CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. In entering upon the discussion of the Problem of the Liquor Traffic, we naturally consider what the traffic does to us before inquiring what we shall do with it. The investigation of a disease precedes and then determines the nature and strength of the remedies. This is the logical, and we believe it will be found to have been the chronological, order of thought with those who have been most earnest practical students of the relation of legislation to this traffic. By the liquor traffic, of course we mean the common sale of alcoholic liquors as a beverage. It is self-evident that the intemperance of the country is mainly due to this traffic. We are, then, to inquire what are the burdens intemperance lays upon us, and then whether the traffic has any benefits to show by way of offset. To many it will seem an entirely needless task to set forth the evils which we suffer from this cause. Conceded by so many eminent persons of every school of thought, and emphasized by observers from every point of view, they might with propriety be assumed at the outset as the basis of any argument. We meet such statements as follow everywhere. Charles Buxton, M.P., the English brewer, declares that if we "add together all the miseries generated in our times by war, famine, and pestilence, the three great scourges of mankind, they do not exceed those that spring from this one calamity." Richard Cobden, years ago, put on record his testimony that " Every day's experience tends more and more to confirm me in my opinion that the temperance cause lies at the foundation of all social and political reform; while John Bright, his compeer, calls the "love of strong drink the greatest obstacle to the diffusion of education amongst the masses of the people." Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary under the Gladstone ministry, confessed that intemperance was "not only a great evil, but the greatest of all evils with which social reformers had to contend." The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent visitation charge, gives this solemn warning: "There is one dreadful evil overspreading the whole land, which makes havoc of our workingmen-the evil of intemperance; un less you make distinct and positive efforts against it, you will be neglecting an evil which is eating out the very heart of society, destroying domestic life among our working classes, and perhaps doing greater injury than any other cause that could be named in this age.' Dr. Temple, the Bishop of Exeter, lately said: "Of all the preventable evils in the world, intemperance is, perhaps, the greatest." The London Times, as the organ of the general sentiment of observing men, tersely sums up the matter thus: "The use of strong drink produces more idleness, crime, want, and misery than all other causes put together." Nor have such utterances been less pronounced in our own country. The common sentiment as to the vice of intemperance was well expressed in the report made to the Legislature of Massachusetts by the friends of a license law in 1866, when they styled it "that ulcer of the civilization of the Teutonic races." And recently, in vetoing the Local Option Bill, Governor Dix, of New York, used this emphatic language: "Intemperance is the undoubted cause of four-fifths of all the crime, pauperism, and domestic misery of the State." So Governor Gaston, in his message to the Legislature of Massachusetts in 1875, recommending the repeal of the "prohibitory law," says "that intemperance has been the |