To doubt this, would be to refute the absolute facts that appear. A Prohibition nation would be, beyond every reasonable doubt, a religio-politico system of government in which every spark of the liberties of the people would be extinguished; and this because, as Mill says, "so monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty;--there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify." Therefore, we conclude that the principle underlying and giving rise to Prohibition, should it obtain everywhere, would crush out every vestige of =individual liberty=, and its adherents would justify their course by the "monstrous principle"; namely, that "it is the absolute social right of every individual that every other individual shall act in every respect exactly as he ought to act." Prohibitionists must necessarily stand for this "monstrous principle," and therefore, as certainly as two and two make four, =Prohibition is a menace to the American system of government=. An Old-Time Fallacy For many years the Prohibitionists have systematically promulgated the fallacy that the poverty of the working class is caused by drink. And this they continue to do in face of all the facts, amply proven by all available statistics, that flatly contradict the fallacy. On the question of poverty and drink, the opinion of Francis E. Willard ought to be accepted by the Prohibitionists first of all. She says: "For myself, twenty-three years of study and observation have convinced me that =poverty is the prime cause of intemperance=, and that misery is the mother and hereditary appetite the father of the drink hallucination.... For this reason I have become an advocate of such =a change in social conditions= as shall stamp out the disease of poverty even as medical science is stamping out leprosy, smallpox, and cholera; and I believe the age in which we live will yet be characterized as one of those dark, dismal, and damning ages when some people were so dead to the love of their kind that they left them in poverty without a heartache or a blush." An editorial in the =New York World= some time ago contained the following significant statement: "Only two families in every hundred of the 1575 which have been in the care of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor this summer were brought to poverty =through intemperance=. The percentage goes against preconceived notions and is, indeed, surprisingly small. It should disturb that prosperous complacency which sees in poverty only or mainly the penalty for wanton misdeed. The Association's report for 1909 showed that intemperance, imprisonment, desertion, 'shiftlessness and inefficiency,' all told, accounted for not 12 per cent of those brought to want. The figures for that year showed that 65 per cent of the poverty was due to two causes--sickness and unemployment."