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

I4 The Driizki'i6- S,slem our Chitf Social Evil.
applied result in a public benefit. But in reality the plea
recoils on the system it is advanced to shield; for, compared with the cost to the purchaser, the production
of alcoholic drink gives extremely limited employment
to capital and labor. A quantity of spirits or beer
costing the buyer a pound sterling can be distilled or
brewed for about two shillings in wages, while a pound
spent in furniture and clothes will yield to the workman
from twelve to fourteen shillings. But it is certain that
if the drinks were not produced a large portion of the
money spent on them would be spent on articles of personal wear and family comfort, the increased demand for
which would stimulate the labor market of the country.*
Hence the production of intoxicating liquors may be
pronounced not only necessarily destructive of the people's food, and conducive to noxious adulterations of
every kind, but also incompatible, in proportion to its
extent, with that healthy development of native industry
which would relieve the public distress and increase the
substantial wealth of the community to an unprecedented
degree.
2. THE CIRCULATION OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS.These liquors are circulated by way of public sale or private distribution. The public traffic is wholesale and
retail, and it is chiefly by means of the retail sale that the
great bulk of the liquor produced is diffused among the
people. This sale is licensed, and all unlicensed sale is
illegal and subject to heavy penalty, because the state
assumes a special control of a traffic found, by long experience, to be dangerous and hurtful to society.t But as
* This point has been treated with unanswerable ability in Mr. W. Hoyle's
work, "Our National Resources, and How they are Wasted." The Caledo.
nian Distillery, which sends out spirits valued at ~s,5oo,ooo yearly, employs
-50 men; the same money spent on cotton goods would employ io0,000ooo workmen.
t By the "Intoxicating Liquor (Licensing) Act" (35 and 36 Vict., cap. 94),
the penalties for selling by retail any intoxicating liquor without being duly