rum cannot be consumed without causing an awful amount of demoralization. It is not possible to get at actual shipments, but I am sure I do not over estimate the quantity when I put down sixty thousand hogsheads of fifty gallons each (three million gallons) as the annual consumption in the rivers of Niger, Benin, Brass, New Calabar, Bonny, Opobo, Old Calabar, Cameroons, etc. In other words, this compressed space lying between four degrees and eight minutes east longitude, or say two hundred and fifty miles of coast, consumes twenty thousand tons, or say twenty ships full, of one thousand tons each, every year. The amazing thing is that all this traffic is conducted in the main by not over a dozen firms, the members of which are most excellent men, many of them, I believe, sincere Christians.

That is the trouble about this whole business. If "excellent men" and "sincere Christians" would let it alone, the devil would be beaten out of it by his own sense of shame and disgrace. But as long as he can conceal his tail and sit at the communion table, why shouldn't these poor wretches in Africa and America continue to be turned into hell? Flowers from Eden to garland the neck of the Snake! Mr. Irvine proceeds: "Convince them they are wrong and induce them to withdraw, and what is accomplished? Simply worse men take their place." Doubted-denied there are no worse men than Christians who sell rum. But not to interrupt Mr. Irvine again. "When for fifteen years I conducted my business without it, I was constantly asked what was accomplished, and told that, if I continued to decline, as much rum as ever would go in. I felt between me and Africa that was true, but between me and my conscience it was another matter, and ultimately I withdrew, as success was impossible without it. Notwithstanding I cordially join with you in believing that no effort should be spared to stop or reduce the evil-it is the Lord's work and he can succeed in ways unthought of by us at present."

Now I am going to stop the book right here to say a word for Mr. James Irvine of Liverpool-the man who gave up his profitable business because he had a conscience. Such men save nations as Lot saved Sodom. If in England and America there were ten such men, they might save the world. The liquor trade is full of the other kind of excellent men and Christians. They

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are not all hypocrites. Many of them suffer untold pangs of conscience as they ply their deadly vocation for sustenance and accumulation. Circumstances have made them the managers of these social, state, national and international crimes, but society-that is you and I, and they and all of us-which has the power to destroy, is responsible for the wickedness of its agents, and what the state permits, it does.

Mr. Waller further observes that we cannot get at the full extent of the disease; we are in the dark as to the extent of the evil with which France is mixed up, and her trade and energy is just now conspicuous on the African seaboard. Neither can we go into the quality of the stuff dealt out to the native tribes. In some instances, spirit of great strength, which is diluted many times before even the throat of a Brass River negro can tolerate it, is used, and this traffic is also forcing its way into east Africa. In 1883, Archdeacon Hamilton wrote from Brass River that one of the National African Co.'s steamers recently carried 25,000 cases of gin and demijohns of rum, and this was a supply for two factories only, and observing its effects upon the people of the town of Bonny, March 5, 1885, he thus concludes his narrative: "It appears to be the common practice to drink gin in the morning and tumbo (palm wine) in the evening, so that there are other evils to contend with beside heathenism and cannibalism. Rev. Hugh Goldie, missionary at Old Calabar nearly forty years, in the United Presbyterian Magazine-I condense all that I can-says: "Thus brutalized by the slave trade they give themselves to the indulgence of their lusts and appetites to the utmost extent of their means.” . . . He speaks of "the utter degradation into which that traffic sunk them by the fire water found among them, . which neutralizes the efforts of the church more than the heathenism of the country. the people are generally in a state of semi-intoxication, disinclined to listen, caring for nothing but strong drink. As far into the interior as we have penetrated the gin bottle had preceded us. Even commercial benefits are lost by the destruction of the very people with whom the commerce is attempted." He expresses great regret that the Berlin conference on the formation of the "Free Congo State" did not exclude the drink traffic. A great part of the fire

water is from Germany-indeed that empire seems to be utterly reckless in its greed for commercial returns. A Glasgow firm formerly employed a large number of looms weaving cloth for the African market-now they have not one. A trader wrote from Calabar river to his principals to send no more cloth-drink was the article in demand, and Mr. Joseph Thompson, F. R. G. S., says that the drink traffic will render the anticipated demand for calico in the Niger regions, where he had journeyed, hopeless. "The Christian community in past times aroused the nation to abolish the slave trade and slavery in British territory. A like task is now before itthe awakening of the nation to abolish this drink traffic." Mr. Thompson, whose experience with the African tribes is considerable, says, further: "The trade in this baleful article (spirits) is enormous. The appetite for it increases out of all proportion to the desire for better things, and to our shame, be it said, we are ever ready to supply the victims to the utmost, driving them deeper and deeper into the slough of depravity, ruining them body and soul, while at home we talk sanctimoniously as if the introduction of our trade and the elevation of the negro went hand in hand."

The Africans demonstrate the possession of a higher and better nature, and the consciousness of impending destruction, by their pathetic and heart-rending appeals to the nations, which for money are holding by force the accursed poison to their lips.

The following is a translation of a letter written by King Maliké, of Nupé, to Bishop Crowther, himself an African. King Maliké is a Mohammedan.

Salute Crowther, the great Christian minister. After salutation, please tell him he is a father to us in this land. . . . . It is not a long matter, it is about barasá (rum origin). Barasá, barasá, barasá, by God! it has ruined our country; it has made our people become mad. I have given a law that no one dares to buy or sell it; and any one who is found selling it his house is to be eaten up (plundered); any one found drunk will be killed.

I have told all the Christian traders that I agree to everything for trade except barasá. I have told Mr. McIntosh's people to say the barasá remaining with them must be returned down the river. Tell Crowther, the great Christian minister, he his our father. I