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

T[W(sle of Food by iztoricaiinz, Liquors.
sooner will the tremendous waste of food, now annually
repeated, be arrested. The 6o,ooo,ooo bushels of corn thus
lost as nutriment would supply some millions of persons
with wholesome food; and it is no defence to assert that
the void thus created is filled with imports from abroad.
Destruction of food is not rendered less criminal because
more remains behind; the food fund of the world is, of
necessity, reduced by the quantity thus wasted; and foreign imports raise the price of corn in our home markets
beyond the actual standard. To this must be added the
loss of the labor of all kinds in bringing about a waste of
valuable aliment. If he who makes a grass-blade grow
where one did not grow before is a benefactor of his species, what name shall be bestowed upon the system which
causes the yearly loss as human food of 2,000 square miles
of strengthening grain? The same objection lies against
the liquors imported, all of which have been produced by
the waste of substances sent by Providence for the sustenance of man. It will be observed that this effect is
bound up with the very production of alcoholic liquors,
which could have no existence but for the conversion of
that which is nutritious into that which is not.
It may also be remarked that in the production of intoxicating liquors, more than of other articles of consumption, forms of adulterations can be practised, and are
known to be so, extremely pernicious to the consumer.
Complaints are made that such practices are almost universal, and the temptations to this abuse are too powerful to permit the hope that they will be very sensibly
reduced while the manufacture of the liquors is continued.*
The plea that "very much capital and labor are embarked in the production of alcoholic liquors "is no justification, unless it can be shown that capital and labor so
* See Appendix C.
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