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

34 The Di-inkiz,i S'sitcm our Ciief Social Evil.
from the consciousness of aiding the removal of the
drinking system and all its evils. On the third point, it
may be remarked that comparison there is none between
the benefits claimed for strong drink and the calamities
inflicted by it. What food does it furnish in return for
the harvests wasted? What wealth for the poverty
caused? What virtue for the vice? What intelligence
for the ignorance diffused? What happiness to set over
against the boundless miseries inflicted? What life saved
to compensate for the numberless hecatombs made up of
guilty and innocent alike? What assistance to religion
as an equivalent for the irreligiousness, sensuality, and
apostasies it is unceasingly producing? There is but one
reply to these interrogations-a reply which confirms the
judgment laid down as the proposition of this chapterthat of all the evils unhappily distinguishing the present
age, none can comnpare with the drinking system, whether
regarded in the extent, diversity, duration, or virulence
of its effects. In the race of mischief, it is without a rival:
the palm of infamy it bears away without appeal.
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