came into the car and called out, "Last place to get a drink, gentlemen, for many hours." (By drink, of course, he meant beer or spirits.) Many rushed out, and a party of three young men returned with large flasks of liquor. We did not see this consumed, as, knowing they were transgressing, they took it by turns during the seven hours we were traveling in Maine to enter the retiring-room of the car, never failing to come out either wiping their mouths or "licking their gills." All this, then, shows "there is really something in it." I feel there is a lot in it. Suppose it can be shown that in a dozen places in this big city drink can be got in an underhand surreptitious manner, that does not prove the law is a failure, but the necessity for secrecy proves the power of the law. Let us have the same advantages in Old England as they have here. I am glad to get the "Alliance News" out here, and to observe the onward course of our movement. "More power to Sir Wilfrid's arm!" You will be hearing of us on your side about March, all being well. I am, dear sir, yours very sincerely, DUNCAN S. MILLER, Conductor of Royal (Boland Street) Hand Bell Ringers. United States Hotel, Portland, Me., U.S. A., November 8, 1882.

Mr. J. N. Stearns' presents the following concessions to the efficiency of the prohibitory regimen, gathered from the utterances of the

BEER BREWERS' CONGRESS.

The Twentieth Annual Session of the Beer Brewers' Congress, which met at Buffalo, in 1880, gave strong testimony showing that, from their stand-point, "Prohibition Prohibits." The President, Mr. Ruter, in his opening address, said:

The State of Maine, with only seven barrels last year, and 7,031 barrels the year previous to that, has now disappeared altogether from the list of beer-producing States.

The Executive Committee in their report say:

Your Executive regret they are obliged to call your attention to local legislative measures in many States, and especially in the States of Iowa and Kansas, which threaten the entire extinction of breweries in those States. Suggestions from this Convention as to how such arbitrary legislation may best be met and defeated are very desirable.

1" Prohibition Does Prohibit," National Temperance Publication House, New York city, 1882, p. 90.

The report of the Agitation Committee also sounds the alarm, and says:

As regards prohibition and temperance agitation, your committee call your attention to the fact that the spirit of intolerance is on the increase in many States. In the Legislature of the State of Iowa there has been passed a measure, through the efforts of this party, which threatens the extinction of every brewery in that State. A bill is now before the Congress of the United States to appoint a commission of five to investigate the alcoholic liquor traffic, and this proposed measure requires your serious attention.

They adopted a series of resolutions in which they said:

Resolved, That the members of this Association, individually and collectively, use every means in their power to remove unjust and unwise legal restrictions which zeal without knowledge has imposed upon our trade, and to resist the future enactment of such laws.

The beer brewers always, and every-where, oppose prohibitory laws, because they know it diminishes the sale of beer. The Washington "Sentinel," organ of the beer brewers, with Lewis Schade, its editor, their paid attorney, speaking of the proposed prohibitory measures in Iowa, says:

If those prohibitory measures should become a law, four grain distilleries and nine fruit distilleries will be destroyed. That loss, small as it is, might be borne. But there will also be 150 breweries stopped, which paid into the United States Treasury last year over $200,000 taxes for nearly as many barrels of beer produced by them, and two millions of capital invested therein destroyed. Over 4,500 dealers in malt and spirituous liquor will be broken up, and just so many families deprived of the means of making a living.

"Our enemies themselves being the judges."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC VINDICATION OF TOTAL ABSTI

W

NENCE.

ITHIN the last twenty years, in some classes of our native population, reactionary tendencies in respect to the principle of total abstinence have been apparent. The question of the use of alcoholic beverages has been re-opened and reexamined by a considerable class of influential persons, and many classes have felt a downward tendency. Several things have contributed to this reaction: the infusion of more than ten millions of immigrants into our population since 1850, very few of whom had been favored with temperance tutelage, has been a prominent cause; the intimate association of large numbers of our citizens with the habits of the Old World, by foreign travel, is another cause; the low moral condition of the post bellum period is another; and the great beer invasion is another.

But there are other causes which have operated widely and potentially. In 1855 the "Westminster Review" defended the use of alcohol in health as necessary-indeed, as food for the body. Notwithstanding, in 1860, this journal magnanimously acknowledged that more recent scientific French investigators of the highest rank had exploded that doctrine, yet there were those who continued to advocate it, prominent among whom was that great man and patriot, ex-Gov. John A. Andrew, one of the most idolized and influential men Massachusetts ever numbered among its eminent civilians, who conducted an investigation before the Liquor Committee of the Legislature in 1867, in which he strongly antagonized total abstinence and prohibi

1 For a fuller account of these deteriorating tendencies, see pp. 397-407. See pp. 452-471.

tion. Again, in 1872, '73, able articles written by that highly cultivated physician, Henry I. Bowditch, M.D., in the "Reports of the Massachusetts Board of Health," advocated the existence of certain cosmic laws which determine intemperance. All of these discussions attracted wide attention, and unsettled the confidence of many in the principle of total abstinence. Many persons first doubted, then vacillated, then apologized for the use of intoxicants, subsequently became advocates of the liquor cause, and freely indulged in the fatal beverage. The argument of Gov. Andrew has recently been republished, in an immense edition, by the liquor fraternity, for wide circulation in certain Western States, upon which they are concentrating their energies; and Dr. Bowditch's paper has also been lately reprinted by the advocates of "Moderation" in New York city. Dr. Howard Crosby's advocacy of moderate drinking is still fresh in the public mind.

The number of persons affected by these theories is not small. Literary and scientific men, gentlemen of leisure, educators, statesmen, and persons of lesser note, have been beguiled by the specious sophistries. The recent advance movements in temperance have felt their solid resistance as barriers in the path of progress. One of the most urgent duties of temperance men is to sift out and expose these sophistries which are beguiling and ruining so many.

These theories may be summed up under two heads:
SUPPOSED COSMIC LAWS; and

THE SUPPOSED UTILITY OF ALCOHOL.

I. THE COSMIC THEORY.

Is INTEMPERANCE DETERMINED BY NATURAL LAWS? Considerable research has been expended in the endeavor to discover some individual race peculiarities, or some uniform tendencies in the history of the race, as a whole, or some universal laws in the constitution of nature, which may account for the existence and prevalence of intemperance. Such

inquiries are of great fundamental importance. If these suppositions can be shown to be any thing more than hypotheses, and can be vindicated upon a true scientific basis, then intemperance ceases to be a question of morals and reform; for, if this theory is true, intemperance is controlled by material laws, and must be assigned a place in the category of things which are inevitable, to be tolerated, and, possibly, slightly regulated, but not eradicated. Some intelligent persons seem to have settled down upon such convictions, indulging in alcoholic drinks with hushed consciences, and indifferent to efforts for reform.

To specify Different theorists claim that the prevalence of intemperance depends upon one or more of the following great influences: Civilization; race; climate; and the prevalence or non-prevalence of native wines or beers.

It is an important inquiry-and legitimate, too-whether the history of the drinking customs of the world, and modern scientific research, furnish any light upon these hypotheses, which will determine their acceptance or rejection.

I.-Is Intemperance dependent upon the Higher Civilizationa product of the artificial conditions of cultivated life? A popular fallacy has declared that drunkenness is an invariable concomitant of high civilization; that an aboriginal condition means purity and sobriety; and that to civilization is to be charged the introduction of intemperance among savage races. But so far as any information has reached us in regard to uncivilized people in former ages, it attests the fact that the use of some kind of stimulant has been coeval with the earliest beginnings of social life; that the most primitive people have reflected the same vices which accompany the use of intoxicants in civilized nations; and the knowledge afforded by the recent exploration of thorougly savage tribes, just brought within the scope of our acquaintance, shows the same propensity to intoxication, even in very excessive degrees, by the use of drinks peculiarly their own, which we witness in our own towns and