In the foregoing pages it has been impossible to give a hundredth part of the evidence that lies ready at hand in this matter of the use and effects of beer, but we have endeavored, by careful selection, to present such as must have weight with all readers. Nothing has been stated as a fact which cannot be amply corroborated, and no inference drawn that did not seem to be fully warranted by the premises. It has been shown that beer is wholesome, and so mildly alcoholic as to make drunkenness from its use very uncommon. A man who drinks in order to become intoxicated, can, no doubt, accomplish his purpose with beer; but such men are almost unknown where beer is the common beverage. This abnormal impulse usually comes only in consequence of a course of ardent spirits.

The evidence as to the cure of intemperance by the introduction of a free use of beer is especially important, and one of the most striking instances of such success is to be found in the case of Denmark, to which we desire again to call special attention. This is the central point of the whole question. Heartily desiring the progress of genuine temperance, and fully believing that all efforts in the direction of prohibition are false in theory and injurious in practice, that they do not prevent intemperance and do produce many other evils, we hold that the safe and only course is to popularize the use of beer, and cannot doubt that government would do well to foster its manufacture in every practicable way, and that taxation on the product should be abolished, or at least made very light. Such a course would not merely secure the very end which has been unsuccessfully attempted by prohibitory laws, but it would do much more. It would diminish the poor rates, save the money spent in prosecutions, which, after all, do no real good, and incidentally improve the whole business condition. Some refreshing, stimulating drink the people will have, and legislators should seek to guide the instinct, not eradicate it. Men of the highest scientific authority have again and again pronounced beer to be not merely harmless, but beneficial. Experience in the countries where it is most used develops the same result, and the readiness with which it is adopted in place of ardent spirits, whenever it is of good quality and low price, shows how easily the experiment of temperance on this basis can be tried. Even advocates of total abstinence must admit that beer is better than whisky. The fact that it adds greatly to the enjoyment of a people must not be ignored. Here in America we are apt to forget all but the work-a-day part of life, but the demand for recreation exists and must be gratified in some way, and almost always recreation is social, and is made more enjoyable and cheerful by some mild stimulant. It refreshes and enlivens, and so contributes directly to the social happiness that is the object sought.

It is to be hoped that legislators in general will soon learn to take broader views than seem generally to have prevailed in the past. Statesmanship is not bounded by the views of one or the other party and is affected by no popular clamor. It does not enact a law because it is loudly demanded by a certain set of persons, especially if these persons have a hobby to ride, no matter how earnestly they may believe in it. A statesman will see for instance in this temperance question, that the stay of drunkenness must be through a social change. Legal prohibition can do little while all the other conditions of the problem remain unchanged. Something must be given for what is forbidden. If beer is encouraged ardent spirits can be driven out, and when this idea is once thoroughly understood and put in practice we shall have the temperance era, so long expected and so ardently desired.

There is another subject which we approach with some reluctance, knowing that however carefully our words may be weighed, there is a large number of estimable individuals throughout the country and particularly in the Eastern states, to whom they will probably give offense. We allude to what is called the Sunday question, and the topic is treated here because in this country beer drinking is, in the common mind, intimately associated with the German Americans and their custom of spending part of Sunday in recreation in a beer garden. The fact that they do so has been more than once used as an argument against them and against the use of beer, as if there were any real connection between the character of the drink and such a custom on the part of its greatest consumers even supposing the custom to be actually harmful or immoral. As such a feeling exists, however, it seems worth while to call attention to the fact that what is known as the New England Sunday is not an essential part of Christianity as so many honestly suppose, but something that in comparison with Christianity is new and local. We need hardly say that in the early days of the church it was distinctly taught that the time of the Jewish sabbath was past and for several hundred years this view was generally held. Notice the following passages from the New Testament:

Jesus himself taught the disregard of the sabbath as a day of ceasing from labor or recreation and are we to suppose that both his teaching and practice had no meaning?

Paul says, “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Let no man therefore judge you in respect of a holy day or of the new moon or of the sabbath days.”

The first legal enactment requiring an observance of Sunday as a Sabbath, was foisted upon the Christian world A. D. 321, by Constantine the Great—a heartless tyrant who had caused seven members of his family to be put to death in cold blood, that he might attain political and religious supremacy! He embraced Christianity because the Pagan priests and pontiffs could not grant him absolution, and would not fraternize with such a murderous monster! Hence he became the father of the so-called Sunday laws. Even Constantine’s decree did not interdict recreation nor the tillage of the soil. In general, through the Christian world, the day was a holiday, such as it now is on the continent of Europe. There the hours of service in the churches fall, usually, in the morning, and are strictly observed while the rest of the day is universally given to enjoyment. Let those, however, who are accustomed to cry out at the notion of a continental Sunday, remember that they are themselves the innovators, and let them, too, examine the following passages from the writings of men whose names must command respect, and not one of whom would speak in such a matter without mature consideration:

Tyndale the martyr, Erasmus, Paley, McNight and a host of other Christian authorities, were and are of the same opinion regarding Sabbath observance. England and America stand practically alone in retaining so much of the Jewish Sabbath. Here is a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Jared Ingersoll of New Haven, Conn., which bears directly on the subject and may be read with both interest and profit by those who concern themselves in Sunday laws.[22]

A correspondent of the New York Staats-Zeitung[23] writes as follows: “The Emperor of Germany has made a contribution to the discussion of the Sunday question, that is very much to the point. It is an address to the Prussian Synod, which had recently objected to the holding of a review on Sunday, and reads thus: ‘He who instituted the Sabbath has declared that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The puritanic and Calvinistic conception of the Sabbath as a day of penance and repentance, has always been foreign to the feeling and taste of the German people.’”

These words of the Emperor will receive the hearty assent of every German-American, and preachers and pietists may as well understand that Germans in America will struggle as long for their free Sunday as Germans in their old home have for a free German Rhine. They have conquered back the “sacred stream” and something more into the bargain, and we here shall have no less success in securing a free, cheerful Sunday, if we remain united and true to our principles.

England formerly held the same views that then and since have prevailed on the continent, but gradually the liberty of the day was restricted and its character wholly changed. We have lately met with an excellent summary of the course of legislation that produced this result. It marks clearly the various stages of the restrictive process and we cannot do better than reproduce it here for the benefit of readers to whom it may prove novel.

“Prior to the statute of 1676, any act done on Sunday, except in proceedings of courts, was of the same binding force as if performed on any other day. Parliament sat on that day, for in the reign of Edward I., in 1278 and 1305, three statutes were made on Sunday. Nor did the first restraining laws make any distinction between Sundays and other holy days. Thus the statute of 28 Edward III., Cap. 14, in 1357, says: “Shewing of wools (i. e., by merchants) shall be made at the staple every day in the week except the Sunday and solemn feasts of the year.” No further enactment was made touching the matter in question for nearly 100 years; but in 1448 was passed the act of 27 Henry VI., Cap. 5, entitled, “Certain days wherein fairs and markets ought not to be kept,” which sets forth that “The King hath ordained that all manner of fairs and markets in said principal feasts (of Ascension, Corpus Christi, Assumption, and All Saints) and Sundays and Good Friday shall clearly cease from all shewing of any goods or merchandises (necessary victuals only except);” but in recognition of the fact that there had previously been no such restriction, it is provided that “Nevertheless, of his special grace (the King) granted to them power which of old time had no day to hold their fair or market, but only upon the festival days aforesaid, to hold the same authority and strength of his old grant within three days next before said feasts or next after.”

The act of 4, Edward IV., Cap. 7, in 1464, seems to have been occasioned by some special irritation from the dishonesty of leather-dressers and shoemakers; for, after sundry stringent provisions applying to them generally, it is provided that “No person, cordwainer or cobbler, within the City of London * * * upon any Sunday in the year, or in the feasts of the Nativity or Ascension of our Lord, or in the feast of Corpus Christi, shall sell, or command, or do to be sold, any shoes, huseaus, or galoches, or upon the Sunday, or any of said feasts, shall set or put upon the feet or legs of any person, any shoes, huseaus, or galoches.” This statute was repealed in 1522, but re-enacted, in part, in 1604.

In 1552 was passed “An act for keeping holy days and feasting days” (5 and 6 Edw. IV., Cap. 2), the preamble of which is an instructive example of the pains taken by all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, prior to the seventeenth century, to deny that Sunday or any other holy or feast day, possessed of itself any sacredness or any higher claim to observance than that of convenience for the purpose of uniformity in worship. It ran thus: “For as much as at all times men be not so mindful to laud and praise God * * * as their bounden duty doth require; therefore, to call men to remembrance of their duty and help their infirmity, it hath been wholesomely provided that there shall be some certain times and days appointed wherein the Christian should cease from all kinds of labors; * * * neither is it to be thought that there is any certain time or definite number of days prescribed in Holy Scripture, but that the appointment, both of time and also of the number of the days, is left by the authority of God’s word to the liberty of Christ’s Church to be determined and assigned orderly in every country by the discretion of the rulers and ministers thereof, as they shall judge most expedient for the true setting forth of God’s glory and the edification of their people; be it therefore enacted, that all the days hereafter mentioned (to wit: Sundays, the Feast of the Circumcision, and twenty-two other feast days that are named, and Mondays and Tuesdays in Easter Week and Whitsun Week) shall be kept and commanded to be kept holy days, and none other.” It was further provided, “That it shall be lawful to every husbandman, laborer, fisherman, * * * upon the holy days aforesaid, in harvest, or at any other time of the year when necessity shall require, to labor, ride, fish, or work any kind of work at their free wills and pleasure.” This Protestant law was repealed the next year by the Catholic government of Mary, and restored in 1604, in the first year of James I. It is strikingly similiar to the decree of Constantine the Great, made in the year 321: “Let all Judges and people of the town rest, and all the various trades be suspended, on the venerable day of the sun. Those who live in the country, however, may freely and without fault attend to the cultivation of their fields * * * lest, with the loss of favorable opportunity, the commodities offered by Divine Providence should be destroyed.”

In 1558 (1 Eliz., Cap. 2, Sec. 14,) was passed the first law requiring attendance upon public worship “upon every Sunday, and other days ordained and used to be kept as holy days,” upon pain of church censure and a fine of twelvepence.

The English Puritans of the time of James I., were the first to impose the name and character of the Jewish Sabbath upon the first day of the week, and those who came to America brought the name and the idea with them. To that seventeenth-century influence, and not to any scriptural or ecclesiastical teaching of any earlier time, are we indebted for sermons on Sunday observance. The doctrine held on that subject by most evangelical Christians is not yet three hundred years old.

In 1625 was passed a law (1 Car. I., Cap. 1,) that “There should be no meeting, assemblies, or concourse of people out of their own parishes on the Lord’s day, for any sports or pastimes whatsoever; nor any bear-baiting, bull-baiting, interludes, common plays, or other unlawful exercises or pastimes used by any persons within their own parishes.” “This statute,” says Blackstone, “does not prohibit, but rather impliedly allows any innocent recreation or amusement within their respective parishes, even on the Lord’s day, after Divine service is over;” and, in point of fact, both Charles I. and his father before him issued proclamations encouraging such amusements after Divine service.

In 1676 was enacted the well known “Lord’s Day act,” of 29 Car. II., Cap. 7, which prohibits generally all work, labor, and business on Sunday, except works of necessity and charity, and which, with more or less modification, forms the basis of all Sunday laws now extant in the United States. Exceptions to this law in favor of hackney coachmen, fishwomen, and chairmen, were enacted in 1694, 1699, and 1710, and a clause prohibiting bird hunting was subsequently added, but it remained in substance until alterations and repeals of English laws ceased to have any force in this country.”

As an historical matter the question is not very abstruse and the truth is well enough known to scholars everywhere; should there not then be charity for honest convictions?

In many cases the practice for years has been tolerably liberal while all the time the old and stringent puritanical Sunday laws of 1702 were retained on the statute books liable to be enforced whenever a minority should choose to demand their revival.

Such cases have recently been seen in many places in this and other states, but particularly so in Newark, N. J., where the enforcement of such an old act forbidding the sale of beer and other beverages on Sunday caused a reaction of unexpected violence, and very characteristic of the profound change that has already taken place in the popular conception of the day. The circumstances in brief were as follows: A considerable number of prohibitionists had organized under the name of the Law and Order Association for the purpose of enforcing the Sunday law and preventing the licensing of bar rooms. Numerous prosecutions were made and carried through to conviction under the old state law after having failed in the city police courts. Thereupon the Citizens’ Protective Association was formed and in September, 1879, a demonstration was made by a great procession, and the adoption of resolutions calling for a repeal of the law which, after lying idle so long, had suddenly been revived to the great injury of an established business, and with manifest injustice to a large number of peaceable citizens who conceived their rights to be interfered with, inasmuch as a law long inoperative must practically be regarded as a dead letter and ignored by those who, if they had supposed it to possess vital power, would have removed from its jurisdiction or taken pains never to come within it. The procession numbered ten or twelve thousand and great enthusiasm was displayed, not only in the ranks, but by residents all along the line of march. The matter was evidently one which took a deep hold on the feelings of the community and none the less because of a common feeling that they had been unfairly treated by the appeal to a law not in harmony with the spirit of the times or of abstract justice. A crowd is very apt to be wrong and it is easy to stir up the people, but here the crowd had more reason on its side than it was itself aware of, reason founded on history, and making the law that had been enforced an unwarrantable attack on personal liberty. They felt that it was so, though few probably would have been able to give a clear explanation of the feeling or trace its justification by the facts. As for enthusiasm, we are told that it needed no stimulus and can easily believe it to have been so, for aside from the more abstract and philosophical justice of their complaint, there was the immediate smart felt by men who lose the day of recreation to which they have looked forward all the week, or find that they are to suffer a pecuniary loss and that their occupation is not only checked but stigmatized. The matter made a great excitement and called out many bitter paragraphs on both sides, but chiefly among the more narrow-minded and pharisaical of so-called religious press. We have no space or disposition to go into the details of their criticism, even for the sake of illustrating how far misrepresentation and innuendo may be made to stand in place of careful statement and sound argument. The case has been spoken of because it is in some sense typical, because it represents the course of public thought and feeling, and the change which even within two or three generations has come over the rigid enactments of puritan early settlers. These puritans did much good but it was all tempered and shadowed by an austere severity that has no merit in itself and that crushes out much the better part of life and obscures many a truth that in itself is clear as noonday. The mind of the people has changed. It is time that the law should be changed also. The Christian Union has said, “The sooner the issue is made in Chicago between a whole sabbath and none at all, the sooner the Christian element in the community will win the victory it will deserve. Half a sabbath is hardly worth fighting for.” We say that the best rule for observing the day is that which gives the greatest amount of harmless freedom and enjoyment to the greatest number, each according to his own judgment and conscience. Our foreign element is very large and has its own beliefs and traditions, as dear and as implicitly held as those of any one whose training and practice have been after the strictest sabbatarian pattern.

We have attempted here no argument, but simply given some cardinal facts, and now leave the matter in the hope that those who dissent will at least respect honest utterance and not allow their objections on this one point to prejudice them against our discussion of the value of malt beverages as aids to genuine temperance and useful friends to man.

We close as we began, with the words which seem to us to indicate the only practical road to real temperance, and record again our motto

BEER AGAINST WHISKY.