The alcoholic controversy.

Date:
[1868?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The alcoholic controversy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sticks to liis science, than to say that a seller must be anxious not to sell ‘ too much ’ of his wares, or must trouble his conscience with the buyer’s judicious use of them. And he is right, if the trade be of a normal kind, and gain be its object. The law evidently treats the trader who sells too much of the in¬ toxicating liquor as the guilty cause of intoxication. This seems not harsh only, but utterly unjust, to some, who will have it that only the buyer is to blame. We must, therefore, spend a few words on the topic. Much metaphysical jangling is often wasted on the word Cause; and as the word is unavoidable, it is well to insist on its popular and necessary meaning. We deal with a social and political question, and must employ the word in that practical sense which alone can enter politics. In Greek the man is cutloq (causative, re¬ sponsible, perhaps guilty') who is curia (a cause) of something un¬ desirable to society ; and so must it be with all nations. To judge of a man’s guilt, we have to deal with causation popularly, not meta¬ physically. Events never depend on a single cause. When a man fires a train of gunpowder, he is one cause of explosion, the quality of gunpowder is another, the atmo¬ spheric medium is a third ; but the man was not ignorant of the pro¬ perties of gunpowder, hence we throw on him the whole blame, and treat him as emphatically the ‘ cause,’ if the explosion be hurtful. So when European traders sell brandy to North American savages, knowing that the red men cannot resist the temptation of the ‘fire¬ water,’ no moralist can avoid pro¬ nouncing the sale inhuman, and that the seller is the cause of all the evils which follow. To plead that he sells only for his own gain, is anything but a justification; it rather makes the deed more for¬ midable, more hostile to the human race. Other motives are local, partial, transitory; but the love of gain is unlimited in time and space, and undiscriminating in its pursuit of customers. If a man sell to In¬ dians a poison cunningly disguised because he hates their tribe, and wishes to exterminate it, we judge the sale to be a terrible crime, yet it is a crime which the perpetrator may never repeat, nor desire to repeat; its mischief may be all in the past. But trade expands itself indefinitely in proportion to its own success. The gains, when large, are not consumed forthwith, but a sensible part is reserved as new capital to extend the sale. The great prin¬ ciple of active trade is, as far as possible, to lower price in order to increase the guantity sold. A trader who thinks it his duty to restrict his sale of an article from moral considerations, has little chance of gain from that article ; and if he sell nothing else, his scruples of conscience are likely to make him bankrupt. This is so evident, that when we hear of men entering the trade of selling spirits to In¬ dians or opium to Chinese, we infer at once that they are not troubled with moral scruples. We know that though conscientious men may have inherited such a position, no conscientious man would voluntarily enter it. Such a traffic is essentially bad; sales ought not to be carried on by such machinery. Nor is any agency, in time and guise of peace, more formidable to a State than the conspiracy of powerful capitalists against the virtue of individual citizens. A rich man is permitted to corrupt a woman to his own vicious desires by the offer of money. Legislators may abhor his act, but they have never taken in hand to enact any severe or pro¬ portionate punishment. But a conspiracy between a trader and a second party to corrupt a woman for convenience to the purse of the