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

3o Thze Dri'lkin,, Syistcm ozir Clzicf Social Evii.
wert-z the evils, and whether it is wise to endure the evils
for the sake of the benefits? Those who would maintain
the affirmative impose a formidable labor upon themselves-one which no advocate of the drinking system
has ever seriously attempted to perform. When or from
what quarter is evidence forthcoming that abstainers
from strong drink suffer from the absence of it as much
as society suffers from its use? What testimony or inductive reasoning can justify the proposition that, if intoxicating liquors were to cease from the world, more
injury would result than now results from their circulation and use? Conceding (for argument's sake) that
some good attaches to the drinking system-nay, very
considerable good —what sober observer can contend
that the good is equal to the evil, either in kind or measure, in quality or bulk? Yet an equivalent ought to
exist, or society is the loser, and the drinking system is
maintained contrary to the dictates of wisdom and of the
supreme law of the public good. A heathen philosopher,
Pliny the Elder, supplies to Christians a memorable
lesson and admonition in the words-" So vast are our
efforts, so vast our labors, and so regardless of cost,
which we thus lavish upon that [vizuiz-wine] which
deprives man of his reason, and drives him to frenzy and
the commission of a thousand crimes."
3. It may be said "that the same evilswould reafifear iunder
other circumstances, and that, zf the drizikizhn systemz did not
pfrodutce them, they would revive in some dzferenl way." This
assumption is so entirely improbable in itself that, to
render it in any degree accepted, a powerful array of testimonies ought to be adduced. But of evidence in its
support there is none. Who can believe, as this objection assumes, that the effects of strong drink are really
no effects of it at all, but results of other causes that
would operate just the same if the alcoholic drink were
absent? Who can believe that it makes no difference to