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

Suppression of the Liquor Traffc
explain their criminal proclivities and the absence of
any restraining principle of a moral nature.*
(3.) 7here is a vzice of every grade, including that which is
sfecia//y stzgmatized as " the social evil." How strong drink
acts as the ally of every species of licentiousness is best
known to those who have studied the sins that eat as a
canker into our great cities and rural parts. Womanhood
is discrowned and degraded by no agency at once so
sure, so swift, and so subtle, as lthat of strong drink.
The picture drawn (Prov. xxiii. 33), "Thine eyes"-if
thou lookest on the wine that is red —" shall behold
strange women," is true to all times. What is said by
Bishop Porteous of the "simple youth" may be said
more sorrowfully of the inexperienced maid when par
taker
"Of midnight revel and tumultuous mirth,
Where, in the intoxicating draught concealed,
Or couched beneath the glance of lawless love,
Death snares the simple youth, who, naught suspecting,
Means to be blest, and finds himself undone."
Prostitution, as a public vice and scandal, could not be
sustained were intoxicating drink not ever at hand as a
means of seduction, a hardener of the moral feelings, and
a bar to that repentance which all but the most abandoned never lose some hope of finally regaining. The
clause in the license which forbids "the assembling of
prostitutes in a public-house" tacitly acknowledges a
fixed relation between dissoluteness and alcoholic drink;
but, under the plea that "prostitutes must have refresh
* It is notable that of the indictable offences and summary cases, amounting in all to above half a million yearly, a large percentage (from 20 to 40)
have respect to persons of "previous good character," and nearly as great a
percentage to persons of "character unknown," giving an aggregate of
about three-fourths of the cases as acts of misconduct of men and women
who might have been supposed as unlikely to commit crime as the rest of
the community. In five cases out of six "the drink" was at the bottom of
the offence, or a leading element in the list of causes.
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