The Real Reason.

But leaving the scripture, from which, as we have seen, the moderate drinker may at best extract an excuse for his indulgence, but never a command, we come to the real motive of his action. He drinks because drinking is pleasant, and because he thinks that in moderation it does him no harm. And over and over again he tells us that we must prove alcohol to be an absolute evil before we can shake his position. You may see this argument advanced in the columns of the Spectator by so clear- page 14 headed and high-minded a writer as Mr. Richard Hutton.^* An [unclear: a] dialectician, though probably a less devout Christian, but still a [unclear: m] lofty character, and one who now and then addresses a Church [unclear: Cong] and publishes an occasional volume in which all the resources of [unclear: scept] are brought, amid ecclesiastical benedictions, to the defence of [unclear: dogmatics]. I mean Mr. Arthur Balfour—has argued in the same way. In a [unclear: ress] speech,^† after admitting that "undoubtedly much misery, much vice, [unclear: re] crime can be directly traced to habits of intemperance, and if habits of [unclear: in] perance could be eradicated from the people, so far all these great [unclear: e] would be mitigated or destroyed"—he proceeded to repudiate [unclear: geo] teetotalism as the remedy in these words:—" It is not, as far as I am [unclear: sh] discover either by my own experience, by the experience of my friends by the testimony of doctors, the use of alcohol in moderation which does harm either to the individual or to society." This seems a somewhat [unclear: i] defence of a drug which he confesses to be "the undoubted source of [unclear: n] misery, much vice, much crime," but the caution is characteristic of Balfour, who is never dogmatic except when he is dealing with [unclear: l] politics.^‡ Let us, therefore, concede to the moderate drinker [unclear: sou] beyond the alcoholic agnosticism of this wary philosopher. We are concede that alcohol is normally an essential to the enjoyment of [unclear: pe] health—medical science has got far beyond that; and those abnormal [unclear: o] which may require its use as a medicine we have already arranged to him over to the physician. But let us admit that to men like Mr. Balfour. Mr. Hutton alcohol in moderation does no harm, and further, that for the if there were no others to be considered, it would be a genuine addition the joys of life, a legitimate heightener of individual and social pleasant Is then our argument destroyed ?