cause."
Ir is one of the evils-of drink that it leads s great many good and well meaning men to uphold teaching of which exaggeration is the principal feature, What is known as the Temperance cause has never been able to be temperate; its supporters, forget fal of the axiom of all great moral teachers, including Confucius and Socrates, that virtue lies in the menu, invoke prohibition and call it Temperance; and by the wilful misrepresentation with which they bolster up their cause, disgust men of moderate views, who would gladly assist them in attain. ing their object, if that object really were what its name professes it to be. While it is difficult to exaggerate the evils of drunkenness, the evils of drink are always exaggerated. We may apply to these too thorough-going reformers the words of Professor Blackie "They know not in mystical wedlock to join With pity pleasure, and wisdom with win The evil results of drunkenness are so patent, the harm it does to society generally and to individuals in our own circles are so constantly before us, that we shrink from impeding the exertions of those even who go too far in their endeavours to remove the -causes of these ills; but no cause can wholly prosper that is not founded on truth, and whatever may be true of drunkenness, drink is not the accursed thing which Temperance orators brand it as being, but, moderately employed, is a very good and wholesome thing. There are of course men so weak that they cannot use the " good familiar" moderately, but society cannot tolerate that a thing good in itself should be denied to all, because it is abused by a fow.
With all their faults, our local Tomporauce societies have done a great amount of good in this community, and the readiness with which they welcome on their platform the assistance of people who are known not to be festo. tallers, shows that they are not such thorough-going enemies to alcohol, as Senator Blair of Now Hampshire in the United States, This gentleman has introduced into the Senate an amendment to the Constitution providing that on and after Ist January, 1900, throughout the United States no alcoholic distilled liquors, no intoxicating liquors, can be manufactured or sold, and none imported into the country or exported from except for medical, mechanical, chemical or scientific purposes; nor can the illicit fluids be transported through any part of the United States. This resolution has at least the merit of being intense. Ib gives the American people nineteen years more in which they may drink and be merry indeed; but probably these nineteen years may be necessary to enable American financiers to discover other sources from which the largo revenue now derived from the manufacture and sale of intoxicants may be substituted; and to enable the army of citizens who live by the manufacture, sale and taxation of the illicit fluids, to find other There is no probability whatever of Senator Blair's resolation being adopted by the American people, and it is therefore a little difficult to see why it has been presented; for it can do no real good to the cause for which he fights, to have its supporters brand themselves as fanatics, The half is still often more than the whole, and those who try to get the whole too often get nothing, It is no use telling people that wine and beer do not do them good, as long as their own sensations contradict the statement; and the world generally is not unselfish enough to give up what it likes and what it is convinced does it no harm, in order that a few may be deprived of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.