themselves, and form a back-door through which lads and young girls, too respectable or too young to walk into the bar, are enticed into the public-house, and introduced to habits of secret drinking, to bad company, and to ultimate ruin. These allurements to a bad habit should be suppressed at once. We have no right to prevent people from drinking; but we have a right to forbid the publican to allure them by such devices as these. We demand no restriction on the use of liquors, no hindrance on those who desire to go and buy them, when we say that all places of this kind should be brought under the act which subjects theatres to the control of the Lord Chamberlain; and that officer should make it a rule to grant no license for any such establishment to the owner or occupier of a public-house, or in any place next-door to a public-house. We do not propose that this rule should be enforced by law, as such a law would inevitably prevent refreshments, such as beer or wine, from being sold in any place of entertainment; we merely wish that the Lord Chamberlain should use his discretion, by refusing to license such places as appendages to the regular business of the publican, who is sure to regard them as means of increasing the sale of his wares, and attracting customers who would otherwise be sober enough, but who, having come to see or to listen, remain to drink and to get drunk.

Sunday is the publican's harvest-day; the day on which the people have most leisure to go to him, and least liberty to go any where else. We would restrict his opportunities, and deprive him of his monopoly. There is no reason why he should enjoy a special privilege without paying for it; and we would exact an extra license-fee, and if necessary an increased amount of security, from the tavern-keepers who desired to be allowed to open on Sunday. The ordinary license should, as in the case of the (now abolished) six-day cab-licenses, be available only from Monday morning to Saturday night; a new permission should be necessary for Sunday opening, and a new payment required. This would, we believe, lead to a very general closing on Sunday, as most of the better sort of publicans would be glad to enjoy a day of rest, and many of the others would not care to pay for the right of losing it. At the same time, the man who really wanted a glass of beer or of brandy would not find it very difficult to get it; and those who did not, finding their usual resort closed, would not care to go and seek another, especially if better places were opened to them.

In keeping closed against the people all places of rational recreation, whether public or private property, on the people's own day, the Sabbatarians are doing the work of their Master's adversary in the most effectual manner-are aiding incalcula

bly the degradation and depravation of their countrymen. Sunday, the Crystal Palace and the Zoological Gardens are closed against the working-man, the Museum is shut, the Free Library is locked up; but the gin-shop is open. That or the church, such is his only choice; and we know how he chooses. If he will not worship God, he is forced into the service of the devil. On Sunday, at the hours when he is abroad, "whatever door is shut against the poor man, the door of the public-house is open to him;" and we cannot shut it till we have opened another. Excursion-trains have done much, especially for the better-paid of the working-men; the Park Bands have done something; but very much remains to do. Open the libraries, the museums, the picture-galleries, the public gardens; then, and not till then, you may close five-sixths of the public-houses, and the rest are very likely to close themselves. We will not deign to argue the theory which confounds the Christian Sunday-the high feast-day of our genial Church-with the Saturday fast-day of the Hebrew law; we will only say, that any man who employs a servant that day to attend on him, has no right to denounce the employment of others to serve the public; that no "work of necessity or mercy" better deserves either title than the work of affording to the labouring man a Sunday substitute for the gin-shop.

(2.) There can be no moral reason why the law should not interfere, in some cases, with the worst of those social usages which we have indicated as a second cause of intemperance. The peremptory abolition of all fines, footings, and the like, in workshops, now enforced by the systematic tyranny over one another which is a dark blot on the character of the working-classes, would, if practicable, be certainly beneficial. The money misspent on these occasions is obtained by a species of extortion which bears not a little resemblance to actual robbery; and which would justify legal coercion, if coercion should seem likely to effect the object. Employers, at all events, should set themselves resolutely to extirpate practices at once extortionate and pernicious; and steady, conscientious discouragement on their part of all attempts to obtain money under such pretences as those described above, might probably be sufficient, without the intervention of the law, to remedy the evil. Wherever the assistance of the legislature can be dispensed with, it ought not to be invoked: first, because every new law is a new evil in itself; and secondly, because law can only act roughly, clumsily, and by general definitions, often suppressing much good and causing much inconvenience in repressing a practice which well-directed private efforts might have cured without such drawbacks. Where, however, personal interest is too

strong for merely social means and individual strength, let law be invoked. Let employers of labour, and their foremen, be forbidden to have an interest in the drunkenness of their hands by a law which shall prevent them from keeping or taking a share in a public-house, if the practice be found to prevail so extensively that legislation is necessary. Let the payment of wages at a public-house be summarily prohibited, if it be not so fast dying out as to require no legal prohibition. In all these cases we are endeavouring, not to prevent men from drinking, if they like, but to prevent their being coerced or cajoled into drinking, whether they like it or no; and this the most earnest disciple of Mr. Mill's doctrines will not dispute our right to do.

(3.) The Committee of 1854 overstepped this line when they proposed to forbid benefit clubs and similar societies from meeting at public-houses. In the first place, these societies have a right to meet where they please, and a right to drink, with which the law ought not to interfere. Moreover, they don't know where else to go. TheTemperance Hotels" are out of the question; they are almost invariably dirty, squalid, and comfortless; coffee-houses and eating-houses are either too good and too exclusive for the working-man, or else so mean and low that no respectable club of working-men chooses to enter them. The remedy is the same that we have indicated for the whole system of drunkenness: would you wean the working-man from the tavern and the drink, give him somewhere else to go, and something better to do. And if the teetotalers had understood this, they would not have failed. A club-room, recreations, education,-- these are cures for intemperance more radical than the Maine Law.

A working-man's club was opened in Liverpool, under the patronage of philanthropic gentlemen, and under the management of working-men. It could not be made to pay, and was eventually given up. Amusements had been provided, refreshments were served of fair quality and at moderate price, lectures were delivered, songs sung, and dramatic entertainments arranged on a small scale, for the gratification of those who attended. But the plan did not succeed. It attempted to combine too many things; and we fear that a room which was at once a concerthall and lecture-room could hardly be a good place for easy social intercourse. Women, again, were introduced, and beer forbidden; mistakes, as we consider them, likely seriously to interfere with the success of any place intended to compete with the alehouse as a social resort for the working-man's evenings. A money payment, however small, at the doors, probably acted disadvantageously, keeping out many who would have come in and become permanent subscribers, if their first entrance could have

been gratuitous. A trifling addition to the price of refreshments, and a voluntary subscription for the special attractions offered by singers and actors, would probably have brought in an equal amount of money, and many more attendants. The failure of this "Recreative Society" is no doubt discouraging; but it need not prevent other attempts, which may possibly prove more successful especially if any patronage afforded by men of the higher classes can be studiously kept in the background, and if the patrons will abstain from imposing, by their presence, a too frequent constraint upon the shy and suspicious class they desire to benefit. Clubs formed by working-men themselves, receiving from the kindness of others nothing beyond the use, on fair terms, of rooms furnished suitably for their object, and left to make their own rules and their own arrangements, seem to us to have the best chance of success.

Of all means of supplying the workman's desire for unconstrained social enjoyment, those offered by coöperative associations are the most suitable and promising. The newsroom of the Rochdale Store has proved itself a most powerful rival to the public-house. Society, comfortable accommodation, and easy chat are to be had there, as well at least as at the alehouse, and at no cost at all. The workman feels that he is there at home, has a right to be there, and is beholden to no one for his comfortable seat, his paper, and his company; he has no patron beneath whose eye he feels constrained and shy, no rules except those which he helped to frame. He is attracted thither by the fact that he is a member of the store; he finds himself well off when he is there, and at the same time he is brought under influences adverse to intemperance, and most conducive to thrift, self-respect, and an ambition to save money and improve his condition. And the man who has learned self-respect, thrift, and ambition, may be held as emancipated from the thraldom of drunkenness. The spread of these institutions which is now taking place in the manufacturing districts, if it be not ruined by too rapid success, seems to us likely to have in this, as in many other respects, a most healthful influence on the character and habits of the working-class; and though in no sense inclined to Socialism, we regard with unmingled satisfaction the progress of coöperation; hoping only that it will be slow enough to give its leaders time to acquire judgment and self-knowledge before it confers on them the power which success must give, and which only a laborious apprenticeship can teach them to wield.

To improve the workman's home should be among the first objects, as it certainly would be amongst the most powerful instruments, of those who desire to improve his habits. At pre

sent the labouring classes have a keen appreciation of luxury in the gross form of delicate food and strong drink; but little love of comfort, because they are little used to it. Now nothing is so likely to diminish both their desire for, and their willingness to pay for, luxuries as an increasing love of comfort. Some feeble efforts have already been made to provide better dwellings for the working-classes; to give them sufficient air for health, sufficient accommodation for decency, sufficient space for comfort. Such efforts deserve all honour and support; and if wisely directed,-if their promoters abstain from exciting the jealousy and pride of an eminently susceptible class, -if they refrain from imposing rules and exacting conditions, their experiments may be sufficiently successful to justify and to induce similar enterprises on a larger scale. We confess that we have little hope of permanently raising the character of any class until their homes are such as deserve the name; until their dwellings are such that, however poor, they need not be ashamed of them; are such, at least, as to admit of that degree of decency without which morality is difficult, and self-respect impossible. A man whose home is not fit to go to is sure to spend his time at the public-house; and the way to cure him is, not to close his refuge against him, but to relieve him from the want of one.

Chiefly, however, we must look to education as a means of correcting intemperance: first, as it enlightens the working-man regarding the degradation which drunkenness inflicts on himself individually, and on his order as a whole; and secondly, as it, beyond all other influences, gives him higher tastes and better occupation. We know that it has been said that education fails to alleviate intemperance; that the most educated districts are sometimes among those most noted for drunkenness. Without entering into a discussion as to the truth of this allegation, we would point out one thing,-that the knowledge of reading and writing, which is what in statistics is meant by education, has little or no inherent connection with temperance, and only affords a man the means of self-instruction, without in any way predisposing him to avail himself of those means. It gives him the key of a cabinet of the value of whose contents he has no idea, and which it will give him no little trouble to open. This is too generally all the education which working-men possess; they can read without ease, and write with much difficulty. Something more than this is wanted in an education which is to develop intellectual tastes and control sensual appetites; and something more than this an ever-increasing proportion of the rising generation receive. All ought to receive the best education that the country can give them; and if they do not, it is partly because we have not yet done with the squabbles of sects