grog-shop and the miserable drunkard, as their most valuable supporters. These influences will be arraigned against universal Prohibition, and it will require many Dows and Careys to conquer. That they will conquer, I as fully believe as that there is a God in heaven.

I repeat, Prohibition has been no failure in America, all things considered. It has hardly had a fair trial generally; but where it has, the beneficial results in such localities have quite exceeded the expectations of its friends. With us, as with you, the opponents have been most ingenious in their arguments to prejudice the masses against the measure. One standing plea has been, that it is "a tyrannical attempt to take away the liberties of the people." "Is it right," they ask, "that any citizen should be prohibited from selling, or be embarrassed in the means of procuring, what he is accustomed to use without apparent injury to himself or the public, because others abuse it to their own detriment?" In replying, it is necessary first of all to inquire what are the invariable and inevitable social effects of the liquor-traffic? for it is on these grounds, if at all, that the State has a right to interfere. Now, it is safe to assert that whenever human beings have been exposed to the temptation of intoxicating drinks, many have partaken of them habitually, and a considerable number have become drunkards. So long as this ensnaring temptation is publicly offered, it is certain that many will drink, and numbers will become abandoned drunkards. These propositions are confirmed by all experience, from the days of the flood until this very hour. It is equally undeniable that these drunkards are withdrawn from every duty they owe to society, and finally hurried down, through sufferings none but themselves can conceive, to dishonoured and untimely graves; that in the meantime some of them become maniacs; that some, under the moral blindness and frenzy of intoxication, are guilty of murders and other crimes; that many of them inflict upon their helpless wives and children miseries, compared with which speedy death were a blessing; and that the immediate costs and terrible consequences of these misdeeds fall on citizens in no degree accountable for them. Can a law, designed to relieve these citizens from such mischiefs, by directly and absolutely interdicting their known cause, really be tyrannical and unjust? or is it not usual and proper legislation? Light may be thrown on the question by a simple definition of municipal law and of liberty:

"Civil, or municipal law, is a rule of conduct prescribed to all the citizens by the supreme power in the State, in conformity to the constitution, on a matter of common interest. It is the solemn declaration of the legislative power, by which it commands, under certain penalties or certain rewards, what each citizen should do, not do, or suffer, for the common good of the State."

Liberty is defined as "The power of doing whatever is not injurious to others; the exercise of our natural rights, bounded only by the rights which assure to others the enjoyment of their rights. Civil liberty is the power to do whatever is permitted by the laws of the land. It is no other than natural liberty so far restrained by human laws and no further, as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage of the public."

Now, in view of the admitted wrongs to individuals, and burdens and

taxes upon the public, through the sale of intoxicating drinks, compare a law simply prohibiting that sale with the above, or the narrowest definitions, of municipal law, and we shall find that the law proposed comes strictly within its terms; or compare this law with the above, or the broadest definition of human liberty, and we shall find that it is not infringed a hair's breadth by the Maine Law. If this be so--if the law merely prescribes what "each citizen should do, not do, or suffer, for the common good of the State"-if, in effect, it simply interdicts some from doing what is "injurious to others," then we may safely assume that it is neither tyrannical nor improper, but within the ordinary sphere of legislation.

A license law, in fact, involves the entire right in question, for such a law primarily prohibits all, and then excepts those licensed; and if it had not the right to prohibit them also, the license would be an idle ceremony. In this view of the case, the question of right has been practically settled for ages.

But to some minds the application of the principle of Prohibition, in a parallel case, may be more convincing. Thirty years since the several cities of New York State were almost as plentifully studded with shops for the sale of lottery tickets, as with those for vending intoxicating drinks--both licensed by the State, under the notion of regulating the business. The purchaser of lottery tickets could take the same grounds as the purchaser of intoxicating drinks; he paid for what he purchased with his own money; he had too much prudence to do himself any harm ; he was willing and able to dedicate all he expended for tickets to the benign objects of the lottery, thereby purchasing the possibility of drawing a prize. The vendor of tickets could, in like manner, insist on the pecuniary losses to which he would be exposed, by the destruction of a business, to which he had devoted himself under the sanction of law, and on which his family depended for support; that the business ought not to be suppressed, because a few only of those who purchased tickets were ruined by its allurements-still less should it be suppressed without ample compensation.

In principle, this lottery and the liquor trade were the same, but in two or three particulars there was a difference. Lotteries were for the promotion of science and literature, an object undeniably useful, while the liquor-traffic is of worse than doubtful utility. The allurements of the lottery were considerable, but those of the inebriating cup are many times greater; while the mischief and ruin which attended the former, was as a drop to the ocean in comparison with the latter. On the ground of facts, therefore, the liquor business should have been forbidden, and the lotteries, if either, ought to have been cherished and perpetuated by State licenses. On the contrary, however, the Legislature of 1827 prohibited, under severe penalties of fine and imprisonment, the opening of any lottery scheme, or the sale of any lottery tickets, authorised or unauthorised; and the people emphatically sanctioned the enactment, by vigorously enforcing it, and by causing to be inserted in the constitution, approved by their own votes, a clause forbidding any future Legislature to repeal it.

An attentive examination of our numerous prohibitory and penal laws,

Abolition of Spirit Ration in American Navy. 25

will show that the supreme selfishness which seeks the gratification of its own appetites, or the acquisition of gain, by means dangerous to others, is as promptly and sternly rebuked by municipal law as by Christian morality. It is the impunity in public and private mischief, hitherto enjoyed by the liquor-traffic, and not the law demanded for its suppression, which really constitutes a marked and mischievous exception to the ordinary course of protective legislation.

The philanthropists of England and America are engaged in a mighty work, in spreading the Gospel throughout the world. They send their bishops and missionaries everywhere; but, as a general rule, along with the Bible they introduce intoxicating liquor, and even at the very table of the Lord the convert is expected to partake of the cup of intoxication. I pray that this great error may ere long be corrected in the churches, and when corrected by them, the world at large will follow, and one of the greatest hindrances to conversion will be removed.

Abolition of the Spirit Ration in the American Navy. By Dr. JOHN MARSH, Secretary of the American Temperance Union.

N conformity to a vote of Congress, and by direction of the Secretary of American navy on and after the first of September, 1862; and thenceforth no distilled spirituous liquors will be admitted on board of vessels of war, except as medical stores, and upon the order and under the control of the medical officers of such vessels, and to be used only for medical purposes. To those now in the navy, and entitled to the spirit ration, there will be allowed five cents per day in addition to their present pay.

This is the result of an effort protracted through more than thirty years by the friends of Temperance. At an early period the sailor attracted the attention of the friends of our cause. On land, every coast town was filled with grog-shops, which stripped him of wages that should have been secured to him in some savings' bank, or sent to his early home for the comfort of parents declining in age; and while upon the green seas, the regular ration, morning and evening, kept up the appetite which must be gratified to downright drunkenness in every harbour. If necessity did not compel the sailor to enlist, it was an easy matter for landlords or crafty captains to get him drunk, when he could be drawn in to sign the enlistment papers, from which there was no release.

The direct sailing of a Temperance ship from the port of New York, under Captain Hart, as soon as all were on board, was then a matter of public observation. The frequent acts of insubordination, and the numerous shipwrecks through the drunkenness of captains and crews, early drew the attention of shipowners and captains to the doctrine of Total Abstinence, as no less demanded on the ocean than the land; and a large portion of the coasters, whalers, and merchantmen in our Eastern

C

States were found being navigated without any spirit ration at sea. Το promote this great object the marine insurance offices were induced to make a difference in the premiums between ships navigated on the Temperance principle and those that continued the ancient practice.

Thus successful in the private service, the friends of Temperance naturally turned their attention to the great arms of national defence, the army and navy. Though needing something more than moral suasion here, they felt confident that the array of astounding facts they should be able to present to the departments and to Congress must ultimately effect a change. Fortunately the War Department was filled by an officer, General Lewis Cass, who for thirty years had been in the field, and seen most arduous service, without ever tasting of ardent spirits, who knew from his own experience that the spirit ration was not necessary to the soldier, while he could testify that most of the insubordination and seven-eighths of the desertions were owing to intemperance. There was but little difficulty, therefore, in obtaining from him an order, as early as November, 1832, abolishing all spirit rations in the army, and forbidding its introduction into any port, camp, or garrison of the United States, and its sale by any sutler to the troops. No commutation was allowed to those from whom it was taken. This has continued the law of the army to the present time, though it has been broken in upon frequently, under the false pleas of necessity in fatigue duty. In the navy the friends of Temperance were not so successful. Arguments, indeed, were not wanting to show that the spirit ration should be immediately removed. In 1831 the distinguished gentleman then at the head of that department expressed his conviction that "the use which was made of ardent spirits was one of the greatest curses," and he declared his intention to recommend a change.

A distinguished naval officer gave it as his opinion that "nine-tenths of all the difficulties which the officers had with the men arose from ardent spirits; and if Congress would pass a law prohibiting their use in the navy, giving to the men the value of it in money, it would be one of the greatest blessings that could be conferred upon them." In the then state of the public mind this might have been effected; but unfortunately a compromise was adopted, the spirit ration being continued to be provided, and six cents allowed to such as voluntarily relinquished it. Had all provision of it then ceased great troubles would have been avoided. Under this regulation numerous officers favoured the renunciation of the grog and acceptance of the commutation, sometimes with great success. On one occasion one of our largest war ships went her entire cruise in the Mediterranean without the whiskey tub; and in the great exploring expedition, in 1847, many and happy were the results of the same system. But, at the best, these examples could only show how desirable was the entire removal of the evil. At liberty to drink, the junior officers and seamen formed an appetite and a habit before reason could assume the reins, and the navy became the receptacle of all the broken-down drunkards of the merchant or whaling ships, and of the vagabonds of foreign countries who could get no enlistment in a merchant service. Insubordination through drunkenness could be corrected only by the cat, and the

system of flogging was carried to a pitch which aroused universal execration. In a Boston Convention, in 1839, it was stated on indisputable authority that, on a thousand seamen paid off in that port at one time, there had been inflicted 2,700 lashes for offences traceable to drink. The abolition of the flogging system was demanded and obtained; but the occasion of it, the spirit ration, the great cause of insubordination, remained; a strange anomaly in legislation, continually involving the officers in the navy in difficulty with their crews. Moral suasion and kind treatment are of small efficacy where rum is allowed to disturb the brain and inflame the passions of men. Not a few of the superior officers of the navy-Foote, Stringham, Dupont, and others-have struggled hard for the entire abolition of the rum ration, and a vast body of facts, in relation to its inutility and its mischievous effects, have, from time to time, been laid before Congress; but never till this year of our national troubles, when it has become necessary to expel every evil and to strengthen ourselves in every department, have the labours of the friends of reform been crowned with success, and the great blessing of a navy without grog become ours.

Canadian Temperance and Emigration. By WILLIAM W. SMITH, of Owen Sound, U.C.

My facet relatel vés. intend to sketch Temperance and Intemperance

Y facts relate to Upper Canada, my arguments and deductions

among certain classes in my own country. And, first, let us look at those most intimately connected with this country, and about whom people here would naturally be most interested-emigrants. It is not every man who is a model emigrant. The ancient Greeks took their women and children, gathered up their household treasures, their battle harness, and the sacred fire from off the altars of their gods, and went out to found new cities, which should be to them a new Athens or a new Thebes. But, in these days, many a man goes forth the unwilling emigrant of adversity, transfers his corporeal presence, but leaves behind his best affections. These are not true emigrants-they are exiles. Others come to us who, having gathered up all their affections for home and country, are prepared to consider themselves at home in the country of their adoption, and take to themselves the name which, however it may sound in your ears, is sweet in ours-Canadians. The man who comes in middle life, not because he loves adventure or would leave his home, but because he can best gain his bread among us, is in great danger of seeking to keep up his spirits, drown regrets, or cultivate old-world associations, by the aid of stimulants. This danger is increased from two causes-his apprenticeship to evil at sea, and the cheapness of spirits in the colony. The emigrant (of the working classes) is told at the port of embarkation that he must take some spirits with him, in case of sea-sickness. He has probably been accustomed to tipple beer, but has never yet been guilty of gross intem