nearly every lot was occupied. The soil was generally of the ordinary description of upland, and, with proper cultivation, would yield fully average crops of grass, potatoes, and grain, especially oats. Of course, horned cattle, swine, and sheep could easily be raised and fattened for market. A large sheet of water bounded the whole front of the settlement, supplying various kinds of fish. About twelve miles from one end of the settlement is the small County town, and further in are several rather populous communities, at all of which places the farmers and fishers could always obtain a ready sale for the products of their labour at very fair prices. Numbers of them accordingly resorted to those markets nearly every working day in the year, and almost invariably would carry home a fresh supply of strong drink from the licensed taverns or shops. Before commencing their return journey most of them became fully or partially intoxicated. There were also several places in their own settlement where the liquors were retailed.

And now, what were the results? Their farms, in general, through the twenty years during which I passed through the settlement, continued with few exceptions in much the same state. Their dwellings generally were of the humblest description, and could scarcely be said to afford anything like comfortable accommodation for civilised life. As to the table-fare it was poor indeed. In some of the houses no bread at times, or only of the very coarsest kind. In very many instances they were also embarrassed with debt.*

Turn now to the other community, where Abstinence from strong drinks was nearly universal. This community was formed at a later period than the other, and under circumstances of deep privation and hardship. The people followed farming occupations for their livelihood, but were nearly thirty miles from any markets, with a mountainous district intervening. For some time they had no road deserving the name, and were under the necessity of conveying their produce by boats on the open sea. They perseveringly struggled, however, with their unfavourable circumstances, and in a few years procured, not only sufficient for their comfortable subsistence, but, with the returns of their surplus produce, obtained many foreign productions. By honesty and extreme punctuality they established with the shopkeepers, to whom they sold their products, such a character that they rejoiced to deal with as many of them as possible. Though the few destitute persons amongst them were maintained entirely by their own contributions, none having ever been placed as paupers on the township, yet they were uncommonly exact and punctual in paying their proportion of the county rates. During the eighteen years I presided in the Courts there was not a single criminal charge of any kind tried before me against an inhabitant of that community. Whatever differences or disputes they had, they settled among themselves, or through the intervention of their spiritual leader. They seemed universally desirous of securing suitable instruction for their

In justice, however, to these people, I must mention that I have grounds for believing that some change for the better has taken place as to their drinking habits within recent years; and doubtless, also, in their domestic circumstances and temporal affairs generally

children, for at an early period they established schools in various parts of the settlement; and in later years had, to my knowledge, as many as ten schools among them.

They early established a Branch Bible Society, and liberally contributed towards the support of that excellent cause. These people, at the very first, adopted the principle of entire Abstinence from all intoxicating liquors; and at the earliest period of the reformatory movement established an Abstinence Society, and were almost universally faithful to their pledge. By the force of public sentiment among them, and through the influence of their pastor, no place was ever licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquor, and its entrance was not even tolerated.

The circumstances, I think, fully warrant me in explicitly asserting that the exemption of these people from the fatal nuisance of a tavern or spirit-shop, and their prudent and righteous principle of entire Abstinence from intoxicating drinks, were the chief causes of their prosperity and comfort, and of their honest, moral, and orderly conduct; while the complete contrast between the two communities described ought to satisfy every unprejudiced mind that the licensed sale of intoxicating drinks is of fatal influence to individual character and social prosperity and happiness.

In certain sections of several of the counties of our province, and in the whole of a few of them, the influence of the public sentiment as to the evil of the retail traffic has prevented licenses being granted for successive periods, and in such places the consequence has been a far less proportion of the ordinary social evils than in other neighbouring districts and counties where such licensed Traffic has prevailed, though the advantages and disadvantages of the respective places in other respects were nearly the same.

În concluding I may mention that in the last session of our Provincial Parliament, in framing the license law, a clause was added in the popular branch of the Legislature, allowing a majority in any electoral district finally to decide against any licensed Traffic in such liquors within the district. I regret to say that in the Upper House the clause was struck out. There may, however, be a good hope entertained that when the measure shall be proposed in the ensuing session of our Parliament, it will become a part of the law of the land.

Notes on the History of the Temperance Reform in Germany, &c. By the REV. J. H. BÖTTCHER, Pastor of Kirchrode, Hanover.

I.

T is a matter of deep interest for psychological research, and most instructive to every thinking mind, to observe the first signs of approaching great social reforms, to notice the small beginnings of the grandest movements. The historian and philosopher may there see, as it were, the minute spark that by degrees will be kindled into a great flame; he may distinguish the seed that is sunk into the earth and entrusted to the

care of Providence-the small kernel from which one day the stately tree will spring, that shall spread far and wide, and shed fruitful blessings among mankind.

When the Temperance Reform had become victorious in America and had crossed the Atlantic; when it had first set foot in Ireland, in 1829; and when, only one year later, the British and Foreign Temperance Society was established in London, who could foresee, from this modest beginning, the excellent results for the benefit of the European continent? Yet such has been the case. A German royal prince was to be the instrument of securing this benefit to his country.

Prince Johann of Saxony, who in 1854 acceded to the throne, a man of great scientific attainments, whose elevated mind is ever intent on promoting the welfare of his people, on his visiting England was present at one of the first meetings of the British and Foreign Temperance Society. Inspired with the grand idea of inducing the people, by dint of moral conviction, freely to renounce all intoxicating drink, by which the people of Germany could alone free themselves from the thraldom of intemperance; this prince, on his return to Germany, in 1831, issued the first appeal to his countrymen-a noble appeal of a young and generous mind.

His physician, the renowned Dr. Carus,* was the author of this appeal, which was signed by nine eminent statesmen and Church dignitaries. The document bears the following signatures:-John, Duke in Saxony; His Excellency Bernhard August von Lindenau, Minister of State; His Excellency Ernst Gustav von Gersdorf, Minister of State; Dr. Med. Carl Gustav Carus, Physician to Prince Johann; Wilhelm von Schlieben, Friedr. Ernst Aster, the Rev. Christ. Friedr. von Ammon, D.D., Dr. Heinr. Wilhelm Lebrecht Crusius, Friedr. Ludw. Breuer, and Gottlab Adolf Turk. These were the first ten Temperance men in Germany, and England may be considered as the father of this first German Temperance Union. Thirty years have passed since then, and on this present occasion you see the first German delegates in your midst.

At the same time, in 1830, the good seed bore fruit in the country of our kindred race in Sweden. The success of the Temperance cause in America had inspired all true friends of humanity with the ardent desire of similar achievements; hence the Patriotic Society of Stockholm had applied to the American Temperance Union for a detailed account of the moral change and social improvements wrought in America by the Temperance Association. This gave the impulse to try in Sweden, in spite of many obstacles, the establishment of Temperance Societies in 1830, 1831, and 1832, such as, for instance, at Jönköpings, Willstad, Ahs Pastorats, Forsheda, Lekaryd, Hannäs, Norköpings, Gusums, Götaborg, Böne, Hassela, Norrala, Tuna, Resele, Jansele, as also at Gothenburgh and other towns. Swedes and Russians surpass all other nations of Europe in the pernicious capacity of swallowing large quantities of alcoholic liquors, though Sweden and Norway, Russia and Denmark,

This far-famed physician and medical author has lately celebrated his jubilee of fifty years' medical practice at Dresden.

Germany and Holland, as well as England, Ireland, and Scotland, are plagued with the same demon of alcohol, under whose dark wings three terrible evils grow and fester-pauperism, disease, and crime.

Happily for Russia, news of the Temperance Reform was brought to Riga by American ships, and thus it came about that Temperance Societies were formed in Courland and Livonia (on the Baltic), particularly through the instrumentality of country clergymen, who daily witnessed the curses entailed on the bodies and souls of the people by the consumption of spirits. These noble exertions of the clergy were afterwards prohibited, and then the Government of Russia forbade the formation of Temperance Societies, the only example of the kind, but easily explained from the Russian finance system, which derives a source of revenue from the farming of the gin monopoly.

The appeals of Prince John of Saxony, and of the Patriotic Society of Stockholm, took the people by surprise. Throughout Europe, in every class of society, even in the ranks of the nobility and the schools of science, alcoholic liquors were at that time considered as a necessary ingredient of food, even as utterly indispensable to the enjoyment of health, and as one of those gifts of Providence that were only a blessing to the human race, notwithstanding the dire consequences attending upon their consumption. The higher classes thought it fantastical, and even cruel, that the people should be debarred this enjoyment, without which, it was considered, they could neither be comfortable nor live! These prejudices, imbibed from infancy, were strengthened by the passion of the drinkers. This perversion of the understanding, this passion of the heart, was powerfully sustained by the pecuniary interest of a legion of distillers and spirit sellers in every land.

Darkness, indeed, prevailed throughout Europe, and thus it happened that the first Temperance agitation could not succeed in rousing Germany, Sweden, and Russia. Enlightenment had not come home to the multitudes, and the efforts recorded were but the forerunners of reform-single flashes of light before the break of day! The men who had raised their voices against the gin pestilence were in this respect in advance of their contemporaries.

Five years elapsed, and in the meanwhile English vessels had brought Temperance tracts to Cuxhaven, on the Elbe. Some of these got into the hands of the highest official in Cuxhaven-the Senator August Meyer, doctor of law, a man of great practical sense and humanity. Among these was the Parliamentary Report issued by Mr. Buckingham's Committee of Inquiry for ascertaining the extent of the evils caused by alcoholic drink. Senator Meyer communicated these papers to several friends, who formed, on the 16th of December, 1836, at Ritzebüttel, near Cuxhaven, a Temperance Society that really took root in the middle classes of the people. His principal assistant in this good work was the Rev. Pastor Walther, who immediately wrote several German popular tracts on the subject. These first German Temperance tracts, and the actual existence of a Temperance or Abstinence Society among the people, attracted general attention.

A

very modest and unheeded beginning again ushered in a new era.

The well-intentioned King Frederick William III. of Prussia, deeply grieved at the great calamities caused in his kingdom by intemperance, against which all the measures of Government in State, Church, or school were of no avail,* had his attention attracted to the accounts of the Temperance cause in America, a success achieved there by the free and unrestrained formation of Temperance Societies on the part of the people. He ordered his ambassador at Washington, in 1833, to procure information concerning the principles, means, and results of these unions.

In consequence of this official demand the American Temperance Society resolved, in 1834, to send an agent to Europe, who should reanimate the struggle against intemperance. Their choice fell upon the Rev. Dr. Robert Baird, who arrived in Europe in 1835, and took up his residence in Paris.

For the purpose of satisfying the many inquiries addressed to him by the various ambassadors of several European States, he wrote a "History of the Temperance Societies of the United States of America," of which a French translation appeared in Paris in 1836. This book contained the first complete information which the continent obtained about the system in America, and of the glorious results achieved. This remarkable book excited great enthusiasm for the Temperance Reform, first in France and Switzerland, but more particularly in the northern countries of Europe, where it raised a struggle against intemperance without a parallel in the history of civilisation.

In giving a rapid sketch of this struggle on the continent, I beg you to observe that gin and similar distilled liquors are more generally drunk in the Northern countries, States of Germany-viz., Prussia, Mecklenburgh, Slesvick-Holstein, Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburg, and in Poland; whereas the Southern States also consume far more wine and beer. However, even in the wine-growing countries, much distilled drink is taken-in France, absynthe; in Switzerland, cherry brandy, &c. As regards Germany, the frontier line is about the fiftieth degree, so that those States situate northward to the latitude of London, or about the half of Germany, comes into consideration here. The struggle on the continent had reference only to distilled alcoholic liquors, and not to merely fermented liquors. It is true the abuse of fermented liquors is also productive of much mischief; but our beer and wines are not nearly so strong and intoxicating as those drunk here and in America, where their effects justify your opposition to them.

To heighten and secure the effects produced by his book, Dr. Baird visited Petersburgh, Stockholm, Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburgh. Everywhere his personal appearance prepossessed the people in favour

The consumption of distilled drinks in Germany was, per head:-In 1801, 2 quartiers; in 1815, 10 quartiers; in 1820, 12 quartiers; in 1825, 18 to 20 quartiers. 1 quartier 49 Paris cubic inches; 1 gallon 233 Paris cubic inches; 1 gallon = to about 4 Hanover quartiers, which is about 2 English pints, at 288 Paris cubic inches. The continual passage of troops in the Napoleonic wars, and still more the use of potatoes for distilling, generally introduced in 1820, contributed mostly to this frightful increase of intemperance throughout Europe. N.B.-1 French litre = 50 Paris cubic inches; 1 stoop in Sweden = 65 Paris cubic inches; 1 stoff in Riga = 66} Paris cubic inches.