Strange, certainly, it seems to us, that among the various modes, some plausible and some supremely silly, that have been proposed and acted upon with a view of checking the ravages of intemperance, so few should have suggested, and none should have acted upon the idea of trying, what might be the possible effect of pure liquor. Common sense should have at once suggested it, and a portion of the redundant and exuberant philanthropy of the age might have been well, at least harmlessly, employed in making an experiment which could in no case have worked disastrously, as all those plans have done which familiarize the people with systematized violation of law, to gratify the morbid craving for those poisons the use of which, growing with every indulgence, soon leaves the victim incapable of resisting the craving that never abandons him but with life. Most people, however, once fairly inoculated with the views of the temperance societies (we refer to the _secret_ institutions under that name), see everything but from one point of view; the vision becomes jaundiced, prejudice carries the day, argument is of no avail, moderate measures are futile, liquor in any shape, alcohol in any quantity, are the _accursed thing_, and those who deal in them, nay, those who see no objection to their use, are _Amalekites_. What to them are the vested interests of the eight hundred thousand persons engaged in the manufacture and sale of liquor in the United States alone? What the employment of hundreds of thousands engaged in its transportation? What care they about the wives and families of either? It is of no sort of consequence to them that over sixty million dollars accrue to the federal treasury, even under the present extremely defective system of collection, from the tax on domestic liquors; half as much more from the tariff on foreign wines and spirits; and that the amounts paid for municipal, county, State, and federal purposes, by license on liquor-selling and drinking-houses, are simply incalculable. As well plant and try to cultivate the sands from high-water mark to ebb-tide as attempt to reason with such people! They are the _communists_ of our country, the _impracticables_, the men of one idea, and that idea a wrong one. We would much like to be able to reach them, to be able to make them hear the words of genuine truth and soberness; but they are “joined to their idols,” as Ephraim of old; the doctrines of the “lodge,” the rulings of the _W. Patriarch, W. Chief Templar_ (or whatever else may be the name of the presiding _Grand Mogul_), are of more avail to them than all the philosophy and all the logic of ancient and modern times. What are the Fathers of the church to the Rev. Boanerges Blunderbuss, at Brimstone Corner, who explains to the satisfaction of his hearers that wine, “which cheers the heart of God and of man,” is but the unfermented juice of the grape, and that our Saviour, at his last supper, squeezed out some three or four clusters of