Now, we think it can be demonstrated that the Traffic in strong drink directly contravenes all these conditions and duties of a State and does so to an extent far exceeding all other agencies combined. The Traffic, therefore, which is already subjected to various restrictions, and in different countries and ages has been proscribed, ought to be totally prohibited by a wise Statesmanship amongst ourselves.

§ 7. From this formal statement and proof of our proposition we proceed to general illustrations.

In 1834, the Parliament of Great Britain, in its Report on Drunkenness, founded on an elaborate examination of witnesses from the three kingdoms, made the following declaration :

"The consequences of the vice of intoxication* are so many and so fearful that it is difficult to enumerate even the outlines of them; and to pursue them in all their melancholy details would require a volume. The following are only a few of the evils directly springing from this baneful

Source:

"Consequences to Individuals.-Destruction to health-disease in every form and shape-premature decrepitude in the old-stunted growth and general debility and decay in the young-loss of life by paroxysms, apoplexies, drownings, burnings, and accidents of various kinds-delirium tremens, paralysis, idiotcy, madness, and violent death; destruction of mental capacity and vigor, and extinction of aptitude for learning, as well as desire for practising any useful art or industrious occupation. Irritation of all the worst passions of the heart-hatred, anger, revengewith a brutalization of disposition that breaks asunder and destroys the most endearing bonds of nature and society. Extinction of all moral and religious principle, disregard of truth, indifference to education,-violation of chastity,-insensibility to shame, and indescribable degradation.

Consequences to National Welfare.-The DESTRUCTION OF GRAIN, given by a bountiful Providence for the food of man, which is now converted by distillation into a poison; the highest medical authorities examined before your committee being uniform in their testimony that ardent spirits are absolutely poisonous to the human constitution-so that not only is an immense amount of human food destroyed, whilst thousands are inadequately fed, but this food is destroyed in such a manner as to injure greatly the agricultural producers themselves, for whose grain, but for this perverted use of it, there would be more than twice the present demand. The Loss OF PRODUCTIVE LABOR in every department of occupation, to the extent of at least one day in six throughout the kingdom, as testified by witnesses engaged in various manufacturing occupations; by which the wealth of the country is retarded or suppressed to the extent of one million out of every six that is produced, to say nothing of the constant derangement, imperfection, and destruction in every [industrial] process, occasioned by the intemperance, and consequent unskilfulness, inattention, and neglect of those affected by intoxication, producing great injury in our domestic and foreign trade. The extensive Loss of PROPERTY by Sea, from shipwrecks, founderings, fires, and innumerable other accidents, which, according to the evidence of the most experienced shipowners and nautical men, are clearly traceable to drunkenness.-The

*We shall show, further on, that the Traffic is the National fountain of this intoxication. The Chairman of the Committee was the late JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM, then M.P. for Sheffield, to whose intelligent and life-long labors in the cause of Temperance and Freedom the world is very largely indebted.

comparative INEFFICIENCY OF THE NAVY AND ARMY, in each of which intemperance is [as] a canker-worm that eats away its strength and its discipline to the very core; it being proved that one-sixth of the effective strength of the Navy, and a much greater proportion of the Army, is as much destroyed by that most powerful ally of death, intoxicating drinks, as if the men were slain in battle; and that the greatest number of accidents, seven-eighths of the sickness, invalidings, and discharges for incapacity, and nine-tenths of all the acts of insubordination, and the fearful punishments and executions to which these give rise, are to be ascribed to drunkenness alone. The INCREASE OF PAUPERISM, in its most fearful shape, divested of that sense of shame which would disdain to receive relief whilst honest industry could secure the humblest independence, and associated with a recklessness of all obligations, domestic or social, which, according to the evidence of witnesses from the agricultural districts, has converted the pauper from a grateful receiver of aid under unavoidable calamity, to an idle and disorderly clamorer for the right of being sustained by the industry of others, or a profligate and licentious parent of illegitimate offspring.-The SPREAD OF CRIME in every shape and form, from theft, fraud, and prostitution in the young, to burnings, robberies, and more hardened offences in the old; by which the gaols and prisons, the hulks and convict transports, are filled with inmates, and an enormous mass of human beings are transformed into excrescences of corruption and weakness [in the body politic, and constituting our troublesome and 'dangerous classes'].-The RETARDATION OF ALL IMPROVEMENT, inventive or industrial, civil or political, moral or religious.-That the mere pecuniary loss to the nation, from the several causes already enumerated, may be fairly estimated at little short of fifty millions of pounds sterling per

annum.

6

It must be evident, therefore, that a system engendering such varied 'consequences' and 'costs' is deeply and distinctly inimical to the real interests of Individuals and of the State, endangering the rights of the one, and rendering impossible the aims and purposes of the other. Twenty years have passed since this deliberate conviction was enrolled upon the records of the British Parliament, and yet we shall find in the sequel, that notwithstanding the march of improvement,' the progress of education, the spread of knowledge, and, above all, the specific efforts to combat this vice of Intemperance, and remove or diminish such of its agencies as mere moral appeal can cope with, every word of that Report remains literally true. The explanation of the fact is simply this: The Traffic has extended its machinery of mischief, and its net-work of seduction, contemporaneously with these efforts; and it is of the nature of narcotic stimulants to generate a tendency to excess, by increasing appetite and lessening moral control.

§ 8. Foreign nations, and those blessed with almost universal education, both moral and religious, have instituted Legislative Inquiries as to the causes, extent, and consequences of Intemperance amongst themselves, -as the Americans and the Swedes,-and have reached conclusions very similar to our own. The 'Report of the Select-Committee of the New York Senate' on the Prohibitory Bill of 1853, thus expresses the facts as they yet exist in the United States of America, after the persistent

efforts, for a quarter of a century, of the friends of true Temperance :

"They would respectfully report, that they concur with the Governor in his message, that the constitution invests the Legislature with the power, and imposes upon them the duty, of adopting measures to promote education, to restrain vice, to punish crime, to protect the rights of persons and property, and to advance the welfare of this great commonwealth, composed of more than three millions of citizens.

"The committee have felt deeply impressed with the weight of responsibility resting upon them, and, after a careful examination of the whole subject, are clearly of the opinion that the sale of intoxicating liquors, as a beverage, retards education and encourages vice; that it tramples upon the rights of persons and property to a criminal extent; and that it is the duty of this Legislature to pass a Prohibitory law, as the only means left to remove the evils complained of.

"Your committee are of opinion that the sale of intoxicating drinks is the direct occasion of more pauperism, crime, debauchery, and frightful casualties, than all other things combined.

"Your committee are of opinion that such liquor is a POISON, and should be so declared and treated, producing a species of insanity which deadens the powers and inflames the passions,* causing the unprovoked commission of crimes on the innocent and unoffending, of an enormity unparalleled in the civilized world; crimes that even barbarians would shudder at, and humanity in its worst forms could not commit, unaided by the demon that is ever present in the drunkard's cup.

"Your committee are of opinion that this poison causes a reckless disregard of property in those who use it; that it is the agent in the destruction of more property by fire, shipwrecks, railroad disasters, and bankruptcies, than all other agencies put together. This bill proposes to save from thirty to fifty thousand drunkards now in our State, their wives and children, from the awful fate to which the liquor trade has doomed them, and to break the charm by removing the temptation from thirty to fifty thousand more of our fellow-citizens who are moving on surely to fill the drunkard's ranks, many of whom are most earnest in their calls upon the Legislature to stop a traffic accursed of God and all good men.

"Pass this law, and your committee are of opinion that it will put an end to three-fourths of all the crimes against persons and property now committed. The testimony of the wardens of our prisons uniformly affirm that at least nine-tenths of the criminals confined are brought there on account of the use of intoxicating drinks.

"Your committee do not propose to recommend further taxes upon the good people of this State in enlarging and multiplying their prisons, erecting gibbets, and inventing new forms of torture, to deter the wretched victims of alcohol from the commission of crimes; but by a simple and easy process to relieve the State of heavy taxes, and save society from crimes, by prohibiting the sale of this poison as a beverage."

At the February term, 1856, of the Court of General Sessions, New York, Judge CAPRON charged the Grand Jury:

"I will state that during the month of January last, 368 persons were

*Flourens, and other toxicologists, have long ago established, by experiment, that Alcohol is a Brain Poison, and one that specially excites and disturbs the cerebellum. This is the true key to the Social Facts. (See our History of Alcohol, 250, 1846: and Prof. Youman's Scientific Basis of Prohibition; 1856.) Dr Alfred Taylor, in his evidence on the Rugeley Poisoning cases, twice deliberately asserts that Walter Palmer was 'Poisoned with Gin.' What more could be said of arsenic ?

arraigned for trial in this Court and the Court of Special Sessions. Of this number, 166 were convicted and sentenced, 182 were convicted, but the sentences were suspended for various causes, and 20 were acquitted. Fifty-one of the convicts sentenced were between the ages of ten and twenty years, and a very large majority of those in whose cases sentence was suspended were minors, and about 100 were under the age of sixteen years! The crimes for which these persons were arraigned comprehended almost the whole catalogue, from petit larceny up to murder. Among the whole number, 102 were confirmed inebriates, and every one was more or less intoxicated when the act was committed for which the complaint was made, though sixty-two professed temperate habits. But it was a shallow pretence; their appearance belied the averment. Other very significant characteristics distinguish these cases. Nearly all of them originated in the night, a large proportion of them after midnight, and the scenes of the catastrophes were laid in fashionable drinking saloons, and tippling houses of less repute. Brothels were not unrepresented in this long and mournful catalogue of our doomed fellow-men. About five thousand other cases of a police character have been adjudicated in the four Police Courts of this City, in the same time!"

For the year ending February, 1856, the commitments to the City Prison, Centre St., New York, were 36,264, of which number 32,703 were persons of intemperate habits.

§ 9. By the concurrent testimony of various countries, the Traffic in strong drink may be impeached, not simply as a nuisance, but as the fons et origo of 75 per cent in amount of those kinds of evils for protection against which the bulk of all laws are framed, and for securing partial exemption from which Society itself is expressly constituted. To neglect such a source of calamity and crime-much more, to 'license' and 'sanction' it— seems indeed a most monstrous dereliction of the duty of a State —a virtual abandonment of its organic and essential functions.

But to oppose practical and efficient Legislative action against the terrible realities of the Traffic, on the ground of a mere abstract theory of Government, is a melancholy exhibition of human infirmity. HUMBOLDT, who has written most profoundly on that side of the Theory which, on the first blush, appears to conflict with such legislation as we contend for, makes the important concession that practical necessity must first be regarded, and not theory.* He admits, also, that the State must create new relations, and therefore rights and duties demanding a sacred respect, and that the state, as the Guardian of the rights of all, must assert its supremacy for the sake of all: that, in doing so, it must start from things as they are, and treat Man as he is, and so, by preserving the gains of the past, reach to still grander

* HUMBOLDT's eloquent plea for individual development as against Restrictions on Luxuries, etc., has no relation to the Prohibition of the Traffic, the very reasons assigned against legal Restriction on natural faculties,-that it limits development and culture,-is a reason for prohibiting that which tends essentially and exclusively to hinder alike intellectual, aesthetic, and moral culture, to bar the progress of social amelioration, and reduce vast numbers to the low groveling tastes of the sot, or the dead level of drunkenness.

conquests of civilization in the future. He even warns the determined doctrinaire against splitting upon the rock of Fact.

"We should never attempt to transfer purely theoretical "principles into reality, until reality, in its whole scope and "tendency, offers no further obstacles to the manifestation of "those consequences to which, without any admixture of other "influences, the abstract principles would lead."

While, on the one hand, the whole history of the world does not furnish a single example of a Nation that has tolerated the Traffic in strong drink, rising to such a reality of moral and social life as to permit of the safe adoption of those abstract theories, so, on the other hand, all the facts of History and Experience go to show, that, with such an influence operating in a nation, the Model Government that is desiderated must be indefinitely postponed.

-we

§ 10. The objection that 'by removing the temptation we destroy virtue,' is based upon an ignorance of the real nature and needs of man. For, first, we only propose the removal of one special temptation; all natural temptations will still be left. Second, temptation far more frequently promotes vice than virtue and it never ends in good save under certain conditions of balance and counterpoise-the existence of which the Traffic renders all but nugatory. Even writers against the Maine Law will perceive this, when the prejudice-of-the-whim is not operating. Take, for example, the following admirable sentence, occurring in a review of the 'Newcomes, in the Spectator for August 18th, 1855. "Is it not to some lucky accident that many of us, whose lives are happy, owe the final predominance of the good over the evil principle in our existence? For our part, when we are taught to pray, 'Lead us not into Temptation' recognize in that prayer the weakness of our nature, and are only too glad if, by lucky accidents and strong resolutions combined, those in whom we are interested can escape the perils that beset youth and age, and finally attain the blessedness of a life in which the affections find their proper objects and the best energies room to breathe." There is no tendency in the Drink Traffic to educe the best faculties; on the contrary, as we all know, the Tavern and Beershop corrupt our moral feelings. An occasional visit of inspection, indeed, to a Brothel, or a Beerhouse, might, on an innocent or pure mind, produce no worse effect than disgust or abhorrence; but perpetual visitation would soon blunt our emotions, and eventually contaminate our nature. Such an effect, in truth, is appointed by Divine justice. As the man who will gaze perpetually upon burning mirrors, induces blindness, a film gathering upon the organ of vision, and the vitality, so to speak, retreating behind the veil ; so the deliberate injury inflicted by the Trafficker for the sake of gain, and the associations of folly and blasphemy with which the visitor wilfully surrounds himself, and the temptations to which he is exposed, bring on a