on the committee, not permissive. Besides, the committee were "empowered to make such changes and additions to the documents in their charge as they may deem advisable, and as may not be inconsistent with the general principles now ap proved."

A committee thus commanded and empowered by the Coun cil to do a specified thing in a specified way, has, according to parliamentary rules, all the authority of the Council vested in them in the doing of that thing in the appointed way; and they could give to their work thus done whatever authority the Council itself possessed in such matters. Whatever that committee did within the limits of its instructions and command, the Council itself did. This no one would question, but for the following statement made in the report which contained said command and instructions, namely: "It would prevent much misconception and misrepresentation, if such a document, [namely, the Platform] after receiving the general approval of this Council, should go forth to the world with the full endorsement only of the gentlemen whose names shall be appended thereto.”* This mode of giving the document to the churches was presented as "the conclusion" reached by the committee, and the Council made it their own conclusion by adopting the report; but in the resolutions and instructions that followed, determining how the Platforın should be issued, the method above indicated was ignored, perhaps unintentionally, but still ignored. They, in fact, did not do what the conclusion marked out; but, instead, the Council ordered the committee to issue the document, and "empowered" it "to make additions and changes;" not in their own name, but necessarily in the name of the Council which endowed them with the requisite authority to do so.

Yet, granting that the Council intended only to approve of the Platform, in a general sense, and to have it issued with the full endorsement only of the committee of revision, the Platform still stands on an equality of authority with the Cambridge Platform. For the former, like the latter, was commended unto the churches, "that for the substance thereof it is that we have practiced and do believe." It stands as the "testi* Minutes, 428.

mony" of that Council respecting matters of polity as to principles and scope, and substantially as to details."

"It is little more than a truism to say that the National Council at Boston had no legislative power to ordain a new constitution for the churches, or to promulgate any new rules; and no judicial power to establish precedents which inferior courts must follow. All that any such Council can do is to inquire, to deliberate, and to testify. What

ever authority the Cambridge Platform has as testifying what was the way of the New England churches in 1648, just that authority a similar statement proceeding from the National Council of 1865 may have as testifying what American Congregationalism is in these latter years of the nineteenth century." These words from the Preface of the Boston Platform were used by the provisional committee reporting the draughts to the Council, and by the adoption of that report they became the words of the Council itself. Whatever view we take of the intent of the Council, the form of its action gives the same authority to the Boston Platform as the Cambridge possessed. We see no reason why the former should not have the same legal force as the latter once had. And since the committee were ordered to revise and issue it, the form in which they issued it to the churches is the authorized form. The Council, through its committee empowered to inquire, change, and publish the Platform, after seven years, presented it, in 1872, as our polity" for the substance thereof."

We conclude, therefore, that the Boston Platform has the same validity as a testimony respecting our principles and usages at the time of its adoption and publication, as the Cambridge Platform had, in 1648, respecting the principles and usages then held and practiced in our churches; and, consequently, that whatever legal value in courts of law the Cambridge Platform ever possessed, that value the Boston Platform now possesses. Both in our churches and in the civil courts the Boston Platform has superceded the Cambridge Platform as the authorized standard of our polity, so far as we can have such a standard.

* Minutes, 104, 133.

ARTICLE VIII. THE ANALOGY OF SLAVERY AND INTEMPERANCE BEFORE THE LAW.

It is sometimes said: "Slavery was destroyed by law; why cannot intemperance be treated in the same radical way 7?" A constitutional amendment brought the former to a final end; let us take courage from our victory to make another amendment to destroy the traffic in intoxicating drink. Then make one more amendment to destroy polygamy, and we shall have disposed of the triple "relics of barbarism." Then shall the blessings of freedom, total abstinence, and monogamy go handin-hand through the south, the north, and the distant west. Thus argue many good people, and they are coming up to some of our western legislatures with petitions numerously signed asking that even all manufacture of intoxicating drink be forbidden, and that not merely by a law but by constitutional enactment. When told that the matter is too great to be thus managed, they fall back on the analogy of slavery. Slavery was great and ruled the nation; now it is dead beyond resurrection, for a constitutional amendment has been laid like a great rock over the door of its tomb; let us treat intemperance in the same thorough way. So, like Macbeth after the saluta tion of the witches, we stand possessed of the first part of the prophecy and wonder how we are to come by the rest. We find thus suggested to us the inquiry, what parallel is there in the position of slavery and intemperance before the law?

There is this first to be said that both slavery and intemperance are things that come within the view of the law. Belief is free and a man may believe what he pleases on any subject, but these matters belong not only to belief but to relations and conduct, and so must come within the province of legislation. Personal habits and conduct are largely free but often transgress the boundaries of right and of statute. Slavery is a method of social relationship and can be dealt with as accurately as polygamy or partnership in business; intemperance involves manufacturing, imports and exports, sales and pur

chases, and serves to produce a man, woman or child with inflamed passions from which the curb of the judgment has been partly or wholly thrown off, so that he will far more easily than before become a pauper, an idiot, or a criminal and drag others after him to the same or a like unhappy fate.

This suggests a further fact: both slavery and intemperance are recognized as mischievous so as to be the objects of repressive legislation. Long before the United States did anything to uproot slavery within its own boundaries, it prohibited the importation of slaves and joined in efforts to destroy the slavetrade upon the high seas. Our national virtue never rose to the height of doing more until it became a military necessity, but amid all the refusal there was a half-way confession that it would be a good thing if we could. At last the necessity came, the blow was struck in the Emancipation Proclamation, it was clinched by constitutional amendment, and slavery as a legalized method of holding men as chattels came to an end. Intemperance stands before public-sentiment and the law-maker in a light essentially the same. The facts of its mischievousness are well known and freely confessed. The national government lays heavy taxes upon the drinking-habit as one that needs repression,-but, unhappily, also as one that is sure to go on, however heavily it may be taxed. The several state governments aim at it legislation which is more or less repressive up to the point of forbidding all use except that for medicinal and mechanical purposes. License fees are demanded by the State not only for revenue but that the State may have some return for the mischief of the traffic and some means of repairing at least a part of the damage. Again and again have questions connected with the legal prohibition or repression of drinking been taken before the courts, but they have always been decided in favor of the authority of the State to tax, regulate, hedge up or prohibit at its pleasure. If a constitutional amendment can be framed that will kill intemperance as thoroughly as slavery is killed by that means, the State or nation is perfectly at liberty to take that step and the judgment of the observant throughout the world would be like that which answered Lincoln's emancipation-proclamation, and given with a great shout of "well done."

Yet here we find a great multitude of people hanging back. They have the right on their side, a great need that something be done, and a plausible analogy to encourage them to push on; yet they have no heart to press for that constitutional prohibition that shall cut up the Upas-tree root and branch. Why is this so? It is because there are differences as well as resemblances between slavery and intemperance before the law, and those differences are of the kind that help slavery to stay killed but would help intemperance to come back to life. For there are differences in being killed. A man once told the writer about a pair of horses that were struck by the locomotive: "One of them was killed dead and the other was killed so that they had to kill him." Slavery was killed dead and twice dead at the close of the war: these reluctant people evidently fear that the new amendment would kill intemperance only so far that we should have to go on killing it again and again.

The radical difference between slavery and intemperance is that the victim of the former is involuntary, forced, while the most conspicuous victim of the latter keeps up at least the semblance and goes through the motions of being voluntary in his subjection and loss. These facts are too plain to need proving. The negro was brought from Africa or bred upon the plantation, and he never heard inquiry as to his likes or dislikes. He was sold and bought, worked and whipped, sent hither and thither, with no voice in the matter at all. From the border States he sometimes slipped away to a land of freedom, but this was not the rule. How long moral or economic considerations would have been in working out his freedom, is of course uncertain, but it might easily have been a hundred years more. When at last "strictly as a military necessity" he was given his freedom, he was armed also with the ballot; between the two he must mainly shift for himself.

How he has done it thus far, we all know. Densely igno rant, he gave his political action into the charge of rogues who bore the right party-name and who made large promises if the solid negro-vote would only give them power. The rogues, white and black, furnished the South with the kind of government that might have been expected: State-debts were enor