Official statistics go far to confirm the triumphant claim of total abstainers that the consumption of strong drink is falling off at a rate not distasteful to the philanthropist, but suggesting grave reflection to a Chancellor of the Exchequer. The receipts from beer, wines, and spirits have been estimated in all recent budgets at nearly thirty millions sterling a year, if we add to the excise the customs duties derived from foreign spirits; and, as this amount is considerably more than a third of the entire revenue, any causes that impair its growth or make it decline are of serious importance to the nation. That the revenue from excise is not increasing, but is actually falling behind, despite the change from a malt tax to a beer duty, is indisputable. That temperance habits have made prodigious strides in the last few years is also beyond question. Do the two changes stand to each other in the relation of effect to cause? In other words, is less of beer, spirits, wine consumed because there is a want of inclination, or is it from want of ability? Partly from the latter influence, there is little doubt. Total abstinence is popular with many because it is an aid to health; with others because it is the handmaid of morality and thrift; self-denying persons practise it because it sets an excellent example; and multitudes like it as it is economical.... In so far, then, as the need for retrenchment is one cause of reduced consumption of strong drink, a change in habit and in fashion might be expected to come with increased material prosperity. The nation ‘drank itself out of the Alabama difficulty’ in the exuberant days which saw Mr. Lowe at the Exchequer; and it may yet again take to tippling so heartily as to enable Mr. Childers to dispense with a portion of the income-tax. At present, however, there is not the faintest symptom of this; all the indications point in the other direction. Temperance and total abstinence march from one conquest to another, blessed by bishops, clergy, and even princes of the Christian Churches, patronised by doctors, eulogised by hard-headed men of business, and gathering in everywhere crowds of enthusiastic converts. The movement is sweeping over the nation in an unchecked tide, acquiring force as it goes, and inaugurating not change merely, but social revolution.... Such changes, needless to repeat, bode no good to the English Chancellor Exchequer, who has to sit idly contemplating the gradual running dry of more than one tributary rill, which he is at his wits’ end to replenish from other sources, or to replace by a more reproductive substitute. Perhaps it is too soon to moralise over the passing event, but it will be impossible long to postpone action, and to rest content with mere discussion.