capacity and the most limited knowledge. "It is certain that two millions of persons are constantly suffering from policerecognised drunkenness alone," says Dr. F. R. Lees, of whom we shall have more to say. Now, as certainly not one third (or any thing like a third) of the cases of drunkenness which occur are "recognised" by the police, which this writer himself will hardly dispute, it follows that 6,000,000, or more than half the adult male population of the United Kingdom, are constantly suffering from drunkenness. We put aside the number of female drunkards, as too trifling to affect the calculation. We must suppose Dr. Lees insensible to the value of such a reductio ad absurdum; but few of his readers can be equally obtuse. Another writer of a similar kind, the Rev. S. Sinclair, states that there are 125,000 cases of persons "taken into custody for drunkenness;" and, as if each case represented a separate drunkard, he bases on this an estimate which gives six hundred thousand as the number of habitual drunkards! One of the favourite assertions of this party, put forth with their characteristic precision of statement and looseness of proof, is, that of" pauperism, three-fourths are caused by drink; of crime, three-fourths; of disease, one-half; of insanity, onethird; of suicide, one-third:" and so forth. In the one-page tract in which these monstrous crudities are published, no evidence worth attention is given,-Lord Shaftesbury, whom we would rather trust for any thing than for statistics, being the chief authority. The assertion in regard to disease carries its own refutation in the first place, because it goes beyond the bounds of oratorical license in its monstrous extravagance; and in the second, because, of all inscrutable things, the cause of diseases is about the most undiscoverable. In regard to insanity, their own statistics expose the absurdity of their statement (which is but a modified version of Lord Shaftesbury's). If they and he had read even the Temperance Cyclopædia, they would hardly have ventured on it. In regard to pauperism, they are probably nearer the truth; though here again they exaggerate wildly, in blind reliance on the same blind guide. In regard to crime, they seem at first sight to be supported by better authority than either their own or Lord Shaftesbury's. Many of the Judges have spoken in a manner which appears to bear out more or less the statement of the teetotalers. But inquiring into the assertion a little closely, it resolves itself into this: "A large proportion of the crimes brought before the Assize and Sessions Courts were committed either by or on persons drunk, or who had been drinking, or who were in the habit of drinking." Now this is a very different thing from a deliberate statement that, as Mr. Clay and others very rashly assert, nine-tenths of crime are caused by intoxicating drink. In the first place, crimes committed by drunken persons are always likely to be detected, probably are almost always followed by the arrest of the criminal; consequently the proportion of crimes committed by drunken persons is much greater on the list of convictions than on that of commission, drink ensuring detection nearly as much as it stimu lates crime crimes committed on persons drunk at the time are merely facilitated, not caused, by the drink. Then, the effect is mistaken for the cause: people who lead a vicious life naturally turn to sensual enjoyment as the object and reward of their evil industry, and drink because they are vicious, instead of becoming vicious because they drink. Finally, an enormous proportion of the crimes committed-greater far than the proportion of convictions-belongs to the professional or habitual criminals, who, according to the testimony of the police, are not and dare not be a drunken class: so far from being stimulated to their crimes by drink, they are obliged to keep strictly sober when about to commit them, in order to retain the fullest possession of all their faculties. It seems, then, that while drink has something to do, directly or indirectly, with a large propor tion of the crimes prosecuted to conviction, the proportion even of these cases in which it is the cause of crime is much smaller; while its share in the crimes committed is probably but trifling in comparison. It is probably true, however, even after allowance made for falsely-alleged excuses of intoxication, that a large proportion of the crimes of violence perpetrated, excepting those of which robbery is the object, are committed by men under the influence of drink. Even of these outrages, nevertheless, the drink is not always the cause. The perpetrators generally belong to a class which is drunken because it is degraded and brutal, not degraded and brutal because it is drunken; they would be violent even if they did not drink, and intoxication only aggravates and excites the passions which would be dangerous without any artificial stimulant. In those instances which occur among more respectable classes,-wife-beatings, murders, and brutal assaults by artisans, mechanics, and those still higher in the social scale,-intemperance is, beyond doubt, most often the sole These outrages are horrible enough; and the fact that it causes them is a heavy item in the long roll of charges against this monster evil. But to say that intemperance causes onehalf the crimes of violence, which we will admit, is one thing; to lay to this source nine-tenths of all crimes is a very different assertion, and one which we cannot allow to pass unquestioned. cause. Undoubtedly there is a connection between crime and intemperance; both of cause and effect, and of conjoint derivation from the same circumstances and the same vices. Besides that portion of crime of which it is the direct and obvious source, drunkenness creates crime by pauperising hundreds, nay thousands, of honest families, reducing them to want and degradation, and driving the children among the offspring of the "perishing and dangerous" classes, recruiting the hordes of our "City Arabs." Intemperance among a large class, where general enough to affect its character as a whole, debases its morals, induces pernicious habits, diminishes the respectability and self-respect of the class, and thereby tends to render it, if not prolific of actual criminals, yet turbulent, disorderly, and comparatively worthless and unprincipled. Idleness, again, is a prolific cause both of intemperance and crime. It is for these reasons, fully as much as from any direct causation, that the two are so generally found in conjunction.* The Teetotalers, with their usual love of personal and class imputation, have endeavoured to fix upon the "beer-shops" the charge of being in an especial sense nurseries of crime. This is, in fact, exactly reversing cause and effect. Where the criminals and beer-shops are connected, as they frequently are, it is the thieves that create the shops. The receivers and the harbourers of the habitual thief find beer-selling a profitable addition and a convenient cloak to their main business, and adopt it accordingly. But the thieves had their haunts before the beershop was allowed, and would have their coffee-houses if beershops and public-houses were at an end. The attempt to prove the beer-shop the origin of the thief exaggerates a very old kind of fallacy. "We have heard that Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sands; but this is to make Goodwin Sands the cause of Tenterden steeple." Prostitution, again, is ascribed to intemperance; quite falsely, as we believe. Gross sensualism produces the one as well as the other, and it is not likely that the man or woman who indulges excessively in sensual gratification of one kind, will be very scrupulous about another. Either vice feeds and fosters the habit of mind from which both arise, and thus fosters the other. That prostitution and intemperance aid and support one another, no one who knows human nature will doubt; that either is in any great measure caused directly by the other, we cannot think probable. Their frequent conjunction is sufficiently accounted for by their common origin. It should be remembered, that about seventy per cent of the committals which annually take place are for "crimes against property without violence"-thefts, and so forth, which are seldom, if ever, committed by drunken or half-drunken persons. It should be remembered, further, that the excuse of intoxication is frequently alleged in other cases without truth, as a means of winning leniency or compassion. It would not be worth while to notice these exaggerations, but that the subject has been so little studied, except by teetotalers, that their facts and 'figures are almost the only ones we possess; and it is therefore necessary, before passing to the serious realities of our subject, to clear away the encumbrance of their absurdities and misstatements. There is no need for exaggeration, no need to include one doubtful item in the long list of charges against the monster evil of this country. It is due to truth, to justice, and, not least, to the cause of social improvement, not to weaken by overstatement a case overwhelmingly strong in itself; nor to endorse, even by silence, injurious fallacies and erroneous imputations, which excite irrational violence on the one hand, and stir up passionate resistance and recrimination on the other. The simplest and tamest statement of the facts is sufficient to prove the evil a great and terrible affliction to the country; endeavouring to prove more is likely to end in signal refutation and shame, wholesome enough for the intemperate advocate of "temperance," but disastrous to his cause. There can be no manner of doubt, except in such minds as that of Dr. Lees, that intemperance has ceased to be a vice of the educated classes. We do not mean that young men of good family do not occasionally get drunk, but that they dare not do so in society, and that excesses of this description are almost confined to the mess-tables of the army, and to the unacknowledged haunts of fashionable dissipation. Drunkenness is no longer common even among young men ; it is held even by them discreditable in those who have passed the limits of youth, and it is habitual with none but the few with whom it is a monomania as clearly marked and exceptional as any other form of insanity. We do not deny that in all classes there are examples of health ruined, high talents wasted, and fond hopes blighted by intemperate habits; but these examples are rare indeed, certainly far less numerous than the instances of similar ruin effected by other vices, which are yet not sufficiently prevalent to call forth an ostentatious crusade against them. It is with intemperance among the lower ranks of society only that we are called on to deal as with a great national vice, a serious social evil; not because they are more vicious than those above them, but because this one vice is made by circumstances their worst temptation and their most pressing danger. That it is so, is affirmed by the concurrent testimony, less apparently precise, but infinitely more reliable, than calculations on slender statistical data, of men in all walks of life, acquainted in whatever manner with the habits, feelings, temptations, perils, and vices of the working classes. Not one of those who, as employers of labour, missionaries to the poor, philanthropic enthusiasts, or practical reformers, have been brought frequently and closely into contact with the mass of the labouring population, but tells the same tale. If the money, time, and health which is spent in deleterious indulgence at the public-house were saved for better uses, all our skilled working-men, all above the grade of common labourers, might enjoy wholesome food, respectable houses, comforts for their family, and a chance of rising in the world for themselves. Wherever any trade earned, as is the case with many, wages greatly above the average income of working-class families, the homes of all the workmen in that trade would be improved, their wives better clothed, their children better educated, and the whole family provided with more comforts and enjoyments than their fellows. At present we fear that this is very little the case; that the best-paid classes are little better off than the worst-paid; and that the condition of the wife whose husband is employed in a trade where wages range from 18s. to 28s. a week is often preferable to that of her whose husband's earnings are from 30s. or 35s. to 60s. a week. in Mr. Greg, in his republished Essay On the Principles of Taxation, estimates the average income of a workman's family at 20s. a-week. It is notorious that there are many trades in which the daily earnings of the workman himself range from 5s. or 68. upwards. We ought, if there were no disturbing element, to find the families supported by these trades better off every respect than the average of their class. There are some whose condition ought to be as good-whose income is quite as large as that of many families in the lower grades of the middle class. Comparatively very few, however, enjoy additional comfort in proportion to the larger earnings of the "bread-winner:" and they know, and all acquainted with them know the reason why. A class of workmen in this country earning higher wages than their order at large — excepting possibly those cases in which the higher wages arise from the necessity of qualifications implying an unusually high average of general capacity and intelligence-do not live better than their fellows; they simply drink more. We are anxious that this assertion should not be misunderstood. We confine the comparison to classes or trades, believing it not to hold good of individuals. On the contrary, we have reason to think that, as between man and man in the same shop, the better-paid worker is generally the more sober and respectable man. There are exceptions to this, of course, especially in particular trades, where the better workman, being liable to overwork of an exhausting kind, and other unhealthy conditions, becomes more intemperate than his fellows. But what |