sible, to evoke sympathy towards practical measures for the material diminution of an evil which is a reproach to the intelligence and civilization of which Englishmen are so apt to boast. To dwell on the frightful extent of drunkenness, public and private, would be worse than to repeat a thrice-told tale.' It is universally conceded that we are, in this respect, in a very unsatisfactory condition. In Liverpool, for example, the Police Report records, under the head of Drunk and Disorderly,' that 7,000 males and nearly 5,000 females are annually taken up in the streets! The daily and weekly papers teem with the most shocking illustrations of this vice and its effects, iterated to the point of disgust. Every day proves,' says a recent number of The Press,' that drunkenness is the monster evil of the age in England. Its effects make themselves felt in all departments of social life. The colonel of a crack regiment wages ineffectual war against the drunkenness which so often deprives him of the services of his best men. The master of the household strives in vain against the potations of the servants' hall, or the still more dangerous attractions of the neighbouring "public," which have proved the ruin of so many a good servant. Men who appear a concentrated epitome of all other virtues, who for honesty, steadiness, and willingness to oblige are alike irreproachable, cannot bear the application of the test of sobriety.' The causes of this wide-spread and deeply-seated national vice are what should first be ascertained by a true social science, since the knowledge of the cause is the only correct indicator of the effectual remedy. Physiology has distinctly proclaimed the nature of that habitual craving for strong liquors which, being gratified, ends in drunkenness. It is an abnormal state of the nerves and brain, engendered by the persistent use of the stimulant of alcohol, under the operation of a law which finds its analogue in the instances of opium, hashish, tobacco, and other narcotics. All such drugs, without exception, it is alleged, operate through the subtle machinery of the nervous structure, and tend by necessary law to the creation of an appetite which grows by what it feeds on.'* While the * Huc, the intelligent traveller in China, declares that, save with some exceptional organizations, opium smoking in moderation leads with fearful certainty and speed to excess; and excess to crime and a frightful mortality. Mr. De Quincey, nearly forty years ago (1821), in his celebrated 'Confessions of an Opium Eater,' noticed the gradual increase in the consumption of that perilous narcotic, and traces it to a law which we have seen since illustrated in the augmented frequency of tobacco-smoking in England, with its 8,000,000l. of profligate waste. I do not believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium, will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyment of alcohol. I take it for granted, That those eat now who never ate before; original original quantity, by repetition, loses its power to reproduce its first pleasing effect, it is found to leave a craving void behind. Thus the sensual nature demands an increase of the stimulant, both in time and measure, and at the same time the moral-resisting power is either partially weakened or absolutely annulled. Such is the theory of the history and genesis of all the actual excess which temperance reformers deprecate and deplore. The love of pleasure on the one hand, ever mounting to a transient crisis, and on the other, an aversion to pain, are the twin forces whereby the fetters of an insatiable lust are imperceptibly but surely riveted upon the intemperate man. In this state of vassalage, and in the midst of his misery, the drinker exclaims, I will seek it yet again!' Universal history, it is affirmed, attests and verifies this dictum of physiological science. It records no single example, amidst the multifarious conditions of social life, where these seductive intoxicants, once introduced, have not been widely abused; or where their use has remained stationary at some fixed point of desiderated 'moderation.' The old Egyptian, the pagan Arab, the favoured Jew, the refined and cultured Greek, the strong Roman, the wild Scythian, and the ancient German, all in turn passed through the experience which has been repeated amongst the civilized Celts and the Christianized Anglo-Saxons of modern times. No matter what other social conditions prevail, of poverty or plenty, of knowledge or ignorance, of barbarism or refinement, of religion or irreligion, the use of intoxicants always spreads and increases. The passion for narcotics, once engendered, never dies out, never ceases; nay, it is for ever enlarging itself with the supply. Not only has the extent of surface over which the use reigned become greater by time, but wherever special efforts, including abstinence and prohibition, have been neglected for the repression of the evil, the vice has grown more intense in its power, and has most surely augmented in the number of its votaries and victims. Where special abstinence is inculcated, as amongst the ancient Jews, the later Mohammedans, and the modern Teetotalers, we have an * Mr. De Quincey long since pointed out the fact, that, in this respect, wine was more of a deceiver even than opium. Mr. Thackeray, too, in his 'Virginians,' has declared the truth in the face of all the pumps,' and he is an excellent authority on such a point. There is a moment in a bout of good wine, at which, if a man could but remain, wit, wisdom, courage, generosity, eloquence, happiness, were his; but the moment passes, and that other glass somehow spoils the state of beatitude.' Mr. De Quincey has a similar observation:-'The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which it as rapidly declines. There is a crowning point in the movement upwards, which, once attained, cannot be renewed; and it is the blind, unconscious, but always unsuccessful effort of the obstinate drinker to restore this supreme altitude of enjoyment which tempts him into excesses that become dangerous.' example example of an empire within an empire,' governed by special laws. This is a case where individuals have, so to speak, withdrawn themselves from the operation of the law in question. Hence, in estimating the prevalence of intemperance amongst a general population, we should first of all exclude the members of temperance societies, as not fairly coming within the circle of the influence which we are investigating. Weak beverages and mild narcotics, amongst those who use them, become stepping-stones to stronger and more potent agents of inebriation. Tobacco prepares for opium, beer for gin, and light wines for French brandy. Thus has human nature, in its infatuated search after false and forbidden pleasure, passed through the discordant gamut of a bad and bitter experience, until in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, to adopt the language of the great historian Michelet, we have reached an age in which the progressive invasion of spirits and narcotics is an invincible fact, bringing with it results varying according to the populations; here obscuring the mind and barbarising beyond recovery; there fatally penetrating the foundations of the physical life, and attainting the race itself. Dr. Morel, in his great work 'On the Causes of Physical Degeneracy,' founded on an extensive survey of the social condition of the people of Germany and France, places the universal use of alcoholics and narcotics amongst the chief causes of that decay in the physical existence of the people, which is unerringly indicated by their diminution of stature and weight, by the abridged duration of adult life, and, above all, by an increased proclivity to mental disorder. Having, from the nature and quality of the drink proximately explained the phenomena of drunkenness, as a subjective state, the temperance philosopher goes back a step to account for the drinking itself. Ignoring the few reckless debauchees who resort of set purpose to the use of alcoholics as a means of exciting sensuous pleasure, and who must be placed on the same moral level with the Hindoo or Chinese smoker of opium, he asks why people in general first begin the use of strong liquor? Two chief grounds may be indicated. First, men drink because they have faith in the traditional virtues of the beverage consumed, be it home-brewed, pale ale, or crusted port. Opinion always governs practice to a certain extent, but especially in pleasant things. Appetite is credulous of all assertions which jump with it-The wish is patron to the thought.' While the popular opinion of the excellency of alcoholics prevails, men at large may be expected to continue drinking, whence will follow the old sad sequences as before. This belief, therefore, must be weakened or dissipated by the diffusion of sound physiological knowledge, which is the business of the educator and the temperance Custom a cause of Intemperance. 43 temperance reformer. The experience of teetotalers everywhere shows that, as compared with drinkers, they possess a singular immunity from sickness. Extensive statistics (given in the volumes named at the head of this article) demonstrate the fact, that a body of abstainers will, placed under even less favourable circumstances than careful drinkers, only be subject to one-half the disease, and for less than half the time; whilst the highest teachers of physiological science, as Lehmann, Moleschott, Liebig, and Carpenter, coincide in casting alcoholics from their usurped place in the rank of food, and in remitting them, for exceptional use, to the category of medical stimulants. That alcohol is a very dangerous and tricksy spirit,' needing the (supernatural) power of a Prospero to make it obedient,* is the admission of its ablest and subtlest champion. The introduction and common use of such an article within our family circle can hardly be recommended on any sound principle of ethical philosophy. It is, in fact, a brain-poison. A second cause of drinking, which is perhaps still more potent with the multitude, is custom. It is in vain that men inculcate moral theories, so long as the practical atmosphere of social life antagonizes them. Ideas are powerless against institutions, interests, and temptations. People may proclaim the uselessness or the harmfulness of liquor, the danger of drinking, the evil example set to the young, the unwary, or the weak, and eulogize the excellence of abstinence-no matter, if Fashion, the true queen of the world,' decrees to drink, and Interest, its strongest king, commands to create and tempt, men will continue to do so. It may be a practice more honoured in the breach than the observance,' but what is that to Monster custom, that all sense All that we teach, dietetically or ethically, will come to naught, unless our social institutions, our daily customs and environments, are in harmony with it. As Lord Bacon declares, The bravery of words must be corroborate by custom.' This is the philosophy of temperance pledges and organizations, which furnish needful aids to the isolated virtue of individual example, giving a collective sanction to a novel or neglected protest, which shall neutralize the ignorant despotism of custom, since that which is impossible to be done alone is very easily achieved in association. As it is not to be expected that a people will rise above their circumstances' by any sudden impulse, it therefore becomes the duty and business of the social philosopher, with whom the idea is an actual potency, to inaugurate new conditions of a more harmonious and genial kind, 6 * G. H. Lewes in Westminster Review,' and 'Physiology of Common Life.' out out of which the germ of an improved social life may spring up into fruitful development. This is emphatically true of a third cause of drinking, the social temptations presented by the gin-palace, the beer-shop, and the tavern. The author does not select any section of the traffic for special reprobation, and assuredly we do not believe that the 40,000 beer-shops inflict more injury than the 60,000 publichouses. It is quite desirable, indeed, that the laws on this subject should be assimilated and codified into one system, and referred to one executive authority; but it is contrary to history and experience to suppose that an authority which has never yet controlled the old public-houses effectually, will be able to repress the abuses of a system which will be extended by the assignment of so many beer-shops to their jurisdiction. It is also a delusion to suppose that more crime springs from the beer-shop-the public-house of the poor man-than from the tavern. Taking an average of many towns, it will be found that 10 per cent. of robberies from the person take place in the magisterially-licensed house, against less than 3 per cent. in the excise-licensed beer-shop. At the origin of beer-shops, absurd and exaggerated expectations were formed of their benefits (in utter ignorance of the physical law which determines that drunkenness increases in exact ratio with the consumption of strong drink); we ought not now to fall into the opposite blunder of painting these shops in darker colours than the truth warrants, and thus indirectly turn away the attention of the public mind from the cognate and more chronic evils of public-houses. It will be a great gain to destroy the beer-shops, but the suppression of the dram-shops and taverns would be a greater. The whole systein must, socially and logically, stand or fall together. The traffic is sustained morally, and protected legally, by the authority of the law. As a political institution, raised into power and privilege by Parliament, it can only be suppressed, directly or indirectly, by the same power, whether by positive decree or delegated permission matters not. This is a question which it behoves every citizen to consider, and to decide according to the evidence. What, then, are the results of this system? Drunkenness and disorder, beggary, madness, suicide, and murder. Crime is so completely traceable to the perversion of drinking, and the temptations and accessories of the public-house and beer-shop, that the presiding judge at the Worcester summer assizes for 1859, declared, from a survey of the calendar, that had there been no drinkinghouses, there would apparently have been no crime in that county. Since drunkenness, disease, depravity, and crime-evils, the reduction of which to a minimum is amongst the first and last objects of the social union are the continual fruitage of the three classes of drinking-houses, it would seem but a principle of common |