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

T7ze Rig,Gts of Ainloritics.
is a proposal the liquor interest should desire, not dread.
But the two sections are opposed for the first evidently
contemplates the probability of prohibition-which the
second denies. It is manifest, however, that prohibition
cannot both be popular and unpopular at once. To say
that the question is not one for localities to decide, but
that it ought to be decided for the whole country by a
general peremptory enactment, is to assume that the
local liquor question is not a local one; whereas it both is
so, and has been treated as such for centuries; and, further, the objection assumes that an immediate and universal change would be preferable to a progressive local
movement-a proposition which, whether true or not,
does not affect the justice of the proposal to allow districts, as soon as ready, to make the change for theinmselves. The objector also does not bear in mind that a
majority of the people might be favorable to suppression,
and yet a majority in Parliament opposed to it, for no
social question has ever yet decided a general election;
and the sincerity of the opponents who make this objection will only be raised above suspicion' when they are
ready to support a ilebzisciztm (national vote) upon the
subject,and to abide the issue. A permissive prohibitory
measure would, in reality, afford the best possible test
of the general popularity, or otherwise, of the policy
embodied in it, without the risk of making it operative
where the public sentiment would be too weak to enforce
and uphold it.
6. The objection that " the exfieriiment of irohizbi/ion has
bees tried and has failed," is one of those ready-made
assertions which pass current among the prejudiced or
ignorant, and among none besides. Since i85i, the" Maine
Law" has been on the statute-book of that State (with a
short interval sufficient to prove the inferiority of a strict
license system); and both there, as well as in every other
American State where prohibition has been carried out,
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