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

Objectioin fr-oim "Airtificia! Life" Answ'errcd. 63
strong drinks, and have attracted to that rule numberless
millions of our race. But if it could be shown-as it can not-that indulgence in alcoholic or other intoxicants
has been the common habit of mankind, the inference
that the prevalence of such a habit involves its own vin dication would be utterly false. It would not even tend
to show that man has a natural instinct for such drinks
and drugs, since there is a flood of present evidence that
they are never craved until they have been first supplied,
and that there is no sign of suffering from their absence
where they are never given. Surely it needs no proving
that acknowledged evils may be very common in every
age, and almost or quite universal in some ages, yet with out ceasing to be evils-evils not to be extenuated or
cherished, but as speedily removed as can be. Slavery,
despotism, superstition, violence, fraud, and every form
of sensuality, are not novelties on the globe, nor has the
empire of any vice been limited to a section of the human
family. To assert, also, that any indefensible usage
"must" continue because it is ancient and general is to
resign all hope of human advancement. Is drunkenness
J necessary and good, and is it always to endure because it
can plead hoary antiquity and a widespread rule? Why,
then, should a plea of virtue or perpetuity be set up for
the liquors out of whose use, and from whose intoxicat ing quality, all this drunkenness has sprung? If the
many go astray and suffer thereby, no one can find in
these facts a vindication for his own sanction of the
error, or of his own refusal to seek the introduction of
safer and better habits.
2. It may be said that, "however scitfed total abstinence
woulod be to an ideal state of society, we live in so artifi cial a state that deviations from a rig idly wholesome die tary are not only excusable, but unavoidable, and even use f'il." This argument or apology-one often heard-is a
fair specimen of the confusion of thought under which
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