TEETOTALISM. 51 



be regarded as ultra-Protestant. On the other hand, in 

 Ontario, where the bulk of the population is Methodist, 

 the Church takes the opposite extreme, and is high. 

 Canada is a religious, without being a bigoted, country. 



There is a strong party in Ontario who believe that it 

 would be an advantage to apply the Maine Liquor Law 

 to their province. These people cannot find much to 

 encourage them across the border in those states where it 

 has been tried. I believe that one reason why Canadians 

 are a healthier and more robust race than the Yankees is 

 that they drink better liquor. Perhaps they would be 

 better still if they drank none at all ; I do not venture 

 to offer an opinion on this point, but we know that men 

 will have alcoholic stimulants, and prohibitory laws have 

 never banished the bars from Maine or Massachusetts, 

 though they have driven them to the cellar and the attic. 

 They have never prevented drinking, though they have 

 made men drink in a skulking, guilty way, as if they were 

 about to commit a murder or a robbery. They have had 

 the effect, however, of damaging the liquor and making it 

 poisonous. It is a misfortune for paupers to marry and 

 beget pauper children ; granted ; but try and check the 

 pauper population by prohibitory laws, and the result will 

 be a still worse quality of pauperism. If the good people 

 who shout so lustily under the temperance banner would 

 only turn their energies towards substituting good un- 

 adulterated liquor in place of alcoholic poison they would 

 do good service. At present they are spending their 

 time, their brains, and their money in an attempt which 

 is about as impracticable as to check the ebb and flow of 

 the tide. 



