The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-01

and discipline which those whoundertake the
business of hunting up rum in other peoples
drawers have not rs yet displayed on this
continent, and are not likely to display. We
do not need to enumerate here the objections
to law which cannot be enforced, especially
in community whose order and happiness
are dependent so largely on the popular re-
spect for law, and, above all, on the popular
loyalty and honesty in obeying the law, as
this is. This opens up very wide field,
which, however, anybody can explore for
himself.
We are far from believing, however, that
nothing can be done by law for the dimi-
mutton of drunkenness. The liquor
traffic cannot be abolished, and, in say
ing this, we do not take into account
the spasmodic cases in which town here
and county there has split great deal of
liquor, and stopped drinking for two or three
weeks. But the traffic can be regulated, we
believe, even with the machinery at our dis
posal, SO as greatly to lessen the temptation
to drink, and thus lessen the amount of crime
caused by drinking which, after all allow
ance has been made for the exaggerations and
misrepresentation to which temperance ad-
vocates are, for some inscrutable reason
very prone, is undoubtedly large. In fact, all
that the advocates of prohibition claim
for their experiment, wherever it has been
made, is that it does regulate and diminish
drinking, not that it stops it; but this is dearly
purchased by the creation of habit of con-
tempt for the law which illicit drinking surely
creates. The great difficulty in the way of
this regulation is everywhere IN the Union to
be found in the habits and character of the
political class, which are too low to make
effective dealing with so corrupting ques-
tion possible. Political reform, including re-
form of the civil service, lies at the back of
fa,o, raf0r o1,1 halt halI
never see the liquor question reached in
rational and scientific manner except through
publication Of the official class, both State
and Federal.
What, then, ''Truth- h-seeler" may ask, do
we look forward to as the final solution of the
temperance problem? Do we really think
that the world is fated to remain as drunken
as it is now? Nothing of the kind. We be-
lieve the time will come when drunkards will
be as rare as thieves or swindlers, and as dis
reputable, not because the decent people of
the world will be all teetotalers, but because
those who drink at all will be moderate
drinkers" We think the notion that men
will ever give up wine and beer as a great
moral duty is as wild dream as has ever
entered the brains of an agitator. We know
that intemperance has greatly diminished
under the influence of education and
other moral and social agencies; we
believe it will continue SO to
diminish, under the same influence, until
drunkenness is as rare as is every other form
of indulgence; and to strengthen the moral
and social agencies which do notoriousiy
diminish drunkenness, is the temperance
mans first duty. Everybody who asks HIM
self why the custom of getting drunk after
dinner has disappeared from among the up
per classes in Europe why ministers do not
go and guzzle in their idle hours at taverns,
as many workingmen do; why German ar
tisan can confine himself to drinking beer
through an evening at apublic garden with his
wife, instead of getting madly drunk on whis-
key, as the Irishman does, will, if he tries to
answer his own questions, get great deal of
light on the subject.
All that has been done for temperance in
the world as yet, has been done by persuad-
ing men not to drink, or giving them better
things than drinking to do; nobody really be-
lieves legislation could ever have done as
much. When you get into a mans head and
heart, you hold his will, which the policeman
can never do, and it is through this will that
drunkenness is to be conquered. The pre-
sent movement in favor of prohibition we
look on as one of those outbursts of impa-
thence with Objectionable practices in which
the good people of the world have indulgsd
every Aow and then ever since govern
ments were set up. Nothing is harder than
to refuse to use the powers of government
to stop peoples doing what you don't like,
when you think those powers are within your
reach. This is feeling which has been at
the bottom of all that legislation in aid of
morals and religion from which the world
has suffered SO greatly, so much of which is
now recognized as barbsrous and inhumsn,
and so much of which we laugh over as silly.
1t has taken fifteen hundred years of expert
l. L. 4.
pious by law; it is not wonderful, therefore.
that in many places the faith should prevail
that by law they will eventually be made sober,
There is nothing, however, in the lessons
of history, or in what we see of the tendencies
of society in our day, to warrant this conclu-
sion. There have been three great attempts
made In Christendom to police men into per-
sonal purity-Calvin's, at Geneva; that of the
Puritans in England and America; and that of
the Papscy at Rome. They have all failed,
and failed hopelsssly, and there is no chance
of their ever being repeated. Moreover, the
tendency of the day is against all coercion in
aid of personal morality, or for the suppress
sion of what Bentham calls the self-regarding
vices. This is remarkably shown in the total
change of views which has taken place with
regard to the education of children, from
which the intiiction of physical penalties may
now be said to have almost disappeared. In
other words, self-restraint has begun to play
part in practical education which, much as has
been preached about it, it was in old times
never called on to play.
Lastly, there is nothing in history or human
nature to warrant the conclusion that it will
ever be possible to incorporate in popular
morals a prohibition of acts in themselves
harmless, based simply on the fact that eI-
cess in the commission of them is hartful,
and that some persons are guilty of this