205,567 in 1876 to 172,859 in 1880, or 32,708 less. There was also a corresponding decrease in the number of convictions for crimes. In 1882 the cost of liquors was £126,251,359, a still greater decrease.

Mr. Gladstone himself has expressed the opinion that the decrease in the consumption of intoxicating drinks "is to be traced precisely where we should wish to trace it—that is, in the augmented savings of the people." He finds that the deposits in the savings-banks have increased from £41,500,000 in 1875 to £44,175,000 in 1881; while in the post-office savingsbanks the deposits amounted to £37,000,000, the annual increase having of late been doubled. "To these sums might be added £57,000,000 claimed to be in the treasuries of the various friendly societies."

Great temperance influences, legal, moral, and religious, have been actively at work. The Sunday-closing Act reduced the Irish Drink Bill from twelve millions in 1877 to nine millions in 1880, and the "Blue Ribbon" movement is said to have enrolled 370,000 members in Great Britain prior to the present year. Coffee and cocoa palaces (over fifty in Liverpool alone) have shared in the work.

[The diagrams in this chapter present, in the form of object lessons, a view of the situation of the British Isles in respect to drink, the magnitude of the evil, and the relative progress.]

IN THE UNITED STATES.

IN

CHAPTER II.

A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PERIOD.

(1860-1882.)

N preceding chapters the wonderful advances of the Temperance Reformation in the United States from 1825 to 1860 were sketched. It was a broad, national movement, in which men of the best culture and the widest influence were enlisted; and the agitation was carried on by such methods as produced strong, intelligent convictions, and led to substantial results. We have noticed the great change in the previous drinking habits of American society; the adoption of the principle of total abstinence by the great mass of our native citizens; the strong tendency toward the prohibitory principle in the legislative treatment of the liquor traffic, and its adop tion in its most radical form in about a dozen State Legisla tures. This improvement, in striking contrast with the condition of the country prior to 1825, was the fruitage of a long, laborious, and diligent seed-sowing by some of the best, the wisest, and the most learned men, clergymen, physicians, lawyers, statesmen, jurists, and many in all other ranks of life, who had been aroused by the appalling facts of intemperance to zealously undertake the work of amelioration. Probably in no country, in so short a period, was there ever so radical a transformation. The average consumption of distilled liquors in the United States decreased from seven and a half gallons per capita in 1825 to two and a half gallons in 1850. Social life every-where wore new aspects; the domestic economy of

society was changed; materia medica felt the influence; the number, frequency, and fatality of diseases were reduced; and the moral and spiritual forces of the nation were greatly augmented.

THE CIVIL WAR.

The period of which we are now to speak opened amid troublesome times. The five years before the late civil war, the five years of the war, the post-bellum years-always badaltogether, constitute a period unfavorable for moral and social reform. Violent agitations, heart-rending anxieties, new political problems of far-reaching influence, involving the profoundest thought in their solution, engrossed the attention.

man.

"Our nation had received a new President. Nine States had seceded from the Union, and with them we were involved in a terrible war. It was a subject of rejoicing and hopefulness for the cause of temperance that Abraham Lincoln, who had been called to lead the nation, was a strict temperance No disturbance ever had been, or ever would be, effected by alcohol in that mighty brain; and whatever the friends of temperance would consider desirable in the government, the army, or the navy, they might ask from him without a repulse. His example in the high places of power would always be right, and his great influence consequently good. When the committee of the nominating convention came to him at Springfield, Ill., to inform him of his nomination, some of his neighbors, acquainted with his temperance habits—his unpreparedness to give a political committee the usual treats— sent to his home some bottles of champagne; but he said, 'It wont do here,' and ordered it back where the committee might be assembled. When offered wine at Cincinnati, on his way to take the reins of government, he said, 'For thirty years I have been a temperance man, and I am too old to change.' When asked by a friend, after his inauguration, if he was not overawed in addressing that immense audience of intellectual men, 'Not half so much,' he replied, as I have