darker colors, and a more lengthened and gloomy perspective must be employed." He adds:- "The victims from all causes multiply; but the victims from intemperance multiply in greater measure." Lord SHAFTESBURY, at Manchester, November 24, 1851, said : "Here I speak of my own knowledge and experience, for having acted as a Commissioner of Lunacy for the last 20 years, and having acted as Chairman of the Commission during 16 years, and having had, therefore, the whole of the business under my personal observation and care; having made enquiries into the matter, and having fortified them by enquiries in America, which have confirmed the enquiries made in this country-the result is, that fully six-tenths of all the cases of insanity to be found in these realms and in America, arise from no other cause than from the habits of intemperance in which the people have indulged." The bare figures of this question, putting aside all theories, bring out a most remarkable proposition,-that insanity in every country corresponds in the main to the use of intoxicating drink. We begin with a teetotal country :— Scotland, (educated) 573 ,, Norway, (educated, and social condition good). 551 ,, Ireland, (other causes also) 500 It should be observed that the Public Statician can never ascertain the true causes of madness, especially in the more modified cases, connected with intemperance: and, therefore, his estimates are under the mark. Moreover, there is no account taken of the partial imbecility, and of that disturbance of moral balance, so deeply connected with crime, unhappiness, and misfortune, operating over a still greater number, and springing from the same source. It is argued by some theorists, that the excitements of civilization are the chief causes of insanity. No doubt this is true-but, then, it is only an abstract proposition. * The case of Dove, of Leeds, who poisoned his wife, is one in point. The child of very pious parents, religiously educated, he acquired the habit of drinking, and constant sotting converted him into a moral maniac, even if intellectual deficiency had not been constitutional. What real things does 'excitement' involve? Want of excite ment, again, is another cause; and what will they make of that? The truth, drawn out, is just this that bad excitements, and good excitements in excess, disturb and ultimately destroy the autocracy of the soul. But how? By their action on the brain and nerves-by their draining away its power, and destroying the organs of reparation. But in this calculation, why do they omit the excitement which is produced by a physical narcotic and nervine like Alcohol, taken to the extent of three, four, or five gallons in a year?-one, too, that has a peculiar affinity for the brain? Nor should it be forgotten, that nearly all other excitements incident to civilization are sustained, nay provoked, by the drinking habits. Alcohol operates, therefore, in a double way in producing insanity-it energizes transiently the dangerous passions, and, while increasing their imperious rule, saps and weakens the moral will.* The traffic, then, is not simply the occasion of one insane person's insanity or idiocy, out of every five we meet, by direct temptation and participation, but also the exciter of the dormant seeds, the disturber of the nicely balanced will and passions, in three out of the remaining four. Dr JOHNSON saw this truth in the case of poor COLLINS, the poet, when he remarked that, "with the usual weakness of men so diseased, he eagerly snatched that temporary relief, with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce," and thus developed the fatal tendency. Savages have all our passions, and ungovernable enough. Yet savages don't go mad. Turks, Arabians, Egyptians, have excitements, and lusts, and sufferings, but they don't go mad. Are we to believe, then, that Civilization is the cause of our madness? That the equalizing of human destiny, the spread of comfort and independence, the development of mind, has any necessary connexion with insanity, or inherent tendency thereto ? When we sent the Traffic to the American Indians, they, too, went mad, and have now been well nigh extinguished. Unfortunately, also, we kept the Traffic at home-and we continue to go mad. That civilization may triumph, unimpeded, destroying mental disease, or making it manageable, we must destroy the Traffic! § 118. Go to another phase of the subject-examine into the facts and psychology of the question-and we shall be at no loss to understand the increase of Suicide. Nearly 500 such cases, annually, in London alone! Let us take exceptional and sober France-people have curious notions about 'sobriety'-everybody being sober who is not beating his wife at home, dead drunk in the gutter, or riotous in the police-office! In the Northern *How strikingly this is exemplified recently, in the fact stated by official authority, that the withdrawal of part of the grog rations from the Mediterranean fleet has been attended by a most obvious improvement, not only in health, but in discipline-not half the former acts of insubordination having occurred. departments, we find, in a total of 14,745 cases of madness, 1,024 are ascribed to wine and brandy drinking.* But this has relation to another fact, if possible more frightful. In France, in 1841, out of 2,814 cases of suicide, 185 are expressly said to have committed the fatal act, either while drunk, or after drinking. This shows drunkenness, even there, to be the most frequent of the known causes of Suicide, with the exception of domestic grief and physical pain. Probe these, again, to their causes, and drink takes first rank. People confound motives with causes. A man destroys himself under a certain notion or impression. Now, that is the insanity-but perhaps DRINK is the cause. Moreover, a sober man has grief-but does not sink into melancholy, and ultimately become a suicide; the drinker, under the same circumstances but one, does. What is the cause of the difference? Sobriety or Drink. Of 38 cases of Suicide carefully reported at Aberdeen, it is said that the 'causes' were Insanity, Disappointed Love, and Family Quarrels (vexation); but it is added, that twenty were intoxicated before the act, and seventeen were habitual drunkards. In plain English, the Traffic makes its customers unfit, either to do the work of Life, or to bear its ordinary chances and reverses. Out of 218 cases of suicide in Berlin, the causes of which were ascertained by Dr CASPAR, fifty-four were produced by dissoluteness and intemperance. In the peaceful community of Geneva, out of 133 suicides, 10 were perpetrated by drinkers. But Dr BROWNE has collected the history of 1,222 cases of suicide, taken as they came, at random, and he finds that 158 sought death under the influence of Drink; four committing the act in an unconscious state. Intemperance, the suicide of the soul, is the rife parent of the other! Go, search the hospital's unwholesome round, The felon's dungeon, and the maniac's cell, The workhouse cold, the church-yard's dreary mound, Ask, what does most the stream of victims swell? Parent of ills, Perdition's eldest born; Dark cloud without a bow-a night that knows no morn. * ESQUIROL's analysis of 132 cases of Mania, gives 18, or 1 in 11 to drunkenness which is double the proportion produced by fever, and ten times that of Apoplexy. Again, comparing it with moral causes assigned, while jealousy excites 13 to madness, wounded pride and vanity together 23; misery 19, excessive study 10, excessive drinking yields 18. In 181 cases of Dementia, or fatuity, six, or 1-30th, were traced to drink. But then many of these are assigned to monomania; and, as we have just seen, drink had a large share in that: and fatuity is obviously the end of a course of dissipation. CALMEIL gives the history of 62 cases, 20 of which were the result of intoxication, and 11 of sensuality. But again, 9 cases out of 10 of sensuality are connected with drinking. In a table by ESQUIROL, out of 372 cases of Melancholia, 55, or 1-7th, are attributed to libertinism or intemperance. Of these 55, no less than 19 resulted from intoxication. In a report published by the Commissioners of Lunacy, the number of lunatics is stated, for England and Wales, at 26,516. Of those, again, 2,526 were cases of inherited madness; and 2,335, causes unknown. Of how many of these, then, must drink have been the cause? § 119. We now approach the last of the general counts of our indictment against the Liquor Traffic-that it is the great promoter or producer of OFFENCES and CRIMES. It is so, in various ways. First, it deals out the material which, by necessary law, tends to the production of an indolent, violent, and criminal disposition. Second, it not only affords facilities for drinking, but it always has employed, and still does employ, every conceivable kind of seduction to increase the consumption of that material. This has been demonstrated again and again, in the preceding survey and argument, and we only reproduce the fact here, for the sake of formal completeness. The machinery has worked in the way affirmed, in spite of all regulating law; and we have only now to show what it has done in the direction indicated. The special offence of ' Drunkenness' has already been considered. First, let us take a glance at some Statistical Facts, which illustrate the connexion of complicity and cause, between the Traffic in Strong-drink and the Turpitude and Crime of the country. We say 'some' facts, because statistics, as selected and worked by our Economists, are very often only so many arithmetical examples of complicated fallacies. They seem to think it quite enough to sow figures and reap sums! Now figures, like the facts they ought to express, require a rational treatment: the law of Induction must be applied to them to get out their true meaning; or, in other words, certain elements must be eliminated, and certain facts of connexion established, before the figures are of any value. Figures, for instance, cannot prove that drinking causes crime they can only show that, with much of drinking there is also the coincidence of crime. The same may be said of other social conditions. It is observation of the working of strong drink and the previous knowledge of the history of the criminal-that can alone prove that drinking engenders crime. And when this is proved, no statistics can disprove it, and dissolve the nexus-they can only confirm it, or further establish the extent of its operation. A sound 'philosophy' must precede the figures, control the treatment, and interpret their meaning. All figures, again, must be analyzed-so that we eliminate extraneous circumstances or differing elements-otherwise we but deceive ourselves. For example, a writer might assert that not drinking, but the price of bread, determined the crime of the country. Now, no doubt, there is a certain border of crime-a margin of criminality-that does enlarge or narrow with the price of food, which in turn indicates social prosperity or distress. It might be proved, perhaps, in some years, or even series of years, that while more drink was consumed, less prisoners were confined in prison. Hypothetically, we say, this is possible: but all the statistics in the world could not disprove the fact, that drinking necessarily tends to foster crime. Whatever the quack might say, the philosopher would not predicate, "So much the worse for the fact," but rather "So much worse for the figures" and proceed to analyze the source of the palpable fallacy. In the case supposed, we perceive at once a possible explanationwhat elements are deficient, and what ought to be eliminated, before the figures are worth a single fig. Many fineable offences (and sometimes these amount to 40 per cent) are equivalent in poor times to imprisonment, since the offender cannot pay; in good times' he or his friends can pay, and therefore he does not swell the list of criminal commitments: and thus returns made out without reference to a 'philosophy' of statistics, may be but a series of stupidities, altogether misleading for, in the case supposed, as the poor year must be that of diminished drinking, and the good year that of augmented drinkingthe figures would show (if they showed anything save the folly of the compiler) that drinking promotes order and morality! In such a case, all fineable offences must be eliminated to make the committals an index of the proportion of offences. We shall, therefore, select such statistics as are simplest in their character. § 120. To begin with IRELAND and the Irish.' The peculiar character of the people, their excitable temperament, and unfortunate historical experience, will afford a special lesson. (§ 39-44). The common people have correctly designated the excitement produced upon them by the cratur, as mad with whisky'; and it is a striking proof of the power of the drink to obliterate conscience and perception, that any one should be found to defend a trade in temporary, any more than permanent, insanity. Mr Serjeant LLOYD, before the Lord's Committee on the state of Ireland in 1825, assigned "the easy access to spirits" as the chief predisposing cause of the peasant disturbances and agrarian outrages in county Limerick (p. 31).† The leaders of the Insurrection in 1798, well knew the effect of whisky, and therefore, in the Address to the United Irishmen, imposed as a test, abstinence from Spirits; though the ostensible object was In the Economist of the 21st June, 1856, the statistics of the Rev. JOHN CLAY are quoted, and an attempt is made to show that material prosperity, and not sobriety, is the regulator of crime, the latter being great when the former is low, and contrariwise. The writer confines himself to a certain class of crimes, omitting Summary convictions and fineable offences. He makes no enquiry how far the destitution which incites to legal offences has intemperance for a foster-mother. When all the chaplains, of all the gaols, unite in the same conclusions, Mr CLAY can afford to be depreciated by a writer who looks to the fluctuating and proximate causes of a small part of crime, rather than to the bulk of it, and to its primary and permanent sources. Deduct from the crime of our country that large portion consisting of Drunkenness, and of offences committed under the direct influence of drink, and that larger portion that would never have been perpetrated, had drink not been consumed by the agents of crime, their relatives, or their victims; and how much would be left as the result of 'natural' passion, roguery, and unavoidable distress? This reminds us of LALOR SHIEL'S metaphor, and the reply which it provoked. "Ireland," said the orator, "as a source of inquietude, is to England what Vesuvius is to Naples." Mr STANLEY wittily retorted-"Ay, and from the same cause of mischief-the crater." * Vide Report of the Committee of Secrecy, in 1797. Ibid. 1798. |