Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/156

 or possession of intoxicating beverages. The wonderful improvement effected in the condition of society by a few years of this régime reconciled to it even those who, on general principles, had been most violently opposed to prohibitory legislation. The cessation of the enormous amount of waste of various kinds, estimated to amount to fully one-fifth of the total productive capacity of the community, was found to make all the difference between the existence of an ever-increasing substratum of hopeless poverty and a general diffusion of comfort and independence. It soon became an almost incredible tradition. of the evil past,—those days when drunkenness in a legislator was a cause neither of disqualification nor of surprise; those days when "the rum-soaked senator from All-know-where" could stand up, or, rather, lean, to hiecough forth his boozy philippies against men in whose presence he was not worthy to stand, and against measures he was as incapable of comprehending as of originating.

It had long been recognized, though with but slight result in the way of remedy, that offences against chastity are among those that eat most deeply into the life. of a nation. Of this there had been seen a terrible example in the degradation and final ruin of a once noble people, whose long and glorious history had come to a disgraceful end. Uncleanness, like a foul ulcer, had devoured the manhood of her sons, and so infected her literature, that other nations had found themselves compelled in self-defence to exclude utterly the pestiferous nastiness from their borders. At length, despised, and regarded as a centre of moral contagion, they had fallen