tendency to reach certain ends by violence, if other measures do not seem likely to be successful. In fact, we see the habitual self-restraint slowly developed by the exertions of many ancestors, by the efforts of the individual himself, aided by the training given by education, for the time being withdrawn to a great extent. Every time this act is repeated the greater the tendency for the character to manifest its lower rather than its higher forms. The character is indeed being slowly modified, and that, too, in a most undesirable direction. It is being gradually deprived of much that a slow process of civilization has given it.
It must be patent to all that the direction just depicted is that in which our town populations are distinctly moving. I have sketched elsewhere (the Alliance News, July 22 and 29, 1876) those circumstances in the condition of the masses which, in my opinion, render something more than the mere removal of temptation necessary in the practical treatment of intemperance. Whatever may be the effect of monotonous occupations, of bad hygienic surroundings, of improper food in infancy, and the physical deterioration which results from large aggregations of individuals, there can be no question but that repeated alcoholic indulgence is gradually modifying the character of the masses. It is seen in the growing insubordination, in the turbulence, the impatience of control, in the tendency to assert their opinion on subjects of which they are not in a position to judge; it is demonstrated in the growing thriftlessness, in the marked inclination to increase the number of their holidays, in the spending of a large portion of their weekly earnings on Saturdays and Sundays, till the middle of the week is a time of comparative destitution. It is illustrated by the columns of our daily press in the increased acts of violence perpetrated under the influence of alcohol by men accustomed to be intoxicated; and by the increase of disease of the nervous system, especially excitable forms of mania, found most commonly amid the population of certain industrial districts. Doubtless there are many thrifty, sober, self-respecting, and industrious working-men; but it cannot be denied that the proportion of such men to the whole body is less now than it was in days not far gone by. The character of the masses has been undergoing grave modifications in recent times; and the fashioning hand of alcohol can be clearly traced in the production of the results.
There is, however, a still grimmer aspect of this subject than even the effects of repeated indulgence upon the mental attitude of the individual himself, and that is the influence which such indulgence will and must exercise upon the nervous system of his offspring. We are all of us "the outcome of the coöperation of countless ancestral forces," and each of us is individually indebted to his ancestors for every act of self-restraint, every act of self-denial or control exercised by each of them. Our forefathers, in forming their own character, were insensibly fashioning ours. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the chil-
