summary conclusions, which are signed by Mr. Charles W. Eliot, Mr. Seth Low, and Mr. James C. Carter, fully bear out the lessons that have been drawn from European experience. With regard to the promotion of temperance by law those gentlemen note that the influences of race or nationality are apparently more important than legislation,' and recognise that outward improvement secured by legislation does not necessarily imply a real diminution of drinking. In other words, they recognise the limits of the law in promoting moral improvement. And they clearly indicate what the aims should be in legislating. 'The wise course for the community at large is to strive after all external visible improvement, even if it be impossible to prove that internal, fundamental improvement accompanies it.' That is to say, look after public order and leave morality to moral influences. Further That law is best which is best administered; and the law which is shown to be the worst administered is that which most oversteps its proper sphere and aims direct at compulsory virtue.

All restrictions on the licensed saloons have a tendency to develop illicit selling; but much experience has proved that illicit selling cannot get a large development by the side of licensed selling, if the police administration be at all effective. It is only in regions where prohibition prevails that illicit selling assumes large proportions.

There have been concomitant evils of prohibitory legislation. The efforts to enforce it during forty

years past have had some unlooked-for effects on public respect for courts, judicial procedure, oaths and law in general, and for officers of the law, legislators, and public servants. The public have seen law defied, a whole generation of habitual lawbreakers schooled in evasion and shamelessness, courts ineffective through fluctuations of policy, delays, perjuries, negligences, and other miscarriages of justice, officers of the law double-faced and mercenary, legislators timid and insincere, candidates for office hypocritical and truckling, and office-holders unfaithful to pledges and to reasonable public expectation. Through an agitation which has always had a moral end these immoralities have been developed and made conspicuous.'

Restriction by local option is more favourably regarded, because it has public opinion more behind it and is less compulsory. American experience appears to corroborate Scandinavian that suppression of bars may be successfully carried out in rural districts and in those not far from towns where liquor can be obtained. Villages and suburban districts in our own country which are without any public-house point to the same conclusion. For towns and industrial centres a lawful but reasonably restricted trade is found most suitable in America as elsewhere. The restrictions recommended by the New York Committee are those which the ' experience of many years and many places has shown to be desirable.' They are, briefly, the prohibition of sale to minors, intoxicated persons, or habitual drunkards; on Sundays, holidays, and days of public excitement,

but where such a restriction is openly disregarded, as in St. Louis, it is injurious to have it in the law; saloons not to become places of entertainment and play or to be connected with theatres, concerts, and sporting exhibitions; saloons to be open to inspection from the highway; a limit to the hours of selling, and the shorter the hours the better.' It has also been found necessary to prevent the display of obscene pictures and the employment of women.'

All these restrictions, with one exception, are directly concerned with the maintenance of public order and decency. The exception is the prohibition of sale to minors, which is partly in the interest of public order, for young persons are more quickly intoxicated than adults, and partly to prevent their demoralisation. The last is also a legitimate function of the State, which is properly entrusted with the protection of those who by age or infirmity are unfit to protect themselves.

I trust that enough has now been said to show that the a posteriori teachings of experience gathered over a wide area are quite in conformity with the a priori dictates of common sense. And when once the principle is grasped it is easily applied to the examination of legislative reforms. It draws a dividing line between the spheres of legal and moral action and gives each its proper work to do. They are mutually interdependent; moral influences must be backed up, as they advance step by step, by the law, which in turn draws its effective sanction from

them. But they are distinct. To confound them is to court failure and disappointment. Many are tempted by the evils they see to seek a shorter cut to the desired goal, and because moral influences are too slow would fain invoke the law to do their work. The short cut only leads to a quagmire.

Nor is that the worst of it. I beg those who hold by the moral law and its importance in national life to think this matter over. There is a strong drift in the present day towards the total elimination of individual responsibility for all delinquencies and, by implication, for all merits. It sets in two directions. One is the physical theory, which makes congenital tendencies and environment all-important; the other is the social theory, which attributes all evils to existing laws and systems and promises to abolish the former by changing the latter, without any regard to individuals, as if the said laws and systems had first made themselves and then dictated the conduct of individuals. The confusion between the moral and legal spheres in temperance reform is an example of this muddled thinking. It belittles the moral element in conduct by exaggerating the responsibility of externals, and can only lead to moral deterioration.

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CHAPTER VIII 1

THEIR APPLICATION

THE problem of liquor legislation has been obscured and complicated by a multiplicity of phrases and formulas, to which controversy has given an importance they do not possess. Conditions which are alleged to give rise to evils are mistaken for those evils, and schemes which are only means to an end have become the end itself to enthusiastic partisans. If these things are set aside, and the real object kept steadily in view, the problem is at once simplified. The law we want is that which will best secure good order and remove the abuses connected with the consumption of an article, the use of which may be voluntarily abandoned, but cannot be forcibly suppressed. In pursuance of that aim we can attack in three directions: (1) the disorderly person; (2) the disorderly place; (3) the disorderly time-using the word disorderly' in a general sense. There are difficulties in connection with each, but the worst difficulties arise from the state of public sentiment,

Since this chapter was written several of the suggestions made have been embodied in the Government Bill.