No Cure but in Abstinence.

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to be cured, and therefore they must perish in their vice and sin, unless they are induced to abstain, and surrounded by circumstances favorable to abstinence.* Multitudes who have been led to abstain have afterwards fallen by social temptations to drinking, and greater multitudes have fallen before the allurements of the drinking-house. And "the thing that has been will be,” until the good of all classes earnestly resolve upon the adoption of the measures by which, while benefiting themselves, they will save others from "the snares of the destroyer."

And if the CURE of existing intemperance is hopeless. without the exclusion of intoxicating drink from the diet, the hospitalities, and the traffic of the country, still more hopeless, were that possible, must be its future PREVENTION, unless such a method of defence is carried out. Alcohol will not lose its characteristic properties, nor human nature its susceptibility to its insinuating, seductive, and depriving power. The flowers of social courtesy and charms of social intercourse will not deprive alcoholic drink of its serpentine fascination and poisonous fangs. No mandate to the vendors of intoxicating drinks, to avoid dispersing the miasma of intoxication, will enable them to carry the mandate into effect. Who can doubt that ages must elapse before the bulk of men will be as able, as pure, as wise, as noble as many of those who, in the present age, have fallen victims to this "defrauder"? How, then, can it be imagined that, before that golden age is gained, alcoholic liquors will be rendered impotent for mischief, if incapable of good? May

* "It is the almost universal testimony of those connected with our criminai jurisprudence and the control of workhouses, and, indeed, of all who have looked deeply into the subject, that, in the case of persons addicted to intemperance, total abstinence from intoxicating drink is, under God, the only effectual remedy."—Report of Convocation on Intemperance, pp. 13, 14. Also A. A. Appendix in the Report.

it not rather be feared that no more certain means could be devised of hindering the arrival of a time when the body of the people will be well fed, well clothed, well educated, well ordered, well behaved, than to perpetuate a system which has been hitherto so fruitful in all misery and evil, and which, by its baneful influence on the bodies and minds of one generation, transmits some of its malignant marks, often by hereditary taint, to a posterity uncursed by heaven? It is important that no vain expectation should seize the social philanthropists and reformers of this day. If they permit the seed of strong drink to be sown, they will not, by any counter-contrivance, prevent the uprising of the old familiar crop of intemperance, disease, destitution, vice, and crime. What will be ensured besides this is the choking of much good seed that would otherwise come to fruition. God will not be mocked" even by his servants when they act in ignorance of his laws. As are the seed and the sowing, so the harvest will be, as long as the sun gives light, and the rivers roll onward to the seas.

OBJECTIONS.

1. It is objected that the proposal of excluding intoxicating liquors from daily diet, social hospitalities, and from general commerce is, under existing circumstances, an extreme one; that there is already a gratifying advance made, as to public sobriety, upon former times; and that, whatever may be hereafter expedient, present effort should be limited to reforms of a more moderate description.”

This threefold objection may be best examined in its separate parts:

(1.) The charge of extremeness is one well adapted to terrify those who are never more alarmed than when they are supposed to be going in advance of the opinion of their own social circle. But minds not enslaved by con

Objection from "Extremeness."

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ventional fears and fetters will not be dissuaded by any cry of extreme" from inquiring into its justice or error. It is palpably clear that the simple negative of what is worthless or injurious cannot be "an extreme" in any objectionable sense. But total abstinence is the negative of intemperance, and, on this account, entitled to the highest credit; and it is the negative of any use or sanction of the liquors by which intemperance is produced, and by which, before intemperance arises, damage is done to the interests of society. If, then, it be an extreme in this respect, it is not a measure in excess of what is fit, discreet, and good. It is no accusation against a man that he is extremely wise; nor against a woman that she is extremely chaste; nor against any one, that he keeps extremely distant from what is worthless and charged with peril. The total abstainer may be extremely sober, but sobriety admits of no excess; and if his principle is one that would render intemperance impossible, and would, in a thousand other ways, benefit the world, to call it "extreme" is to pass upon it the compliment of being extremely efficacious in preventing evil and in conferring good. The venerable maxims which warn against extremes, and recommend the middle as the safest course, can have no application against a measure which, if adopted, would make mankind extremely safe and happy. The physician is never blamed because he enables his patient to make an extremely rapid and complete recovery; nor would he be admired if he left the invalid half-way between prostration and health. To make these maxims applicable to total abstinence, it should be shown that it is followed by evils as severe and afflictive as those of intemperance; whereas, every recession from intemperance is a good, and "moderate drinking," when most moderate, derives its advantage over intemperance from the fact of its closer approximation to the abstinence standpoint. To speak, as some do, of temperance'

and "moderation as a virtue opposed to total abstinence, is a proof how easily men are imposed upon by sounds. The essential idea in temperance is that of selfrestraint; and temperance, as a virtue, is self-restraint carried to the point of excluding evil and needless risk of evil. Moderation is the regulation of the desires, so as to exclude their gratification in any injurious manner or degree. There is nothing in temperance or moderation thus understood incompatible with total abstinence from strong drink; on the contrary, the virtue of temperance finds its only complete exhibition, in regard to strong drink, in the total abstinence principle and practice.* The charge of "fanaticism" is another form of this "extreme" accusation; but great earnestness in a good work is not a vice, but a virtue; and in the sense of aiming at a chimerical result by impracticable means, temperance advocates are the opposite of "fanatics." Their means are most practicable, and the results, if the means are used, are inevitable. When will respectable speakers and writers have the good-sense to avoid using terms of reproach which simply betray their own fanatical prejudices or deficient discrimination?

(2.) The claim to a great advance in public sobriety is, to a certain extent, well founded; the gross convivial drunkenness once common in the higher circles is now discountenanced and has generally disappeared; but what is proved by these changes is the indisputable connection between drinking customs and drunkenness; and what is not proved is the non-necessity of a demand for the total exclusion of intoxicating drinks from diet, sociality,

*The word " temperance" is from the Latin Temperantia, the force of which is found in the Greek temno, "to cut off." Temperance, subjectively, is the cutting-off of the desire for what is improper in measure or kind; objectively, it is cutting off the things themselves. That temperare is used in the sense of entirely abstaining and restraining is known to every reader of the classics. Livy, the historian, once uses it in referring to wine, to express abstinence from that liquor (Book xl. sec. 14).

A Great Advance in Public Sobriety.

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and ordinary trade. It by no means follows that, because after dinner excesses are less common than they were, domestic and personal insobriety has decreased in a corresponding ratio; but, even if it had, and if drinking habits and the drinking appetite were less frequent among "respectable circles" than they are known to be, the proper inference would be that advantage should be taken of changes already induced-whether by fashion, refinement, enlightenment, or legislation-and a strenuous effort made to broaden the basis of reformation, and to carry it to the fullest extent, in order that all the evil still prevailing may cease, and the calamities so long and needlessly endured be for ever done away with.

(3.) The suggestion that “present effort should be limitea to reforms of a description more moderate" than those advocated in this essay, is one which, for reasons before indicated, cannot be admitted. Whatever might have been the duty of those who had less light than ourselves, it cannot be either just or expedient that those who have a fuller knowledge and a more extensive remedy should conceal the one and withhold the other. The expulsion of intoxicating drink is the one policy which, in proportion as it is practised by the private citizen, by the family, and, as an article of traffic (under legislative arrangement), by the district, will never disappoint, but will yield augmenting testimony to the wisdom which has inspired it, and the patriotism which has carried it to a happy consummation.

2. It is objected by some, that “the temperance movement is itself a failure, since it has existed for forty years without removing drunkenness, while the sale and consumption of intoxicating drinks have continued to increase." But relatively to population, the sale and use of intoxicating liquors have not increased, though, in the consumption of many other articles, and in the general commerce of the country, the proportionate increase has been very great. The