“You will confer upon me a personal favour by stating the reasons for the existence of such a regulation.”
“These are the reasons. We want the minds of our people to be clear and bright, and their intellectual vision unclouded. Is not that important?”
“Again; in these dominions, crime, destitution, poverty, pauperism, and wrong-doing are unknown; but if our people, like yours, imbibed spirituous liquors, crimes would be as frequent and poverty as widely spread as are those terrible evils in your kingdom!”
“I readily admit the force of your reasoning; I am bound to own that the drinking customs of my country are the real causes of our more serious national evils.”
“Then, sir, your government ought to enact stringent laws in order to diminish the cause of those evils.”
“We are a race of free men, living in a free country, and I am afraid that no government will for some years be strong enough to battle successfully with this custom.”
“You pass laws to suppress vice; and drunkenness being one of the greatest vices of your people, and the parent of all others, I can see no reason why you should not put down this traffic by legislation.”
“Your excellency may be right in your conclusion. The evil is a terrible blot on our civilization; were we a strictly sober race, we should be by far the grandest people on earth.”
“My own observations lead me to the same conclusion; but for the present we must put an end to the argument. It is time for you to retire. Your attendant awaits you. To-morrow we shall meet again, though I am afraid only for a few minutes, as I have to pay a visit to a distant part of the empire.”