The alcoholic controversy.

Date:
[1868?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The alcoholic controversy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE ALCOHOLIC CONTROVERSY.1 From 4 Fraser's MagazineSeptember 1868. [Reprinted by the UNITED KINGDOM ALLIANCE, with the kind permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co., 39 Paternoster Row, London, E.C.] IN’ the present controversy con¬ cerning the Drink Traffic, which seems likely, ere long, to come to a critical struggle, it may be of inte¬ rest and not uninstructive to read the following words of Sir Walter Scott,2 penned in the year 1817, as the result of his observations on rural Pauperism. 4 There is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical reme¬ dies, such as general systems of edu¬ cation, and so forth. But a man with a broken constitution might as well put faith in Spilsbury or Godbold.3 It is not the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is pro¬ ductive of real benefit.There is a terrible evil in England, .... to wit, tippling-houses.In Scotland there are few. A man, therefore, cannot easily spend much money on liquor; since he must walk three or four miles to the place of suction and back again, which infers a sort of malice prepense of which few are capable: and, the habitual opportunity of indulgence not being at hand, the habits of intemperance and of waste connected with it, are not acquired. If finan¬ ciers would admit a general limita¬ tion of alehouses over England to one-fourth of the number, the money now spent in that manner would remain with the peasant, as a source of self-support and independence.’ Sir Walter Scott was an acute and impartial observer, as free from fanatical extremes as an earnest and active mind can possibly be. We do not attribute to him any peculiar and unusual discernment, as indi¬ cated in this passage: nay, before ending this article we may be able to show that magistrates and squires who reside on their estates are by no means slow to observe the same facts. There they get a closer in¬ sight into farmers and peasants, not to say a healthier sympathy with them. But the richer classes who dwell in towns have but few per¬ sonal relations with, the poorer, and are either too busy or too proud to look into their domestic circum- 1 The Permissive Bill {for Local Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic), as introduced into Parliament by Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Mr. Thomas Bazley. Pamphlets on the Liquor Traffic, by the Rev. Professor Kirk, Edinburgh. Argument for Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic, by Dr. F. R. Lees. Parliamentary Debates on the Drink Traffic, from Meliora, 1865. A Model Manufacturing Town (Bessbrook, County Armagh). From Meliora, 1867. 2 Life, chap, xxxix.