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

28 Tize Drintking Systemt our Chief Social Evil.
poverty, and degradation than that which comes before
the police courts."
(2) The attempt to foist these evils upon bad s6cial conditions is both absurd and futile. Absurd, because those
conditions, however sad and lamentable, could not induce
drinking and the effects of drinking, if the drink were
not made, circulated, and consumed. If it be allowed
that they cause many to fly to strong drink for a temporary though delusive relief, it must also be allowed that
this could not happen if the liquor were not manufactured and placed (and often in alluring forms) within
sight and reach of the lowest of our poor. But the
attempt to make "bad social conditions," and not the
drinking system, responsible for the evils deplored is
perfectly futile, when it is borne in mind that it is drinking which is perpetually reducing great numbers from
good social conditions to bad ones; and that all the bad
conditions that could proceed from unavoidable poverty
are multiplied and made worse by the drinking system.
These very conditions are invariably amended or banished whenever the drink is excluded; and to seek to
drain off the effects of the drinking system while intoxicating drink is made, sold, patronized, and generally consumed is to convert the fable of Sisyphus into a fact.
2. It may be said "that the evils alleged a,-ainst the drinkiizg system are, in reality, its abuses, and have no necessary
connection with that system w,hen ib iroieriy coniducted and controlled."
Certainly, the abuse of a system is no legitimate argument against it; but this plea of "abuse " is notoriously
a common resort in defence of systems inherently
vicious; and, when it is adduced in defence of the' drinking system, justice requires that evidence should be
given (i) that the system has practically been free, or
can be made free, from the "abuses "; and (2) that it has
uses which compensate for the " abuses" while they