It has been well said that “the best government is that which governs least”; and it might with infinite propriety be added that the legislative body stultifies itself when it passes laws that cannot possibly be carried into effect. One such law on our statute-books, yet constantly and notoriously violated, does more to destroy that political morality with which our people are, to say the least, not overburdened—of which certainly there is no surplus—than would ten wrong practices against which no law exists. We learned, during the late war, of how little avail legislation is when it undertakes to regulate and declare the value of gold; and it is designed briefly to set forth in this article that the proposed much-vaunted prohibitory legislation touching alcoholic liquors is false in theory, must be unsuccessful in practice; that remedial (not _repressive_) measures are what is required; and to suggest means by which the end aimed at by such enactments can be attained without invading the domain of the church, the free-will of humanity, or placing the state in the odious light of executor of a grinding tyranny exercised by a temporary majority over a recalcitrant minority. And here, in the outset, let it be understood that there is no difference between ourselves and the most ardent favorers of the Maine Law, or any similar enactment on this matter, concerning the detestable nature of drunkenness, which we both admit to be a damning sin in the sight of God and a crying scandal before man. That it is a loathsome vice is a proposition requiring only to be stated, not argued. Even the wretched being who is enthralled by it will admit this and lament his deplorable condition. The days are past when Fox, Pitt, and Sheridan went openly drunk to the House of Commons; when the usages of the highest society were such that we still retain therefrom the saying, “Drunk as a lord”; when the literature of the age informs us everywhere that _gentlemen_ were not expected to be sober after dinner; when Burns could write in Presbyterian Scotland, “I hae been fou wi’ godly priests”; and when, in our own country, the first thing on entering and the last on leaving a house was a visit to the sideboard. Drunkenness is now deservedly considered by the entire community not only a vice but an inherently vulgar one. Fashionable society will not tolerate it, and there is no pretence of usage any longer set up that will even partially condone it. In short, it is the one unpardonable sin against modern society, and we are well pleased to see it ranked in this category. But while detesting drunkenness, and deprecating, in the strongest manner, the habitual use of intoxicating liquors, we dislike very much to perceive a tendency on the part of the public to ignore the fact that there are other sins besides the abuse of liquor, and that it is not by legal provision that people are to be kept sober. As Almighty God has