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

Drink-Selling and Poverty.
As the consumption of strong drink is stimulated, and
drinking habits and appetites are formed, there will not
only appear an alarming amount of intemperance; but
associated with this, and in large part dependent upon it,
and the personal dispositions thus fostered, social evils
of the darkest hue become invariably aggravated and extended.
(I.) There is iovert/y, deeenzing into desti/ulion, and sinking in fiauierism-a many-sided evil both to the sufferers
and to the state. How this is created and confirmed by
public-house influence, and the grounds of the common
estimate that three-fourths of the gross amount is due to
strong drink, need not be elaborately set forth. A few
persons who are in love with paradoxes deny the all but
universal admission, and talk of poverty as the cause,
and not the effect, of drinking. But the opposite is demonstrated by the testimony of all the authorities who
have ever given witness before parliamentary committees
and royal commissions, or who have placed their views
upon permanent record: and the reasonableness of this
judgment will appear when it is remembered that great
multitudes spend on drink a proportion of their wages
which is thus lost to all savings and investment purposes; that drinking leads to idleness, very commonly to
one day's absence from work every week, and often to
longer periods of "play "; that money is lost, and good
openings missed, by the stupidity or recklessness brought
on by drink; that fits of sickness, frequently prolonged,
are occasioned by intemperance; that numerous accidents, unfitting for labor, are occasioned by drinking;
that the abuse of earnings on drink causes much domestic sickness through want of food and timely medicine;
and that the death of the husband or wife from this
cause reduces the survivors at once to the paupers' roll.
Nor must it be forgotten that many well-conducted sober
persons are brought into a similar plight through the
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