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

9go Food Dcs~/ro)'cd iis PIV'oduiic ioio of Si-oilozg Drinik.
the strength of life, but also the morals of our countrymen." In I795, the eloquent but not always judicious
Edmund Burke made an impassioned plea on behalf of
ardent spirits and against the stopping of the distillery
but the logic of facts proved too heavy for the light artillery of the orator, and in I796 and I797 distillation from
corn was prohibited, as a necessary alleviation of scarcity, and with the result not only of saving much food
from destruction, but also of rendering the poor " app.rently more comfortable and better fed " than when the
scarcity was less pressing and the distilleries were in full
blast.-* Dr. Darwin, the elegant poet and able physician,
denounced the whole system of using up corn for intoxicating liquor as "the conversion of the people's food into
poison"; and in the Report of the Select Committee of
the House of Commons into the subject of intemperance (I834), the wastefulness and injuriousness of this
course is vigorously depicted: "Not only an immense
amount of human food is destroyed, while thousands are
inadequately fed; but this food is destroyed in such a
manner as to injure greatly the agricultural producers
themselves; for whose grain, but for this perverted and
mistaken use of it, there would be more than twice the
demand, for the use of the now scantily-fed people, who
would then have healthy appetites to consume, and iim-l
p r o v e d means to purchase, nutriment for themselves and
children, in grain as well as in all the other varied productions of the earth." Parliament did not profit by
these truths when the years of famine in Ireland (I846-9)
brought death to tens of thousands and. the whole
country to the verge of ruin. The policy five or six
times resorted to by the English Government within the
previous hundred years, and always with success-nota
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* Colquhoun on the Police of the Metropolis (~oo).
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