resolute opposition, and compelled to strengthen the hands of an enemy they detest as cordially as any. A "holy war," whether against infidels in arms or social evils undermining religion and society, is always liable and likely to be misdirected, and all but certain to become fanatical; and the preacher of a social crusade, were he as able, might prove nearly as mischievous as the Hermit of old. It is this divorce between judgment and benevolence, between discretion and energy, which induces cautious thinkers to look with so much distrust on a great part of the philanthropy which is the boast of the age; which leads to so much bitterness against prudence, science, and moderation, in the harangues of the enthusiast, and to that want of counsel from wiser heads which is so evident in all his practical efforts; and which has done more to hinder social reforms than all the personal passions and class interests enlisted on behalf of existing evils.

In nothing is this so manifest as in the case of what is perhaps our worst national vice and misfortune; in no part of that "war with evil" for which, as Mr. Milnes tell us, we have come forth upon the field of life, is the crusading spirit more ardent and earnest than in the struggle against intemperance in no direction are the defects and dangers of that spirit more clearly shown. Here, if any where, we might have expected to find common sense and moderation prevalent among reformers; for never was there a case in which extravagance and violence were either more clearly foolish or more certain to defeat their own object. Here was a cause for which a sober and rational advocacy would have commanded the support and active sympathies of millions; against which extravagant pretensions and proposals were sure to array irresistible antagonism. Yet this cause we find to have been so managed by its crusaders, that sane reformers have deserted it in despair, and the field is almost wholly abandoned to a horde of ignorant and mischievous fanatics. And yet the evil is one so terrible, that nothing but utter hopelessness of effecting any good with such allies could have driven earnest well-wishers of their country and their kind to relinquish all effort to amend it; and so notorious, that nothing but the worse than folly of those who wage open war against it could have deprived them-as they are deprived of the sympathies of society and the countenance of the educated classes.

It is possible to exaggerate the evils even of intemperance; and we all know how certainly reaction or indifference are the effects of detected exaggeration. The sins of the advocates of teetotalism-in no sense of temperance-in this respect have been perfectly enormous. It is astonishing to find statements made by men not wholly devoid of education which carry on their face their own refutation, palpable even to the meanest

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 stimulates 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 cause. 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.

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 ostentatiors 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