To which the indulger in moderate and honest four-penny replies, “I see exactly what teetotalism has done for you, and you can’t be too grateful for it; but there is no demand for it to do so much for me. If I was afire, as you say that you once were, and blazing in the consuming flames of drunkenness,—to use your own powerful language—no doubt I should be as glad as you were to leap into the first water-tank that presented itself. But I am not blazing and consuming. I am no more than comfortably warm under the influence of the pint of beer I have just partaken of; and though I am glad indeed to see _you_ in the tank, if you have no objection, I will for the present keep outside of it.” Again, from the tone adopted by certain total-abstinence professors, people who are compelled to take such matters on hearsay—the very people, by the way, who would be most likely, “for his good,” to join the majority of two-thirds that is to shut up taverns—would be made to believe that those who frequent the public-house are drunkards as a rule; that though occasionally a few, who have not at present dipped very deep in the hideous vice, may be discovered in the parlour and the taproom bemusing themselves over their beer, the tavern is essentially the resort of the man whose deliberate aim and intention is to drink until be is tipsy, and who does do so. The moderate man—the individual who is in the habit of adjourning to the decent tavern-parlour, which is his “club,” to pass away an hour before supper-time with a pipe and a pint of ale and harmless chat with his friends—is well aware of this exaggerated view of his doings; and it is hardly calculated to soften his heart towards those who would “reform” him, or incline him to listen with any amount of patience to their arguments. He feels indignant, knowing the imputation to be untrue. He is not a drunkard, and he has no sympathy with drunkards. Nay, he would be as forward as his teetotal detractor, and quite as earnest, in persuading the wretched reckless swiller of beer and gin to renounce his bestial habit. It is a pity that so much misunderstanding and misrepresentation should exist on so important a feature of the matter in debate, when, with so little trouble, it might be set at rest. If public-houses are an evil, it must be mainly because the indolent and the sensual resort thither habitually for convenience of drinking until they are drunk. Is this so? I have no hesitation in saying that in the vast majority of cases it is not. The question might easily be brought to the test; and why has it not been done? Let a hundred public-houses in the metropolis be selected at random, and as many impartial and trustworthy men be deputed to keep watch on the said public-houses every night for a week. Let them make note particularly of those who are not dram-drinkers, but who go to the public-house for the purpose of passing an hour or so there; let them mark their demeanour