28  jBypenmental  legislation
of  our  great,  busy,  turbulent  Anglo-Irish  towns.
At  any  rate,  it  is  obvious  that  experiments  ought
to  be  made  upon  the  most  closely  proximate
cases  which  can  be  found,  and  if  three  or  four
such  towns  as  Birmingham,  Bristol,  Bolton,  and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne  could  be  induced  to  try  the
Gothenburg  scheme,  it  would  be  an  ample  first
experiment.  Even  between  English  towns  the
difference  of  magnitude,  race,  occupation,  and
local  government  are  often  so  great  that  it  is  by
no  means  certain  that  the  same  scheme  will  succeed
equally  in  all.  The  differences  in  the  intemperance
rates  in  the  several  boroughs  of  England,  to  which
I  shall,  perhaps,  draw  attention  on  a  future  occasion,
are  so  extraordinary  and  profound  that  the  Committee ­
  of  the  House  of  Lords  were  thoroughly
bewildered  on  the  subject.  Under  such  circumstances ­
  it  should  not  be  assumed  that  uniform
legislation  must  be  the  ultimate  object  of  our
efforts.
It  is  a  most  important  question  how  far  the
proposals  of  the  United  Kingdom  Alliance,  for  the
Suppression  of  the  Liquor  Traffic,  can  be  approved
from  the  point  of  view  here  taken  up.  I  venture
to  maintain  that  those  proposals,  so  far  as  embodied
in  the  Permissive  Prohibitory  Bill,  now  dropped,
had  all  the  possible  evils  of  a  great  legislative  leap
in  the  dark,  with  few  of  the  corresponding  possible
advantages.  Four  years  ago,  in  a  paper  read  to
the  Manchester  Statistical  Society,  I  gave  reasons