ciate this argument in favour of temperance as strongly as any other. The power of creating every year 200 such stores, cornmills, coöperative factories, as exist at Rochdale, would be the power in a dozen years to make England a home that no man would leave for Australian diggings or American backwoods.

We

Our readers will have anticipated from what we have already said, that we are in no sense advocates of compulsory abstinence; that we have neither sympathy nor respect for a body like that which, under the name of the United Kingdom Alliance, has been set on foot by the disappointed teetotalers to suppress by legislative power the sale of all" alcoholic beverages.' cannot too strongly express our dissent from the proposals, or our disapproval of the conduct and demeanour, of that association. Having imposed on ourselves the duty of studying their publications, it is only just that we should give utterance to the conviction forced upon us, that, with very few exceptions, all their manifestoes and arguments are disgraceful to their character and discreditable to their sense. Their logic-if it may be so dignified--is feeble beyond comparison, their statements unreliable, their arguments too generally a tissue of libellous imputations; their language is unworthy of Christians, and would be impossible to gentlemen. We must single out for especial reprobation their chief text-book-the Prize Essay of Dr. Lees -which transcends all teetotal literature we have yet seen in incoherency of thought and violence of language. His controversy with Mr. Gough, by the way, is proof that the habit of insult and imputation is scarcely a safe one, even for a MaineLaw advocate, a man wont to vituperate his enemies being unable to school his pen to sobriety of abuse in quarrelling with an ally. It does no credit to the Alliance that such a man is about the most capable literary supporter they have found. But, to do him justice, the chief difference between him and his associates is in his greater fluency of scolding; the temper and disposition of all being pretty much alike. Great brewers, like Messrs. Bass, Barclay, and others, including men like Sir F. Buxton and Mr. R. Hanbury," have already built up their fortunes out of blasphemy and beggary." "Men of station and conductors of the public press wickedly endeavour to lessen the odium which attaches to the offence of drunkenness." "Ladies are not unfrequently found among the victims of the fatal appetite engendered of wine. Eau-de-Cologne is sold in gallons to fashionable women-not for a scent, but to disguise one." In reply to Mr. Adderley, who "could not see" the justice of prohibition, Dr. Lees insinuates, "there are many things that people cannot see, especially after dinner and wine." The publican is "a chartered libertine," a "drunkard-maker," " "drunkard-maker," "poison-vendor,” “traf

66

ficker;" the last being a nickname which seems, in the mouth of Dr. Lees, to convey some hidden sting, but in which we can see nothing but a vulgar impertinence. But when the Saturday Review is called 66 a despicable quibbler," and Mr. G. H. Lewes "a Timon, who triumphs over shame;" "a gay, deluding, philosophic knave,"-how can poor Boniface expect milder or more discriminating treatment? In one word, the Essay is a disgrace even to the Alliance; and it is painful to read on its cover the signature of such a man as the Recorder of Birmingham, affixed to a commendation of this congeries of falsehood and vulgarity. It is the authorised publication of such works, and the employment of advocates whose platform oratory is of the same stamp, which induces men of sober and reflective spirit to regard with fear and disgust the whole brood of modern "temperance" agitators.

We fear that the Maine-Law party of America are as bad as their imitators in England. The following extract from a speech of the Hon. Amasa Walker, published in England under the authority of the Alliance, is worthy of Dr. Lees himself:

"What has the Maine Law accomplished? It has branded the seller of liquid poisons, under the form of intoxicating drinks, as a criminal. It has made his calling infamous; it has placed him in the same category with thieves and robbers, and doomed him to imprisonment in the same cells as all other felons."

For malignity, vituperation, and implied falsehood, it would be difficult to produce any thing surpassing this.

The violence of the Alliance is in some degree explained, if not excused, by the fact that it consists mainly of the defeated and dispirited relics of a party that has been degraded by its own folly and virulence from a position of public honour and usefulness to one of contempt and ridicule. What teetotalism was in the days of Father Mathew our readers have not forgotten; what it is now, the documents of the Alliance will convince any one who reads them. The Total Abstinence movement failed. Reclaimed drunkards returned to drinking, made worse by the consciousness of a vow solemnly taken, and broken in a moment of weakness-the little self-respect they had left being utterly and hopelessly gone. Pledged abstainers, repenting of a foolish vow hastily made,-foolish, we mean, in those who did not feel that they could not be temperate, and finding no substitute provided for the public-house, retracted their promise, broke the faith given in an hour of unreasoning enthusiasm, and again sought good cheer and good company in the alehouse-parlour; they, too, somewhat the less safe for the doubtings of conscience in regard to the obligation they had cast aside. The result might have been foretold; nay, it was

foretold eighteen hundred years before. The unclean spirit did return to the house that he had left, did find it empty, swept, and garnished. And if "the last state of that man was worse than the first," it was the fault of those whose only notion of moral reform seemed to consist in personal abuse and partisan pledges. The best of the teetotalers retired in sorrow and disappointment; sadder, and, we hope, wiser men. Perhaps it occurred to them that a little less denunciation and invective, a little more attraction and substitution—somewhat less abuse, and somewhat more practical measures-might have achieved their purpose better. But they had never been the controlling spirits of the party, whose real leaders are and always were the most violent and fanatical declaimers among them. These, in the characteristic manner of baffled demagogues, changed the nature, and perverted the object, of the movement. Failing to make men temperate by harangues and pledges, they turned their energies to the somewhat easier object of making them teetotalers by force. And with this view their Alliance was concocted; and a measure, based on that of Maine, put forward as their suggestion for the regeneration of society.

*

The intention of the Alliance, as set forth by themselves, is merely to prevent the public sale of intoxicating liquors. They would allow the people to drink, if they can get drink without paying for it. They would allow the mechanic or day-labourer to brew his own beer, or the gentleman to import his own wine, and drink it at home. But they would "destroy the traffic;" forbid the sale of that of which they dare not as yet propose to forbid the use. No party of gentlemen shall go to dine at Rich

• Mr. George Lucas, an advocate of the Alliance, reports the following instance-one among scores-of teetotal failures. "I have here an abstract of the working of the Leeds Temperance Society from its origin to 1851. I find in 1837 there were in connection with it 14 branches, 29 weekly meeting-places, 118 speakers on the plan, a Temperance periodical issued, and a regular system of visiting established. Now, 13 of these branch societies have died out at one time or another, and I think now only four of them have an existence; while only one of them has made vital progress. The 29 meetings have been reduced to three. No speakers' plan exists, no system of visiting, no publication is issued. During the whole of the existence of this society, there has been a zealous and able committee, near 4000l. expended, the best advocates in the world commanded; but, in spite of all, these reverses have been endured; and none so much deplore it as the noble men who have laboured to promote the cause. Take now a few facts respecting Woodhouse Society, the one with whose history I am most familiar. It was established nineteen years ago, had an active committee, every means that ingenuity could devise to promote its success was employed during a space of ten years, when the committee took a solemn review, and were entirely discouraged. They had got the people with them; but they had gone back again, and could scarcely tell from whence their committee could be sustained. This was their condition after ten years of earnest and sacrificial industry had been devoted to the cause; and I am satisfied, so far as I have ascertained the facts relating to Gateshead and the Temperance Societies in general, that this is a summary of their history in this kingdom."

mond or Greenwich; or if they do, they must dine as teetotalers, and drink healths in lemonade or sparkling soda-water. Farmers and artisans shall no longer meet on Saturday evenings in the alehouse-parlour for their "crack o'er a glass"-the only social gatherings of the working-man. Nay, it shall not be lawful to keep open even a wholesale shop for the sale of wine or beer or spirits; there shall be no means of procuring them but by home-making, or direct importation from abroad by each individual who desires them. What this would amount to we can all understand; and after having made such proposals, it is as childish as it is dishonest on the part of the Alliance to tell us that "they do not attempt to interfere with drinking, only with the traffic in drink." Why, their object in destroying the traffic is simply to render drink unattainable to ninety-five in a hundred of the people. It is better to speak out at once the truth, which they are continually betraying in such passages as this, and others yet more decisive. "It is not the public-house with which we war; it is not the publican to whom we object; it is not even the company we find there that is necessarily objectionable it is that which vitiates the calling of the taverner, and corrupts his company; which makes alike the trade, the trader, and the tippler objectionable to the pure and good:-it is the use of the specific drink!”*

Sound

The real purpose peeps out a little farther still in the following, from one of the monthly papers of the Alliance: "Absolute safety for the individual can be found only in absolute abstinence from that which does, in an awful number of instances, produce the drink-appetite, and may do so in any one. legislation with regard to intemperance must be based on a recognition of this truth." What this means, if not that legislation should enforce "absolute abstinence," it would be difficult to say. Indeed, it is strange that any one should doubt that the purpose of the movement is the total prevention of the use of wine, beer, spirits of whatever kind; and that the prohibition of importation would be enforced against the higher classes, if ever by their concurrence the prohibition of purchase at home were enforced against the lower.

That a scheme so outrageous should find supporters, should be ventilated at public meetings and in periodical tracts, and even have two insignificant organs in the weekly press, would be impossible but for that crusading spirit of which we have spoken. It has, indeed, very few creditable friends even among that class. But, having already said enough of the general character of the agitation, we prefer for the future to confine ourselves as far as possible to the arguments of these few, and * Dr. Lees' Prize Essay, p. 41; the italics are in the original.

in exposing what we consider the faults and fallacies of the prohibitive scheme, to apply ourselves to the reasonings and views of those who are with the Alliance, but not of it; confident that if Mr. Newman and Mr. M. D. Hill fail to make out their case, their arguments will not be strengthened by the aid of Dr. Lees, Mr. Pope, Mr. Dow, Mr. Dawson Burns, and the rest, whose names are appended to the class of tracts and essays we have described.

Mr. Newman, not having made the subject his especial study, has abstained, with rare conscientiousness, from entering warmly into the advocacy of the "Maine Law." His views must be sought in two letters addressed to the Editor of the Reasoner, in both of which his object was to vindicate rather the justice than the policy of such an enactment. In these he first defined his position, which differs toto cœlo from that assumed by the professed apologists of the Alliance. "We would prohibit," he says, "not the sale, but the traffic;" and he expresses his opinion that a salaried agent should be appointed to sell alcoholic liquors to all who might demand them, but should be prohibited from gaining a penny by the traffic. Passing over the probable quality of goods in which the vendor had no interest, we have simply to note that this plan merely proposes to do somewhat more effectually what is already done by the present law, namely, to check the encouragement of intoxication by the vendor of spirits. But to do this, not thoroughly, but a little more effectively than is done at present, it would inflict immense inconvenience on fifty sober people for the benefit of five drunkards, -a fault which seems to us sufficient to counterbalance all the good effect that could be anticipated from it. The Alliance propose something very different from this; and it is as an advocate of the principles of the Alliance, rather than as an independent adviser, that we have to deal with Mr. Newman. They propose to appoint such an agent as Mr. Newman describes, with instructions, left in blank in their "draft of a bill," but filled up sufficiently by their speakers. They would allow him to sell only for scientific, manufacturing, or medical purposes. Nay, we rather think that, in reliance on a few unknown physicians, and on Dr. A. Combe, together with some hesitating theories of Dr. Carpenter's, they would prohibit spirits, wine, and beer even as medicine. This proposal Mr. Newman apparently sees to be absurd; but if we understand him rightly, he defends the principle on which it rests. Treating the authority of the State over its subjects avowedly on the same footing as that of a general over his army, he maintained-in answer to an assertion, in the Reasoner, that the Maine Law was "a crime"-the right of the state to prohibit the use of intoxicating liquors.