hen every consideration pleaded
for radical and thorough work, was practical infidelity to the
cause and the crisis. It was sporting with humanity, and giving
to the winds a glorious victory for the right when it was within
our grasp.

The situation was complicated by two other political elements.
One of these was Temperance, which now, for the first time, had
become a most absorbing political issue. The "Maine Law" agitation
had reached the West, and the demand of the temperance leaders was
"search, seizure, confiscation, and destruction of liquors kept
for illegal sale." Keenly alive to the evils of drunkenness, and
too impatient to wait for the inevitable conditions of progress,
they thought the great work could be accomplished by a legislative
short-cut. They insisted that the "accursed poison" of the
"rumseller," wherever it could be found, should be poured into the
gutter along with other filth, while he should be marched off to
answer to the charge of a crime against society, and take his rank
among other great offenders. Instead of directing their chief
attack against the appetite for drink and seeking to lessen the
demand, their effort was to destroy the supply. They had evidently
given no thought to the function of civil government in dealing
with the problem, nor did they perceive that the vice of drunkenness
is an effect, quite as much as a cause, having its genesis in the
unequal laws, in the domination of wealth over the poor, in the
lack of general education, in inherited infirmities, physical and
mental, in neglected household training; in a word, in untoward
social conditions which must be radically dealt with before we can
strike with effect at the root of the evil. They did not see that
the temperance question is thus a many-sided one, involving the
general uplifting of society, and that no legislation can avail
much which loses sight of this truth. For these very reasons the
agitation for a time swept everything before it. Its current was
resistless, because it was narrow and impetuous. If the leaders
had comprehended the logic of their work and its unavoidable
limitations, and had only looked forward to the overthrow of the
fabric of intemperance by undermining its foundations, the regular
current of politics would not have been perceptibly affected, while
the way would have been left open for a more perfect union on the
really vital and overshadowing issue of slavery.

The other eleme