“He who does not smoke,” said the sage, “has known no great sorrow.” Similarly, it may be urged that he who never joins in a friendly glass has known no great joy. Do we express our unfeigned joy and thankfulness for having a great and good Queen to reign over us by toasting her in flat soda-water? Forbid the deed! When our sons return from the midst of many and great dangers, from the battle-field, the raging deep, or the land of savages, do we express our delight by putting the kettle on to boil? Avaunt! I have known a man who had won £27,000 on a certain Wednesday at Ascot, dine that same night off a chump chop, chips, and a bottle of ginger-beer, at a coffee-house no great distance from Fleet Street. And he gave the waitress one penny for herself, and counselled her not to “get gamblin’ ” with it. But amongst my own personal friends, when the fancied horse catches the eye of the judge, there is revelry; and who shall say that they sin thereby? I do not believe in the man who takes his winnings sadly—or at all events impassively. “A shout, and a drink, and then sit down and write about it,” is the programme pursued by a journalistic friend; and although I do not always “write about it,” ’tis much the same programme pursued by myself. Nor do we rejoice for the sole reason that we have got the better of somebody else. For, alas! the balance at the end of the year is far too often in favour of that “somebody else.” “On the question of the prohibition of the {232} liquor traffic,” says an authority on the ethics or total abstinence, “there has been much controversy. Its opponents have contended that it is an invasion of personal liberty; that even when imposed by a majority it is a violation of the rights of the minority, and that all that is really required is such a magisterial and police supervision as will repress drunkenness as much as possible, and inflict different penalties on offenders. To this statement various answers are returned. With regard to the violation of personal liberty the prohibitionists maintain that in one sense all law interferes with liberty. A good law interferes with the liberty to do wrong. Therefore, they say, assuming that the common sale of drinks wrongs the public a law interfering with this wrong is in accord with true liberty. They hold that individual profit must be subservient to the public welfare, _Salus populi suprema lex_. If hardship is alleged as affecting the buyer, the statement of John Stuart Mill is quoted, who declared that every artificial augmentation of the price of an article is prohibition to the more or less poor; yet there is hardly any government which does not in some way or other legislate so that the price of intoxicants is increased. As to the possibility of extirpating intemperance by means of strict regulation as to the sale of drink, the prohibitionists affirm that the existing system has been tried for hundreds of years, and often under the most