The alcoholic controversy.

Date:
[1868?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The alcoholic controversy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    goods. Hence a new fund for sa¬ ving. Sir Walter had no possible foresight of this movement; he wrote in the humdrum days of 1817, when the nation had hardly gained breath from the great French war and the convulsions of trade which its cessation caused. Never¬ theless he saw clearly how expendi¬ ture on drink is related to pauperism. He saw, further, the intimate relation between a multiplicity of drink-shops and freer drinking. Nothing can be clearer or more de¬ cisive than his argument. Very few have what he calls a ‘ malice prepense ’ for drink. Few will take the trouble to go miles to get it; and when once the habit is broken they cease to desire the liquors. Sir John Davis last year stated in a public meeting that every great Asiatic religion, except Christianity, has proscribed intoxicating liquors. He estimated that 800 millions of the earth’s population (Buddhist, Brahminist, and Mahommedan) live under this religious prohibition: and whatever allowance we make for the indulgence in opium, hashish, bang, or fermented milk, it seems unreasonable to doubt that several hundreds of millions are totally without alcoholic drinks or other narcotics, in cold as well as hot cli¬ mates. But the experience of even Scotland alone suffices to establish, first:—that people who are reared without facilities of the drink grow up without cravings for it, or any need of it whatever, as diet; next, that the very same people, or rather their children, are in not many years in¬ fallibly corrupted (in the present low stage of our moral develop¬ ment), if daily plied with a manifold presentation of the fatal liquors. This was wTith Sir Walter a fact, long- before the word teetotallism o arose, or the question of total ab¬ stinence had been publicly debated. More still, he discerned, that the crooked policy of the king’s ex¬ chequer was at the bottom of the whole evil. He wishes that 1 Fi¬ nanciers would admit a general limitation of ale-houses over Eng¬ land ! ’ He would have them cut down to one-fourth of the number, but the Exchequer did not like to lose the duty. This is the disgrace¬ ful fact, which may try to hide itself, yet creeps out in too many ways; not least, in our introduc¬ tion of spirit-shops into India, un- disguisedly for the sake of revenue, and to the disgust of intelligent natives. The modem gin-palace was unknown until near the close of Sir Walter’s life; and it is only the ale-house which he censured. The greater enormities of spirit¬ drinking so shocked well-meaning legislators, that they tried to coun¬ teract the pest, by multiplying beer-houses, in spite of all the mis¬ chief which they had previously done. It is difficult to imagine that the experience of the past was forgotten; but two sinister in¬ fluences combined in 1830 to suffo¬ cate or counteract experience. The one came from the political econo¬ mists, who were already strong among the parliamentary Liberals. The economy of that day aspired to be a deductive science, based on a few simple axioms (and as such James Mill presented it), so as to be nearly independent of expe¬ rience. Its professors seemed to themselves to have a calculus far loftier than that of the common statesman, and imagined that it ought to dictate to politics: more¬ over, some of them struck out the idea that free trade in liquor was the true cure alike for excess of drink and for adulteration. To obtain free trade in spirits was im¬ possible ; for every one was groaning over the new gin-palaces; but the notion was started, and was sin¬ cerely believed, that a great multi¬ plication of beer-houses in which spirits could not be got, would draw people off from the spirit- shops. At the same time, compe-