THE MORAL STATUS OP ALCOHOL. 369 



possession of the homicidal idiosyncrasy. If, too, every silly 

 fellow who might deliberately choose, in defiance of the most 

 elementary laws of gravitation and cohesion, to skate on thin 

 ice and fall into ice-cold water, were simply allowed to remain 

 there, instead of being fished out by royal humanitarians and 

 petted into second life by brandy-grog and hot baths, then, as 

 it jseems to me, the metropolis would be thinned of some of 

 its most silly individuals. 



' I regret to write,' states my author in manuscript, ' that, 

 so far as my personal experience has gone, I never yet saw an 

 individual whose virtue of liquor-temperance was held on so 

 frail a tenure that it must needs depart at the sight or smell 

 of strong drinks, worth keeping. Viewing such people in re- 

 lation with the whole human community, leaving reverently 

 undebated the question of individual responsibility in a future 

 state, then it seems to me it might have been well had deli- 

 rium tremens, or some kindred malady, been allowed to make 

 short work with them. 



' Drunkenness is every way hateful and abominable : the 

 conclusion, nevertheless, does not seem to follow in any se- 

 quence of logic or reason, that because drunkenness is a bad 

 thing, alcohol, the cause of drunkenness, is to be banished. 

 Take some parallel illustrations. The first case is this: 

 would it not be quite on a par, as to considerations of logic 

 and reason, that fires should be abolished because certain 

 results of great evil happen from the misuse of fire, as that 

 alcohol should be abolished because there happen to be some 

 drunkards ? Might not a plea be urged for the abolition of 

 razors, seeing that some few throats have been cut by razors? 

 of steam-boilers, seeing that grave accidents have resulted 

 from the explosion of some ? And thus forward ever, next 

 door to infinity.' 



These sentiments, are altogether too harshly put; the laws 

 they would lead to, if carried into practice, would be alto- 

 gether too Draconian : nevertheless, it is impossible not to 



BB 



