school are the smokers in a lower rank, but, in the various ordeals they have to pass through in a year, the average of the smokers had constantly fallen, and not inconsiderably, while the men who did not smoke enjoyed a cerebral atmosphere of the clearest kind." What is here said of the non-smokers may also, I am sure, be said of the Teetotal boys at any school, compared with those who drink even small quantities of alcohol. I was rejoiced to learn, from the report of the late Temperance Conference in London, the progress of Total Abstinence in several of the Dissenting colleges in England.

Mr. Robert Rae, secretary of the National Temperance League, read a paper on "Temperance in the English Dissenting Colleges," in which it was explained that the Temperance students in the five Dissenting colleges in London were formed into a society, and the following statistics of each college had been supplied :

Of other colleges less precise information had been received; but the Wesleyan, at Richmond, contained sixty students, of whom about onehalf, and at Didsbury, forty, of whom the same proportion were believed to be Total Abstainers. At Trevecca, out of twelve, about eight or nine were Abstainers; at the Cavendish Institution, Manchester, out of twentyfive the Abstainers were seventeen or eighteen; at Rotherham, out of seventeen, there were twelve; at Mr. Spurgeon's, out of thirty-three, twelve or thirteen; at Brecon, out of thirty-four, twelve; and at Haverfordwest, out of twenty-seven, four.

I wish I could give an equally favourable report of the progress of Teetotalism in the Universities in which the Church of England clergy are educated. I can tell you that I saw it stated lately that there is a flourishing Temperance Society in Trinity College, Dublin; and you will be glad to hear that when Mr. Gale and I were in Oxford, last May, we had a meeting of between twenty and thirty of the undergraduates, who heard with the greatest attention our exposition of Teetotal and Permissive Bill principles. But I hope that the account of the divinity students in the Dissenting colleges will stir up the students and the clergy of the Church of England to the only rivalry which ought to exist amongst Christians — the rivalry in the exhibition of love to God and their fellow-creatures, and in the practice of "good works."

On the Educative Power of Law, considered in Relation to the Permissive Bill. By JOHN PATON, Barrhead.

I.

"Old opinions, rags and tatters, get you gone."

MERE opinion ought to give place to positive knowledge. The best we can say of opinion is that, in many cases, it proceeds from the confused, distracted groping of the mind after truth. Our good intentions are all praiseworthy, but where mischief flows from them their goodness can never compensate for the evil they inflict. If this be true respecting the opinion, which (so to speak) was the soul's instinct of truth, what can be said of the stubborn impertinence of opinion which has no such inspiration, but persists in controlling society by its dogmas? It may at least be affirmed that it has not ruled, and cannot rule society. There is almost as much difference betwixt ruling and controlling as there is betwixt right and wrong; and if the truth itself be irksome, as a mere controlling power, when it does not enter the mind through knowledge, the conduct and consequences produced by false opinions are sure to result in confusion, however good may be the intentions of their holders. Examples of this abound in the world's history, and no better illustration can be given than the opinion, once so universal, that the way to ensure sobriety was to use intoxicating drinks in moderation. This has been one of the oldest of opinions, and one of the most fruitful sources of anarchy; and although knowledge has now taken its place, as a mental conviction in the minds of many men, the moral depravity, intellectual debility, and physical disease, which the opinion has superinduced, are scarcely, if at all, diminished. The nature of intoxicants, and their relation to the mind and body of man, are now known; there is now no dispute, worthy of the name, as to the fact that intoxicants, by their mere use, increase the appetite which they beget. Drunkenness, therefore, can never be attained as a habit, except by the appetite engendered primarily by moderate use. On this acknowledged fact the Temperance movement has now rested for a quarter of a century. The existing appetite, the hereditary tendencies to that appetite, with the inducements to gratification which the drink trade obtrudes upon society, are, therefore, more than a match for enlightened conviction.

The habits which drinking lays in the foundations of society remain long after it has ceased to be maintained by mental authority. And habit is no trifle; it is the shape into which the individual and society are moulded; it is the role of the individual and of society, which they have established for good or for evil. This phenomenon is nothing new or singular. It is no uncommon thing for men to practice error after the light of knowledge has dispelled the darkness of erroneous opinion. Especially is this the case when some false opinion has pervaded society, and become incorporated in its laws, since these laws, in turn, become the teachers of the individual.

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Habit has, indeed, to a great extent, its basis in law; and it is the more imperative to enter on the consideration of this fact at the present time, because, with unaccountable inconsistency, the opinion is entertained, not only by leading politicians but by Temperance organisations, that men cannot be made sober by act of Parliament." This pernicious opinion is as far from the truth as the exploded notion which propounded the moderate use of intoxicants as the means to avoid intoxication. National, like personal drunkenness, can only be cured by Abstinence; and it is consequently clear that a prohibitive law, as a national educative power, is the adapted agent for the work. To evince this more in detail we must first inquire into the source of government.

Government has to do with men alone. No individual ever thought, or can think, of himself, without at the same time having his thoughts in some shape or other occupied about other people. This is so because every move of the individual is in relation to some other individual. We cannot isolate ourselves even if we would; our interests, and the moral obligations to protect them, are all in common. We are always either satisfied, or uncertain, that that which is due to us is in the safe keeping of the fulfilled or unfulfilled moral obligations of others; and we can never approve of ourselves unless we are conscious that that which is due by us to others is in our own safe keeping. Peace and prosperity are never disrupted, except when weakness, fashion, or ignorance disturb this balance. Government has, therefore, its source in the individual mind; for order is its sole end, and the human mind, in its millions of individualities, is constituted to yearn for and evolve well-ordered conduct. There can be no other instrument to achieve this end but law, which has ever been used as such, and must continue to be so used. It is the rule of conduct.

In confirmation of the personal source of government, we have only to examine ourselves. In each of our individualities the conditions of law are incorporated with an explicitness which precludes all mistake. "On reason build resolve, the column of true majesty in man." It is with intellect, conscience, and the power of resolve, that we are formed to rule ourselves and the beautiful world we inhabit. They who have intellect to survey the field of facts, as they affect their duties and interests, and whose conscience presides over the process of correlating them, are truly royal; and when, by the power of resolution, they can follow whither the light leads, with an "I shall"-not uttered to keep their courage up, but expressing the energy which precedes accomplishment-these are the kings of men; and woe betide the nation which is so base as not to be loyal to them. They have a right to rule, and they have ever done so among the peoples who have contributed to the world's progress. In fact these are the men who make progress possible; and I apprehend that personal experience in Great Britain will endorse this fact. Such men have ever existed, and still exist; and, as a breakwater to the surgings of anarchy, their moral influence is not to be calculated.

We have all experienced the upbuilding and restraining power of men so endowed. Being fitted to rule themselves, they are appointed to rule the weak. Moral power is virtue, whilst weakness and depravity are

incident to the degraded states of humanity; and power in man, as in nature, through its attractive forces, has an ameliorating mission assigned to it. This is the order throughout the universe, and it cannot be otherwise, for God is power! Now, it is of the very nature of power to attract and diffuse itself. Thus it is that the weak are invigorated, and the bad transformed.

If the country is ever to be made sober, it must be achieved through the educational power of law. But why should the opponents of sobriety by act of Parliament either make themselves merry, or grow solemnly dull, over the efforts of those who are working to achieve it? Does the fact not remain, that society is at this moment made drunken by an act of Parliament practically framed to that end? If there be nothing to laugh at in the training to drunkenness, which is so completely accomplished by the existing license laws, we would recommend our opponents to economise their drollery until the Permissive Bill is proved to be an equal failure with the license system, in the districts which may adopt it. Fun, to have point, must have a legitimate object; but is there anything very funny in the idea of attempting to wean the drunkard by prohibiting the drink? A little reflection on our country's history might encourage our opponents to think better of the prospect.

It is a notable fact that Scotland was made intelligent by act of Parliament; and this result came in the legitimate order of government. The German movement for the right of private judgment had set the people longing for the light and freedom needful for the diffusion of its results. The epoch was propitious, and pregnant with a leader. In due time it gave him to the country. He was formed to rule, as the people were formed for allegiance. "He came, he saw, he conquered." Knox had intellectual penetration to perceive that the veil of ecclesiastical forms and exactions, which made the light darkness, must be rent asunder, and his resolution was strong to tear the veil in shreds, that the light might illuminate.

In setting himself to accomplish all this there was no trickery in the man; his sympathies were with the people, and conscience had its full force in the transaction. Thus the people were strengthened and encouraged; they had now received one to whom they could be loyal; one that had all the sagacity, all the heart, and all the courage of a Big Brother, and they rejoiced to do his bidding. He had come to their help, and they gave their energies to his guidance; he and they were knit together by affinity of nature into a compact of order, and they set themselves to achieve more than destruction. It was not sufficient that the veil of ecclesiastical forms should perish for ever, something more positive than this was required to be attained; the conditions of mental darkness must be substituted by the conditions of light. To overthrow misrule is but to remove the rubbish from the foundation whence the edifice of true order should rise, with all its harmonious proportions. In the mount of vision the form of this structure was revealed to the sagacious intellect of Knox; he came down with it to the people, and with a strength in his intonation which gave the inspiration of assurance, he said, "Here it is, my brothers, the abbeys and cathedrals are no longer yours, or theirs who lived in

them; I have given them to the winds and the weather, and these shall give them to the antiquaries, who may whine sentimental whimperings over them to their hearts' content. But for you and for Scotland I have received a system of parochial education-take it; let the schoolmaster be substituted for the monk, and from his hands accept the mental training which shall result in knowledge and sound reflection." And Scotland, with uplifted voice, said-" So let it be !" The gift was ratified by legal enactment. It was an Act of Parliament which sent the schoolmaster abroad, and from the moment that he reflected himself in the intellect of the peasantry, their mental acquirements inflamed their ambition, and sent this people swarming into all the countries of Europe to push their fortunes. Their pockets were not furnished, but their brains were; and they turned their brains to a money account in every quarter of the globe, by filling situations which involved trust and culture.

II.

If it be possible, as we have seen it is, to make a nation intellectual by the educative power of law, what is there to hinder the same instrumentality from soberising a community? Law is to the community what a resolve is to the individual; it is the practical carrying out of what intellect perceives and conscience approves. Without this there can be no development either in the individual or in the community. We are therefore warranted in looking for more than mere intellectuality in Britain as the product of law, manifesting the national character, maintaining the national life, and directing the practical issues which make up its history.

If, indeed, we would only observe and reflect a little, we should perceive that the very morality of the country is distinctly traceable, in the most important instances, to law, and to law alone.

John Howard was also a king of men. The times on which he fell were very different from those of Knox; but the difference in their circumstances did not affect the character of the men as such; it only gave them different missions to fulfil. And Howard fulfilled his nobly, as a king ought. He represented all the higher traits of English character. He entered upon his work in the bold spirit of fairplay, and did it with comfortable methodicalness. "Justice to the criminal" was his watchword. All the instincts and knowledge of his nature pointed to the fact of society's responsibility for the crime which annoyed it, and the indiscriminate and crushing harshness of its punishments. Moved with compassion, he set himself to estimate this punishment. He gauged it accurately, and found it to be vengeance only. Furnished with its statistics, he gave them to the world, and the conviction became common between himself and England, that it was of the nature of vengeance to educate in the wrong way; and, consequently, that our prisons became seminaries in which the weak, who had relapsed into crime, were, through the very temptations of society, educated into the higher attainments of villany. This new light stirred the conscience of the nation, and shaped its resolves to infuse into its prison discipline some element of justice and mercy.

Why should the cynic sneer at the power of law, for good or for evil?