In opposition to prohibition and coercion.

use of these elements, because the casualties by fire and flood are most disastrous ?Would he forbid their use, because people are burned in cities -drowned in the rivers ; because a boiler bursts at sea, or an engine sometimes runs off the track, or kills hundreds by the violence of a collision?Williamthe Conqueror, it is true, once denied to the people of England fire and light after the curfew tolled ; but the ab- horrence in which the act is held would not encourage anybody to follow his example.Woman is God's best gift to man.The fascination which she spreads around her-how difficult to resist; the passions she inspires how intimately interwoven with all that arouses to exertion, and rewards us for our toils.Yet, when even love is indulged in to excess ; when reason is empowered ; when passion hurries on to folly, how numerous the victims ; how blasting the effects.Yet who would, reasoning from the perils of indulgence and the dangers of society, deny to man the companionship which alone makes existence tolerable ?The learned member for Annapolis might draw from the sinks of vice, or even from the agony of a single victim, some harrowing pictures, but would he, on that account, imitate the Turks, and lock up all the women ?The victims of indulgence in opium I have never seen, but even spirituous liquors do not produce the extent of physical suffering and moral dislocation that results from the abuse of this drug.But would the learned member deny to society the use of that which allays the de- lirium of fever --which soothes the infant \ipon the woman's bosom, and saves more lives than it ever destroys ?Take gunpowder, which blasts our rocks, loosens our plaster, defends our country, kills our game.Mark the mischiefs and miseries it produces when its myster- ious power is abused.But who would argue that, because boys blow themselves up, and tyrants use gunpowder for unworthy purposes, its use should be forbidden ?Would the learned gentleman, even with the battlefields of Balaclava or Inkerman before him, attempt to re- strain, by human laws, the manufacture and sale of gunpowder ?Who denies that law is the safeguard of our lives and property ; that courts are indispensable institutions : that lawyers are the fearless advocates of the innocent and oppressed ?But has not even law been abused ?How many pettifoggers defile the courts, ensnare the ignorant, waste men's estates and embitter their lives ?Walter Scott's Peebles and Planestanes and Dickens' pictures of the Court of Chancery are familiar to us all.These are but sketches illustrative of the evils

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.