Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/243

Rh for liquor-drinking where it did not exist before, would be easily verifiable if true; but, upon appeal to the facts of statistical reports of criminal and health boards, there is no evidence to sustain it.

The next assertion (3), that such laws give the visionary and crank class in the community political balance of power, is equally unverifiable. The author's complaint that prohibition laws beget an exaggerated oratory, and an appetite for sweeping statements and the cultivation of false statistics, etc., receives a most practical illustration in his paper. His own sweeping denials and allegations of facts, which are not substantiated by any investigation, are ample proof of the danger of such literature to the credulous and unthinking.

To say that all prohibition laws are worse than useless, that they have not lessened the sale or consumption of liquors; that free spirits and free sale would increase the horror of the drunkard and decrease the horror of liquor; and by making the one a crime and nuisance, the merits of the other would come into prominence, or, in other words, increase the severity of the punishment of the drunkard and make the sale of liquor practically free, sounds very tropical to say the least.

The final reference to statistics showing an increased longevity of the drinkers over the total abstainers, as a fact which appeared in the British Medical Journal, is notoriously untrue and mischievous.

Such are some of the allegations which challenge the author for particulars and specifications, to make good his assertions. As they are presented in a historic form, they are apparently based on defective knowledge and incorrect statements and faulty observations of facts, or the construction of facts, according to some theory or purpose, irrespective of all relations or inferences.

It would seem useless to make any detailed study of statements that are unverifiable even if true, in which no appeal to facts is made, especially statements that will not bear the most casual scrutiny. Reformers and their opponents who battle with each other in a "Donnybrook-fair style," striking in all directions, with the wildest dogmatic assertions, reckless of history, facts, and truth, never advance any cause however meritorious.

If the prohibitionary laws are dangerous and injurious there should be facts and data to prove it clearly, and no arguments based on assumed facts, with crooked deductions and doubtful statements, should ever be urged in its defense.

Leaving Mr. Morgan's strange statements, we turn to some general considerations of the alcoholic evil, and the legislative efforts to check and remove it.

To any one who will examine from the scientific side the