Personally I yield to Sir Wilfrid Lawson the highest honour. Beyond all other men he is the hero in this long battle. If I account his Bill defective, he will not blame me: for in its original form, which he would be glad to carry, it closely resembled the Maine Law, and superseded the Magistrates. He has simplified it by making it only a half-measure. After Parliament has been teazed by the drink question for more than twenty-five years (one might almost say, ever since 1834), after candidates at every election have been made anxious by it, we must calculate that all public men will desire to make a _final_ settlement and get rid of the topic in Parliament. But Sir Wilfrid's Bill, whatever its other merits (and I think them great), will not set Parliament free. For so soon as any district adopts his permission to stop the Drink Trade, an outcry must arise from local medical men and chemists and varnishers, demanding new shops for their needs: and intense jealousy will follow, lest the new sellers, though called chemists or grocers or oilmen, presently become purveyors of drink; hence a fresh struggle must continue in our overworked Legislature concerning the new and necessary regulations. Sir Wilfrid's half-measure supersedes neither the Magistrates nor the Parliament, though for two hundred years the Nation has suffered through the laxity of both. Surely we chiefly need real Provincial Legislatures, and, until we get _them_, Local Folk Motes and _Local Elective Boards_ are our best substitutes. This is the other and the complete measure: yet something remains to be said on it. The great evil is, that by reason of competition, a trade cannot live, except by pushing its sales. The Americans have wisely seen that the necessary _sales_ must be effected by Agents publicly appointed, with a fixed salary and nothing to gain by an increase of sales. Such Agents must receive public instructions. This was, in fact, Sir Wilfrid's original scheme, only that it forbad absolutely the selling wine or beer for drink, _unless by medical order_; and the last condition would involve in Parliament endless contention. It is simpler, and I think far better, to give to an Elective Board a general free discretion. Parliament _might_ indeed dictate that sales should go on through a public officer only.