking system,-leaving a tolerable margin for domestic brewing, and for other possible sources of private supply, we shall be under any preceding calculation, if

* See II Esdras, ch. vii., v. 57.

+ Mr BUXTON, Article just cited.

In Liverpool alone, the annual cost of prostitution and associated crime was calculated, in a report to the Watch Committee, at £700,000.