PREFACE. THE last fifty years have witnessed a mighty change in the moral and religious character of Great Britain. We have left off shooting one another on matters of insignificant importance. State lotteries have been abolished.-Human beings are not now hanged by the score like so many dogs.Churches and Chapels have been multiplied and are somewhat better filled than formerly. -We have sent Bibles and Missionaries to the uttermost parts of the earth.—We have picked the beggar boy out of the kennel and sent him to school.-We have multiplied public hospitals and public charities of every kind. We have passed laws for the protection of the brute creation.-We have abolished bull-baiting and cock-fighting.-Pugilism has ceased to be a profession, and man stealing a trade. We have become professedly more religious; and we have certainly become a thousand times more humane and more enlightened. But notwithstanding all this manifestation of real progress we regret that it has still to be said that " we are yet the most drunken people on earth." And it is because we believe this statement to have some truth in it that we are desirous of seeing a Maine Law carried out in this country; and it is in furtherance of this object that the following pages have been written. The work itself does not lay claim to much originality, but it was felt that a want existed in reference to general infor mation on the subject of the Maine Law, and this want the Author has endeavoured to supply; and knowing that a very large class of persons are saying, in the language of Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens' Hard Times, "Now what I want, is facts. In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!" he has endeavoured to present such a compendium of the facts and arguments of the case, that cannot fail to show, that in advocating a prohibitory law in reference to intoxicating drinks we are only advocating the principles of equity; of religion, and of social and domestic order. While we have full confidence in the value and efficacy of moral suasion in reclaiming the intemperate, we think the time has come when we should call for legal enactments, to prevent the further manufacture of drunkards, and the perpetuation of drunkenness. The motto we adopt, and which we are |