THE SALE OF PURE LIQUORS.
By Editor
THERE is hardly any phase of the temperance movement which we do not heartily wish Godspeed. If men will not be total abstainers, we are glad to have them agree to put some limits to their drinking. If they have no objection to milder liquors, we commend them for refusing rum and gin. We have even expressed an approval of the movement—as far as it goes—of our English brethren, who pledge themselves not to take anything intoxicating "between drinks." But there is one proposal recently made in public by professed friends of temperance, for which we have no word of commendation, and that is, to promote the sale of "pure liquors." We don't want any more pure liquor sold. There is altogether too much of it on the market now. And pure liquor is no improvement on adulterated liquor. With all the vile mixtures which have been manufactured to make drunkards, nothing has yet been found so bad as the original article imitated. Pure whisky makes a man just as drunk as strychnine whisky, and when he is drunk on the one liquor he is quite as likely to commit a crime, and is fully as great a fool, as if he were drunk on the other. Within the last ten days a great criminal has confessed that his crime was committed while he was drunk on cider; and it has turned out that a number of young criminals in another State were helped to their crimes by the use of beer. Pure liquor may, it is true, prolong a drunkard's life, and enable him to commit more crimes and to prove more of a curse to the world than if he drank the vilest adulterations of liquor known to "the trade;" but we don't think it will pay to organize a society to bring that thing about. The worst thing on the face of the earth for a man to drink at any time is pure liquor.—Christian at Work.