take up the standard and move forward. The Republican party will not sit on the fence much longer. The masses of the people in it, and a very large majority of the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of that party believe in the prohibition of the liquor traffic, and these elements will get down on the right side of the fence very soon. The fence is not an easy seat, and those who desire effective action cannot, or at least will not, wait much longer for their former associates in contentions which are passing away to make up their minds upon the liquor question. It ought not to require much thought or time for a Republican to decide that the people should have an opportunity to amend the national Constitution if they please.

If the leaders of the Republican party fail seasonably to comprehend this, I fear that they will find themselves retired or their party defeated-one or the other, and perhaps both-when the votes are counted in national elections not far remote. What the Republican party most lacks now is the courage of its own convictions. Its convictions are strong enough, and the path of duty is clear enough. We cannot dally and delay forever. Courage and resolution alone are necessary in the future as in the past. Losses in one direction will be made up by enthusiastic and permanent gains, and still greater losses from the very heart of the party will be prevented.

It is better for the country that the votes of foreign nationalities at the American polls should meet an issue upon which they can themselves divide. Upon discussion of this issue the Irishman and the German will in due time demonstrate that they are Americans. When the temperance element of the Republican party goes out of it, the party will be dead. Its soul will be gone and its body offensive. I believe that the following form of a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States will commend itself to the common sense of the American people. It is taken from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives December 27, 1876:

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following amendment to the Constitution be, and hereby is, proposed to the States, to become valid when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, as provided in the Constitution:

"ARTICLE

"SECTION 1. From and after the year of our Lord 1900 the manufacture and sale of distilled alcoholic intoxicating liquors, or alcoholic liquors any

part of which is obtained by distillation or process equivalent thereto, or any intoxicating liquors mixed or adulterated with ardent spirits or with any poison whatever, except for medicinal, mechanical, chemical, and scientific purposes, and for use in the arts, anywhere within the United States and the Territories thereof, shall cease; and the importation of such liquors from foreign states and countries to the United States and Territories, and the exportation of sucn liquors from, and the transportation thereof within and through any part of this country, except for the use and purposes aforesaid, shall be, and hereby is, forever thereafter prohibited.

"SEC. 2. Nothing in this article shall be construed to waive or abridge any existing power of Congress, nor the right, which is hereby recognized, of the people of any State or Territory to enact laws to prevent the increase and for the suppression or regulation of the manufacture, sale, and use of liquors, and the ingredients thereof, any part of which is alcoholic, intoxicating, or poisonous, within its own limits, and for the exclusion of such liquors and ingredients therefrom at any time, as well before as after the close of the year of our Lord 1900; but until then, and until ten years after the ratification hereof, as provided in the next section, no State or Territory shall interfere with the transportation of said liquors or ingredients, in packages safely secured, over the usual lines of traffic to other States and Territories wherein the manufacture, sale, and use thereof for other purposes and use than those excepted in the first section, shall be lawful: Provided, That the true destination of such packages be plainly marked thereon.

"SEC. 3. Should this article not be ratified by three-fourths of the States on or before the last day of December, 1890, then the first section hereof shall take effect and be in force at the expiration of ten years from such ratification; and the assent of any State to this article shall not be rescinded nor reversed.

"SEC. 4. Congress shall enforce this article by all needful legislation."

The following general propositions were laid down as the basis of the argument on that occasion:

"In order to justify legislation of any kind restricting the manufacture and use of alcoholic liquors, I believe it to be necessary to maintain these propositions:

"First. That it is the duty of society, through the agency of government, which is the creature of society, to enact and enforce all laws which, while protecting the individual in the full possession and enjoyment of his inalienable rights, tend to promote the general welfare, and especially whenever that welfaro is impaired or threatened by any existing or impending evil, it is the duty of society to enact and enforce laws to restrict or destroy that evil. It may be proper to observe that no law can promote the general welfare which deprives an individual of an inalienable right, when that right is properly defined, or which impairs the enjoyment thereof, whether of life, liberty, property, or the pursuit of happiness. But society has inalienable rights as well as individuals, and the right to such legislation as will promote the general welfare, in its true sense, is one of them; and the inalienable rights of individuals and the inalienable rights of society at large are limited by, and must be construed and enjoyed with reference to each other.

"Second. While society has no right to prevent or restrict the use of an article by individuals for purposes which are beneficial only, yet if that use, beneficial to some, is found by experience to be naturally and inevitably greatly injurious in its effects upon others and upon society in general, then it becomes the duty of society, in the exercise of its inalienable right, to promote the general welfare and in self-defense to social life, just as the individual may defend his natural life, to prohibit, regulate, or restrict the use of that article, as the case may require. This principle is daily applied in laws which control the manufacture and use of gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, dynamite, and other things of great and dangerous potency, the unrestrained use of which, even for useful purposes, has been shown by experience to be destructive to the inalienable rights of others. This results from the common principle of law that every man must so enjoy his own rights as neither to destroy nor impair those of another, and it is the great end for which government is instituted among men to compel him so to do.

"Third. No person has a right to do that to himself which impairs or perverts his own powers; and when he does so by means of that which society can reach and remove by law, to such extent as to become a burden or a source of danger to others, either by his example or by his liability to commit acts of crime, or to be essentially incapacitated to discharge his duties to himself, his family, and society, the law- that is, society - should protect both him and itself. A man has no more right to destroy his inalienable rights than those of another, or than another has to deprive him of his own. The laws restraining the spendthrift in the destruction of his inalienable right in property and punishing suicide (as the common law did, by forfeiture of estate, etc.), or attempted self-murder (as the law does now), are familiar examples of the application of this principle.

"These are elementary principles of law and of common sense. They are corner-stones of all just government. To these principles every member of society is held to have given his assent. They are unquestioned, so far as I know, by any one who believes in any law. They are axiomatic and indestructible as the social organization itself.

"Fourth. The use (unless medicinally) of alcoholic liquors to the extent of intoxication or poisoning-which, as will hereafter. be seen, is the same thing as intoxication-is an injury to the individual; it inflicts great evils upon society at large; it is destructive to the general welfare; it is of a nature which may be greatly restricted if not destroyed by the enforcement of appropriate laws; consequently such laws should be enacted and enforced; and this should be done in our country, either by the States or by the General Government, or by both, if such laws can be made more efficient thereby."

The above form of amendment to the Constitution may lack somewhat in radical scope; and the briefer forms, taking effect at once and including distilled and fermented drinks in the same provisions, which have been adopted in Kansas and Iowa and proposed to be added to the constitutions of other States, may be preferred.

This, however, has commended itself to my own judgment as one which could be enacted by this generation and as likely to work out in its practical administration the full measure of reform which national action can accomplish. The slave trade was abolished by a constitutional provision which took effect twenty years after its adoption. Had its provisions been made operative at once, the whole Constitution would have been defeated. There are reasons why an amendment will be found difficult of ratification in three-fourths of the States, which denies local option to the States in regard to light wines, cider, and fermented drinks; even in Maine the pronounced friends of prohibition fear to ask an amendment of the constitution of their own State which shall forbid the manufacture and sale of domestic cider. The form above submitted frees the State from the shackles of Federal power so far as non-distilled liquors are concerned. The power of the State to prohibit is in every respect enlarged and reënforced, and in none curtailed.

There may yet be developed a public sentiment which will apply the same rule of absolute and immediate national prohibition to all forms of intoxicating poison. The continual public discussion of a national measure is a national notice to the maker and dealer to quit. Any amendment of the national Constitution, which sets the State free to control the traffic within her own borders, would be a great advance. Until at least this is done, the war must go on, and public sentiment is likely to become more rather than less determined in dealing with the curse of alcohol.

HENRY W. BLAIR.

THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

PART II.

IN reading Mrs. Carlyle's letters, it should always be remembered that we gather into a day the petty perplexities, the domestic torments, of forty years. The impression produced upon the reader is entirely different from the actual repression of her life. So far from proclaiming her trials, it was her unwisdom to conceal them too much. Her habit-which Carlyle uses, and has a color of right to use, in self-defense, and which Froude freely presents in his favor-was so studiously to hide from him the anguish which he cost her that he did not suspect its existence. This is no valid plea, because he wrested this very silence to his own destruction by charging it to her want of care about household matters. "Alas! can that need to be said? Insane that I was!" he moans in the stern awakening of death. But the letter in which she wrote it was addressed to him; and he read it in life, in her life as well as his, without remorse, without feeling, without notice. Guilty as he was for not knowing her sadness, it seems certain that he did not know it.

In reviewing the notes containing her planning and counterplanning to meet his caprices, and to take advantage even of his roughnesses, "Alas!" he cries, "how little did I ever know of these secret wishes and necessities-now or ever!"

"She flickered round me like perpetual radiance." "Her intellect was clear as starlight, and continued so; the clearest intellect among us all." "She shone round me like a bright aureola when all else was black and chaos." "At lowest," he bears witness, "nothing unpleasant was ever heard from her. All that was gloomy she was silent upon, and had strictly hidden away." "She was weak, weak,- far weaker than I understood. But to me she was bright always as stars and