regarded only in a philosophical light, is a theme worthy of the highest minds. It involves the gravest questions about human nature and society. It carries us into the problems which have exercised for ages the highest understandings. . . . . I venture to say there is no subject now agitated by the community which can compare in philosophical dignity with slavery; and yet to multitudes the question falls under the same contempt with the slave himself. To many, a writer seems to lower himself who touches it. The falsely refined, who want intellectual force to grasp it, pronounce it unworthy of their notice."

I offer this volume as my contribution to the discussion of an interesting problem connected with the Temperance reform. I venture to hope that some chapters may have value for the student of social science who may not accept my conclusions. I attach special importance to the facts herein set forth, and have taken much care to verify them. No one can have a stronger objection than I have to unreliable statistics, and to loose and exaggerated statements. It has been my constant aim, from taste, policy, and principle, to exclude all such.

Throughout this essay my purpose has been to keep close to the subject indicated by the title, to treat it in a calm and argumentative rather than in a rhetorical style, and to present the policy of Prohibition as not a mere corollary from personal abstin nce, but as based upon the broadest grounds of statesmanship.

NEWTON MASS., Sept. 1st., 1877.