closely, borders on intoxication; yet, as opposed to the method which the United Kingdom Alliance would employ in its infatuation for the "Maine Law" theory, there is equally no disposition to sit calmly by while an experiment is being tried that in the very nature of things can only add fuel to the fire, and in so far as the reformation of
our species is the avowed object, must prove as great a failure in liberty-loving England as has resulted in the more lawless states of America. We shall probably be told by some of our teetotal friends - those for whom we entertain the highest regard, and whose praiseworthy exertions in the Temperance cause we shall notice at another time that we have prejudged the case, and that at least some of our views are fallacious. We may also be invited to peruse the "Condensed Argument for the Legislative Probibition of the Liquor Traffic" founded on Dr. Lees’s Prize Essay. We will therefore anticipate both the objection and invitation by saying that the facts (numerous and powerful as they are) of Dr. Lees's work, now lying before us, are altogether insufficient to wean us from a settled conviction that legislative prohibition, even if desirable, would not be tolerated for a single day. We know what we ourselves as strict temperance observers, would do if our quarter pint of dinner beer were denied us; and, knowing also that
we are not the exceptional moderates that some of the total abstinence advocates have represented us, we can readily conceive that there are thousands like ourselves who, while they are proof against insidious temptations to ibibe undue potions of alcoholic drinks, would be very determined to secure by some new means their favourite beverage, which Government, if it had unwisely adopted Mr. Lawson's measure would have deprived them of. It is not many, weeks since we had occasion in our reputed "tussle with Mr. Raper", to give some practical illustrations of the sort of energy which would be manifested by persons like ourselves if subjected to the dictation of neighbours, whose infatuation for a wrong principle or whose impotency of self-control left them expose to the dangers which the moderate drinkers – the true temperance men are not in the least degree apprehensive of. The so called illustrations were such as had come under our notice, and were of a very, decided character, yet, should we not have burdened these remarks with any allusion to them but for the tissue of untruths which appeared in the Alliance News of March 12th. We make no charge against the conductors of that paper
and only regret that the misstatements contained in a paragraph there inserted should have had for their author a member of the St. Leonards Temperance Society.
The foregoing editorial remarks, as might be imagine, were not at all pleasing to the members of the Temperance Society (Mr. Beagley and one or two others excepted), and the exposure of Mr. Burg’s misstatements was particularly annoying to that over-zealous individual; in so much that he afterwards exhibited a spirit of resentment which not only induce the -
