The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

I o The Drinking System our Chzief Social Evil.
that "drunkenness" is a term at once too narrow and
too lax for the subject of such a predicate? To speak
even of "intoxication" or "intemperance" as our master-curse would be to employ language superficial and
misleading; for drunkenness in all its degrees, intoxication in all its stages, intemperance in all its shifting
forms, these, each and all, do but indicate the rank exuberance of the evil we deplore; they only mark the brimming channels fed by higher fountains-social arrangements, institutions, and habits-the whole constituting
what has been fitly denominated the DRINKING SYSTEM.
The phrase may be new to some, but its convenience and
expressiveness are its merit. General terms may be compared to the camera-obscura, which depicts miles of scenery on inches of space; and such a term as the DRINKING
SYSTE-M will preserve the social student from confusing
effects with causes, and will enable him to apprehend by
what means and in what manner we are misled by the
drink curse, the saddest and darkest evil of our age.
The drinking system comprehends whatever is concerned in the production, circulation, and consumption
of intoxicating drinks, with all the consequences, direct
and indirect; and of this system, so viewed, we affirm
that it stands forth as a colossus among the degenerating
and mischievous factors of our social state. To see how
this proposition is sustained, it is necessary to enumerate
some of the more pregnant facts in relation to the several
points.
I. THE PRODUCTION OF INTOXICATING LIQUOR.-The
genesis of strong drinks, and therefore of all future evils
from their use, is effected by the conversion of sugar
into alcohol. " When a moderately warm solution of
cane-sugar or grape-sugar is mixed with certain albuminous matters, as blood, white of egg, flour paste, and especially beer-yeast, in a state of deconmosition, a peculiar process is set up, by which the sugar is resolved into ethyl