known as "prohibition." From 1851 to 1856 "Maine Laws" were enacted in more than twelve States.

Under these two working measures-total abstinence and prohibition-logically germane to each other, the greatest and deepest moral reformation in respect to temperance was realized from about 1830 to 1855. The policy of the reform was clearly and unequivocally against the moderate drinking even of mild liquors, and as clearly against sanctioning the liquor traffic by licenses. If any theories have been demonstrated as utter failures, they are the theories of moderation and license.

Since 1855 there has been some reaction and vacillation. The history of this reverse movement has been carefully sketched,' and need not be here repeated. It has been a departure from these two fundamental measures of reform, which has occasioned the decline. Within a few years Temperance Reformation has been advancing again; but it has been by returning to the vigorous advocacy of the same fundamental measures which, in the past, have helped it forward. It has been conclusively demonstrated that neither moral nor legal suasion can be dispensed with. The Temperance Reform must depend primarily upon intelligent moral convictions in the hearts of the people. But law must also be relied upon to remove the temptations of the drink shop from the sight of reformed inebriates, whose alcoholized brains and vitiated appetites have brought them into such an abnormal and enfeebled condition, physically and morally, that they have little power of resistance, and are almost sure to yield to the seductions of alcohol.

We are still in the midst of a great battle. The forces of alcohol were never before so compactly and powerfully organized either in Great Britain or in the United States as now. Their leagues are every-where. While we have much to encourage us, in the ample evidences afforded on every hand, that our labors have not been in vain, but have produced great

2

1 See pp. 397-407.

2 See pp. 472-484.

and substantial improvement, nevertheless rose-colored views should not be entertained. The liquor traffic is not likely to soon die out from lack of drinkers. It is a moral impossibility for the drink traffic to be extinguished until it is suppressed by law, whatever may be done by moral suasion. Nevertheless, we should not intermit moral suasion efforts. They constitute the basis and afford the true moral impulse for legal suasion. That we should have so many drink shops, such large drink expenditures, and so much drunkenness and crime resulting therefrom, is certainly lamentable. No great permanent improvement in the condition of the country can be expected until government declares that the liquor traffic is an evil which must be put down in the interest of society.

The experience of the past sixty years proves that moral suasion needs to be supplemented by penal action in order to complete success. Observation is convincing men that "if they would successfully cope with the liquor traffic they must wield, in one hand the sword of prohibition, and in the other the trowel of moral suasion. While they build up temperance organizations, they must aim to destroy that which would pull them down again. So long as they use the trowel only, they are merely building a house for the enemy to capture."

It is a sad fact, and humiliating to admit, that "so far temperance revivals have, by the law of reaction, tended to strengthen the liquor traffic; or, in other words, the results achieved during seasons of special activity by temperance men have not been preserved because of legalized temptation." The Father Mathew revival is in evidence on this point. The Washingtonian revival witnessed 600,000 attempted reformations, of which 450,000 returned to their cups. That movement was one purely of moral suasion. Rumsellers were treated tenderly by all the reform speakers, and legal measures were eschewed and sharply renounced; but the reformed men fell before the dram shops like grass before the scythe; and these palpable failures gave that great impulse to prohibitory legislation which culminated in the enactment of the Maine

laws. The converts under Murphy, Osgood, and Reynolds similarly failed, and from the same cause. The "Alliance News," the leading temperance paper in England, in an editorial, in September, 1882, fully demonstrated the practical failure of the blue ribbon movement in that country. It says, "The results of the blue ribbon movement cannot be permanent so long as legalized temptation exists to the extent that it now does," and cited facts from numerous localities demonstrating it.

It infers that "the license iniquity must be swept away." Facilities and temptations to drinking must be removed. ExBaillie Lewis, of Edinburgh, in his strong book, "The Drink Problem and its Solution," demonstrates this truth that, so far as reforming men in the presence of the surrounding temptations of legalized liquor shops, education, coffee houses, moral suasion, and even religion, alone, are failures, and the only solution of the difficulty is to put with these measures the prohibition of the traffic. Men paralyzed, enfeebled, and reduced into an abnormal condition by alcoholized brains and appetites, are morally impotent to withstand the temptation to drink. What crimes against humanity has alcohol inflicted! The instincts of philanthropy call loudly for the protection of these unfortunates by penal sanctions against the seductions of alcohol.

The soundest political economy also calls for the protection of society against the oppressive taxation caused by the liquor traffic. A liquor dealer was complaining of the oppression of prohibition. "I have just paid my taxes, $600, on my city property," said a gentleman in reply, "and I find that $450 of it is caused by the liquor traffic. But I suppose I have no rights. Rusellers have all." Intelligent men are studying the economies of the liquor scourge, and moving against it. In an address in New York city, a few years ago, Elizur Wright, of Boston, said:

The time is coming when temperance people every-where will claim exemption from certain kinds of taxation-taxation under which the consumer now suffers, but which should be thrown upon capital. If the

great tax which is now required to support charitable and pauper institutions should be put upon that portion of the population which is supported by liquor, then capital would retreat. And this ought to be a direct tax upon the whole property of the manufacturers of liquor.

A New York editor made the following comment:

Sensitive as property owners as a rule are to undue taxation, it is surprising that ere this there has not been a general rebellion against the enormous, needless taxation imposed by the liquor traffic upon the property of the whole country. If the liquor traffic is to go on, some system of direct taxation should be devised whereby the capital employed in it for the sake of gain should be made to bear its legitimate proportion of the burdens which accrue from strong drink. When that is done the liquor traffic will cease to be profitable, and capital will withdraw from it. It is profitable now to a small oligarchy of liquor makers and venders, because the crime, pauperism, and the general injury for which it is responsible, the property of the whole community is taxed to pay for. The revenue tax and paltry license fee constitute but the merest fraction of the amount which liquor dealers ought to be compelled to pay while their "business" is tolerated and protected by the State.

One of the cheering indications of the present time is that the liquor problem is receiving thoughtful consideration from able representative statesmen and periodicals. Not long ago the "Westminster Review" said: "We must, as a nation, be sober and honest. Our drinking customs are our greatest 'rock ahead,' not only morally, but also socially and commercially. . . . The loss to the country through the physical and mental ruin and premature death of thousands of victims of the liquor traffic every year can never be estimated." He adds: "The lack of sobriety among our artisans, with whom steady hands and clear heads are essential to the execution of the best work, will tell against us with increasing power, as foreign competition becomes keener; and the loss of time inseparable from drinking habits is becoming an item in the cost of our manufactures, even more serious than any probable increase of wages or reduction of hours of labor. If we mean to

maintain our position before the world, we must turn our backs on the liquor traffic."

Mr. John Morley, M.P., in the "Daily News," London, in 1882, said, "No dispassionate observer can fail to be impressed by the extent and the force of the tendency which, at the present day, is compelling governments to impose penal impediments upon the liquor traffic. From Kansas to New South Wales, from Ireland to Iowa, this movement in self-governed communities has long been known to be gaining strength. Before the century closes legislation will have made much greater advances toward the deliverance of society from this curse."

CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION.

The index finger of the century points toward the constitutional prohibition of the liquor traffic. This child of hope is in the womb of the future. How long the advent will be delayed, and by what hinderances and reverses, we cannot tell; but the progress of events seems to foretoken it, and many are cheered by the great expectation. We would not indulge in rose-colored views, but the trend of reformatory thought and discussion, in large areas of people, is in that direction; and, when it comes, it will be the legitimate outbirth from great principles, which have been generated and developed in the profound and ardent thoughts of true reformers, toiling long and faithfully for the deliverance of society from the liquor scourge. In the investigations and mutual encounters of the champions of progress during the past sixty years, thought has purified, modified, and inspired thought, eliminating much and advancing much, until certain great principles have been wrought out, which unmistakably point to constitutional prohibition as the legitimate sequence.

What are these principles? Six propositions will be accepted by multitudes, as so thoroughly determined that they need but little more than to be stated.

1. The evil which prohibition seeks to remove is "the giant crime of crimes" against society.