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

Similair E-,vils not arising fiooit othe; Cazses. 31
any family, any district, or any people, whether intoxicating liquor is used in any measure or to any excess? If
alcoholic liquors do no harm, abstinence from them can
do no good, and the greatest drunkard would be no better were he to abandon his vice. Who can credit his?.
Trace the objection to its root, and it comes to this-that
a certain amount of evil will always exist, and that all
means for its diminution are of no avail. To state this
opinion is to consign it to the contempt of every mind
elevated above the grossest fatalism. Were it universally
credited, it would extinguish all hope of progress, and fulfil its own dark prophecy by arresting all endeavor after
a better future. The heathen Romans were proud of the
man who did not despair of the republic; and are we, who
profess Christianity, to sanction a dogma which would
compel us to despair of humanity? Some writers who
ought to be better informed, and more capable of juster
reasoning, point to the vices and crimes of pagans and
Mohammedans, who do not use intoxicating liquors, as a
proof that the evils connected in this country with drinking are possible without it. But certainly, drunkenness
is not possible without intoxicating drink; and though
many kinds of evil may hlave various causes, what reason
is there to suppose that, with the removal of one cause,
some other cause or causes will, sooner or later, spring
up to bring the old evils back? If pagans and Mlohamme dans are vicious and criminal without drink, would they
be less so-would they not be more so-with it? Is it
not the fact that the heathen and Mussulman popula tions referred to are as vicious and cruel as we find them,
because they do not strictly observe the rule of absti nence from intoxicants, but either use alcoholic drinks
or sim.ilar substances of a narcotic or inflaming charac-ter? Is it not notorious that many of the worst outrages
of the Sepoys during the Indian Mutiny-cases cited to
show what horrors the sober can commit —were perpe