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

DI-. Clialiicrs aiid" Thze Tiiies " Qziotcd. 91
bly so in Ireland itself in I758-9 *-was left untried, althlou'gh the Irish people, who had then been largely made
sober by the labors of Father Mathew, would have welcoined the legislative interdiction. It is not too much to
say that, through this culpable neglect, enormous destitution and starvation occurred that might have been
averted; and nowhere was this let-alone impolicy more
glaringly denounced than in an article by the eminent Dr.
Chalimers, in the course of which he said: " Had the distilleries been stopped, as they were in I8oo and I8OI, and as
we believe they would have been now, if the famine,
though not greater in amount, had only been general, this
alone would have gone far to repair the deficiency. If
over and above this the breweries had been stopped, and
so for a season all malting had been put an end to, this
would have greatly more than covered the deficiency. A
humane and virtuous despotism could and would have
done it at once. As it is, what between the class interests
of our grandees, and the low and loathsome dissipations
of our common people, the cry of famishing millions
has been overborne." t Some years later, the 7T/;zes newspaper, in commenting upon efforts in Sweden to stop the
use of corn in distillation, employed the following remarkable language: "It is a peculiarity of spirit-drinking that money spent upon it is, at the best, thrown
away, and in general far worse than thrown away.
It neither supplies the natural wants of man, nor offers
an adequate substitute for them. Indeed, it is far too
favorable a view of the subject to treat the money spent
on it as if it were cast into the sea. Yet even so, there is
something exceedingly irritating in the reflection that a
* Dr. Henry, in his " Earnest Address to the People of Ireland" (1761),
remarks, in reference to the stoppage of distillation in 1758-9, "the salutary
effects of which were seen, restoring new vigor to our languishing manufactures, and a visible reformation in the morals of the people."
t zVortI British Revie7u, No. I3.
W