politicians have been called upon to suppress them. Much good may have been done; but drinking habits are still prevalent, and rum-shops still abound. The temperance reform, from this point of view, has been a failure, if by success we understand the eradication of the evils of intemperance. This failure has been, we think, at least partially due to the refusal of the master-minds of the movement to study the various ways in which partial advantages may be gained. Those who view the subject practically maintain, for example, that much benefit to the community would result if the weaker liquors could be generally substituted for the stronger, as wine and beer for distilled spirits; but this notion has been sternly resisted by the great mass of ardent temperance reformers as sacrificing first principles. All alcoholic liquors, they maintain, are poisonous, baneful, and to be equally condemned, unless, indeed, the weakest are not the most dangerous. To which the reply is, that these extreme views are self-defeating; that they have been preached until the community is wearied with it, while the liquor traffic still flourishes, and that it is the part of wisdom to check, diminish, and circumscribe an evil where it cannot be wholly removed. Something might, therefore, be gained, they maintain, by substituting wines and beers, containing five or ten per cent, of alcohol, for whiskey and rum containing forty or fifty per cent.
However this may be, of one thing there can be. little doubt, that to substitute the use of tea, coffee, and cocoa, for spirituous liquors, would be a great gain. In the literature of teetotalism thus far there has been but one dietetical alternative to alcohol, and that is water. With curses upon alcoholic drinks, the temperance lecturer has interspersed copious praises of "clear, cold, sparkling water." In practice the abandonment of alcoholic stimulation has been often accompanied by a resort to the stimulations of opium and tobacco—a change which has in it but few elements of reform. As an ultimate fact of man's nature, he is so constituted that he seeks stimulus of some kind—some method of breaking the monotony of the feelings and getting contrasts in the psychical life. This may be wrong, and water may be the drink that should be exclusively patronized by everybody; but that consummation, whether desirable or not, is undoubtedly remote, very remote indeed. Meantime, there would unquestionably be a great gain in substituting tea, coffee, chocolate, and cocoa, for alcoholic liquors.
Accordingly we are glad to see that a vigorous movement has been set on foot to fight rum-shops with coffeehouses. We have received a very interesting tract from Mr. Charles Collins, describing the results of experiments made chiefly in Liverpool, to maintain a system of "public coffee-houses" and "cocoa-rooms" for the use of English laboring men. There is a society in Liverpool for the promotion of this object, and the pamphlet before us is made up from its reports.
It appears that twenty-nine places under the denomination of "cocoa rooms" have been opened in Liverpool under the auspices of this society, by the employment of a subscribed capital of $100,000. So successful has been the enterprise, not only in its favorable influence upon the habits of the people, but also pecuniarily, that ten per cent, profit on the investment was distributed to the stockholders last year, and it is now proposed to increase the capital of the association to $200,000, in order to still further extend its operations. The following are some of the most important suggestions of the company in regard to the management of such places, as arrived at by their own experience:
