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

The Oby?ction firoii A /leoged Failurzes.
of England, are known to be under the same rule; and in
Ireland, besides scattered towns and districts, a section
of the county Tyrone 6I2 miles square, with a population
of 9,500, is without a liquor-shop of any kind, to the great
satisfaction and advantage both of the landowners and
the tenants.* What, indeed, is of the greatest value in
the consideration of this question, is the unexceptional
contentment of the people with this prohibitory regimen,
though they have had no voice in its application; and,along
with this, the persistent upholding of this policy by the
landowners, few of whom are total abstainers, and who
are, therefore, only influenced in their course by its selfevident superiority over the license system. These specimens of prohibition side by side with license are also
exceedingly useful in refuting the oft-told objections
brought against permissive prohibition, that if adopted,
it would lead persons to bring drink in large quantities
from adjoining parishes; or would increase the drunken.
ness of those parishes; or would multiply illicit selling;
or would promote domestic tippling; or would make
total abstinence compulsory; or would give rise to evils
as bad as drunkenness or worse; or would make existence stale, flat, and exceedingly dry-objections which
are all freely lavished with as little thought as they
embody, and without any regard to their contradictory
character. These objections break like bubbles when
confronted with the actual state of things which has
continued for years in thousands of places within the
United Kingdom; where the predicted evils ought to be
evident, but are not; and where, whatever drawbacks
exist, they are so inconsiderable as not to interfere with
the general beneficent result.
Blessed will be the day when the legislature of this
Empire no longer hinders the people of any district from
* See Appendix L.
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