CHAPTER XI.

THE PROVINCE OF LAW.

"Virtue must come from within; to this problem religion and morality must direct themselves. But vice may come from without; to hinder this is the care of the statesman."-Prot. F. W. NEWMAN.

As we have thus far restricted our view of the evils of alcohol to what it does to the State, so we now desire in turn to limit this inquiry to what the State should do to alcohol. What the individual should do, in what way the good Samaritan can best act, what should be the attitude of the Christian Church, and what should be the utterance of the Christian pulpit, are all questions of momentous, yes, of primary importance. We put them aside here simply because they do not belong to the present discussion.

But so far from there being any antagonism between what is called "moral suasion and political action, or the coercive action of the law, the latter is the outgrowth and the inevitable consequent of the former.

All this seems so obvious, and the relation between moral and legal effort so simple, that

it is discouraging to find such paragraphs in the press as the following in the columns of an intelligent, but conservative religious weekly. After allusion to there having been found in a certain assembly "two opinions as to the policy of prohibition," it adds immediately: "The success of reform clubs has shown clearly that it is possible to resume the moral and educational methods which were so useful in the earlier days of the temperance movement." Possible to resume them! When and by whom have they been abandoned? While these Rip Van Winkle "moral suasionists" have been asleep, the friends of legal and moral suasion have been ever at work. I suppose, of all the permanent temperance organizations in this country, the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance stands before the public the most prominently committed to the advocacy of law as an indispensable ally to the success of this reform. And yet it has always insisted upon the importance of religious teaching and of all "educational methods" as the very foundation of all other work. It was the first society to employ a special agent to visit the public schools, and in other ways to interest the young. It has filled the Christian pulpits with the labors of clergymen; it has organized reform clubs; it has employed for years a lec

turer upon the physiological aspects of the question, and circulated publications covering every phase of the temperance movement. annual report for 1875 gives as the

SUMMARY OF WORK FOR ELEVEN YEARS.

Sabbath Congregations addressed,

Sabbath-schools addressed,

1,337

1,012

Sabbath Evening Union Temperance Meetings, 1,033

Its

More than One Hundred Thousand Children and Youth have adopted the pledge.

Thirty-four Reform Clubs organized, and many Local Tem perance Societies and Bands of Hope.

Over Seven Hundred District Temperance Conventions held.

The quality of this work may be criticised. Undoubtedly its value is various. Let the critic furnish better. But it does not lie in his mouth to object that the support of prohibition has diminished the amount of moral effort.

Its

Consider also the work of the National Temperance Society and Publication House. officers and members believe in the value and efficacy of the law-its resolutions affirm it, its publications maintain it. But "the first great work of the Society, after its organization, was to create a temperance literature." A recent circular says:

During the last nine years over forty thousand dollars have been spent for stereotyping and literary labor and publishing to the world a sound, reliable literature upon every phase of the question. The moral, social, political, financial, scientific, and religious aspects are presented. . . . . The work among the young is carried on through the medium of the Youth's Temperance Banner, 150,000 copies of which are issued every month, and by means of attractive books for Sabbath-school libraries, pictorial tracts, badges, singing-books, pledges, etc."

Will the advocates of moral suasion, pure and simple, show us their work by the side of this? Until they can, will they have the modesty to be silent?

The ludicrous confusion of ideas which leads men to talk of legal and moral suasion as antagonistic forces will at once be seen if applied to other social vices. Imagine a sane man proposing to abolish all laws against prostitution, or to license it on the Continental plan, and in this way expect to make the moral and religious protest against it stronger; or to have the ban of the law removed against lotteries and gaming-houses, or its execution relaxed, so as to awaken a revival of moral influences.

There are some men who talk moral suasion antagonistically, who deserve the rebuke administered years ago by Judge Sprague :