The liquor question in India differs from the liquor ques-
tion in Europe on two fundamental points. All evidence shows that owing to some peculiarity, either of race or climate or temperament, concentrated alcohol is to most Indians direct poison. They drink to be drunk, not to enjoy. It is the right of society to prohibit the sale of any poison, even if desired by a minority, and in the ease of hashish, this is actually done. Again, with the exception of the Sikhs, the outcasts, and the aborigines, every native of India who swallows alcohol commits in his own eyes a crime, not a sin only, mind, but a crime, which any native ruler would think himself justified in punishing. The Indian who drinks injures, therefore, not only his constitution but his conscience, and this however moderate he may be. We cannot carry out all native theories of punishment, cannot, for instance, mutilate for larceny ; but we see no wrong in accepting a native idea which the rulers themselves admit to be beneficial. It is true these arguments point to total prohibition; but in the face of the English, the Sikhs, and the Burmese, we have not the power to prohibit, and must content ourselves with getting as near that object as we can.
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