The licensed trade : an independent survey / by Edwin A. Pratt.

  • Pratt, Edwin A., 1854-1922.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The licensed trade : an independent survey / by Edwin A. Pratt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    On the inquiry thus made I started, I must confess, with a good deal of prejudice, though, perhaps, with no more than is entertained by many thousands of my fellow-countrymen. Teetotal opinions I had passively adopted and had acted on since the days of my youth had led me to assume that the makers and dispensers of alcoholic drinks were—well, all that the teetotallers said of them! But when I began to question the foundations of the faith that was in me, I found that the real facts were very different indeed from what I had supposed ; that the case for the teetotallers (as dis- tinguished from the advocates of that moderation in drinking which seems to constitute the real * temper- ance ’) was based largely on exaggerations, miscon- ceptions, and ideal conditions altogether incapable of attainment, short of a complete revolution in some of the fundamendal traits and instincts of human nature; that, whatever the faults and shortcomings of the traders in alcoholic drinks, neither the trade nor the great majority of the persons engaged therein really deserved the bitter denunciations I had read or heard; and that many of the attempted * reforms ’ of the licensing system might do far more harm than good. I found, also, that, so long as our human nature remains what it is, prudent legislators would do well to recognize as indispensable a trade which evidently responds directly to a strongly pronounced human want, taking such precautions as may be necessary to ensure effective control, but not allowing themselves to be influenced by idealists (aiming at an eventual total suppression impossible of realization) into a policy of unduly harassing, if not of showing injustice towards, the representatives of a trade whose history goes back to the very earliest days of our race. I yield to no one in my desire to see people temperate 1 — 2