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

CHAPTER VI.
PROPOSITION: THAT THE TRAFFIC IN ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS
EXERTS A PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE CALLING FOR ITS
LEGISLATIVE SUPPRESSION.
TRADE or traffic, being a social act, is, by general consent, subject to social control. This control has at times
been exercised foolishly and injuriously; but never yet
has the man appeared who, admitting that the social state
is desirable, has held that the individual-the social unit
-has the right to make his own individual inclination or
opinion the rule of his social action. It is unanimously
a-reed that the freedom and even the good of the citizen
must not be gratified so as to injure the commonwealth.
As society guarantees each citizen the free use of his
powers, and puts him into possession from his birth of
manyadvantages of which he would have been otherwise
destitute, it has a corresponding right to prevent him
turning against society the powers it has protected and
the advantages it has secured to him. Society may blindly or apathetically allow its right of self-defence and selfpreservation to lie disused, in regard- to one or another
form of flagrant evil, just as the individual may neglect
his own improvement and support; but if, in any important particular, society has thus been remiss, true patriotism will urge those who perceive the error to awaken
society to a sense of the neglect, and to the use of such
remedial measures as are required by the nature of the
case. Long-continued insensibility or oversight may
have permitted evils and abuses to become gigantic in
dimension and terrible in their strength; but this result
is a reason, not for inacti(on and despair, but for a more