described, but only upon getting a little drink'—and in the state induced, to talk about reflection and consequences is simply absurd. Old HERBERT, in his Church Porch, wisely says— He that is drunken, may his mother kill, To prevent this 'Outlawry,' we must outlaw the Traffic. error : "CRIMINAL DRUNKENNESS.-The other day, a young and respectable woman was walking peacefully along the street; suddenly, a tremendous blow from the fist of an individual, who acknowledged he had never seen her before in all his life, levelled her senseless with the pavement. Her skull was stove in, and brain only partially, not mortally, injured. The spectators thought the assailant mad. And he certainly was; but his was the madness of inebriation, which he might have been hindered from incurring. Another police report next day, tells us that a tradesman, standing quietly before his own shop, was felled from a similarly sudden blow, from a similar hand, under the influence of the same irresistible species of insanity. The most remarkable point in drunkenness is the apparent necessity under which the patient lies of replenishing and sustaining the fountain of its own furies.-Another police report for instance, places before us the case of a man who, every Saturday, received as weekly wages for skilled work, 52s.; of which sum he regularly drank, in two days, the two pounds, having previously taken the precaution to hand over to his wife the twelve shillings for the food, clothes, house-rent, servant's money, and other expenses of that fortunate woman, and of her and his four children. He could not help it; it was the most he could do; it was liberal; and he is now in the House of Correction for an involuntary and inevitable brutality, which chanced to be discovered. Everybody knows that a number of millions of pounds sterling are in England yearly spent in the purchase of intoxicating drinks. If the drinking went not into drunkenness, this would be a little matter. But how many are in prison and in poor-houses, supported by public money, who ought to have been supported by a man, himself utterly undone, who should have even contributed to the general wealth! Prevention is better than cure, and where the case is very difficult, the prevention should be doubly strong. We have keepers and asylums for those whom nature has made mad; why not for those who are made mad by themselves-for the mad drunkards? We mean, of course in confirmed, patent, proven, and habitual instances. The mad drunkard is generally far more disposed to do evil than the poor sober deranged: yet far less precaution against the former than the latter! "Surely there ought to be rigorous measures for repressing this desolating vice! It is frequently said by foolish people that a drunkard is his own enemy.' It is true enough that he is his own enemy, but he is not his own enemy only-he is the robber of his wife and family, the destroyer of domestic happiness and comfort, and alas! yet worse, sometimes the murderer of those whom he should have protected at the cost of his own life. How often we see in the streets at night the poor anxious wife, perhaps mother of some starving children, following with skulking terror the husband whom she would save from an untimely end, while he, on perceiving P her, turns round with fury, and curses her trembling solicitude. An asylum for the mad drunkard would relieve the crowded poor-house, would diminish the municipal expenses of the country, would incalculably augment production, and would give many a peaceful home where there are solitary, blood-stained hearths. Personal restraint and enforced diet would answer. It is not by usurping the office of the preacher that we can check the evil. In its origin, doubtless, it is a vice; but who does not see, that, in its growth, it germinates into the most fatal of the forms of madness? Treat it, then, as a madness, curable if taken in time, for it is only by arresting the malady that you can extinguish the vice." Very true-but why, then, license houses for dispensing the material cause of the malady? The Morning Post ought to know that all his remedies have been tried, both on the Continent of Europe and America, and failed. At last, the people of the United States have determined to go to the fountain head, and dry up the fons malorum. Of what use is History if we will not extract its philosophy, and save ourselves the bitter experience of wasted effort and certain failure? Nay, even the Weekly Despatch, for July 20th, 1856, avows the truth of the Alliance doctrine. Witness the contrast it draws between a class with Drink-facilities minus, and one with Drinkfacilities plus : "PEOPLE in the south labor under singular misconceptions as to the condition of their northern, especially their Celtic, fellow-countrymen. They hear of Lowland bothies and Highland huts, of squalid poverty and wretched diet; of oaten bread and sheep-head broth, and straightway conclude that the Scotch must be the most miserable people in Europe. They find the Scotch who come south tall and wiry, and strong, leading artizans in the workshop or factory, and at the head of most of the great garden establishments; but that they attribute to orderly habits and superior education. They look for figs from thistles, and grapes from thorns. It is all a mistake. Go down among them, wander through the Trossachs, Braemer, or Glenlyon, drop among the farms of the Lothians, see the large frames, the full muscles, the great calves, the spring in the step, the arched foot, the clear complexion, the full lips, the strong teeth; observe the serviceable, perfectly whole and decent, week-day dress, the universally respectable clothing on Sunday, and then ask yourself, if these can come of squalor or destitution. To begin at the beginning, the infant is very "WE have just finished the hay harvest of Middlesex; the grain harvest is coming. The mowers, rakers, haymakers, garden people, begin work as soon, and go on as long, as they can see. Their employers systematically bribe them to toil beyond their strength. It is beer from morning's dawn till moonrise-beer the first thing in the morning--beer to breakfast-beer at resting time,-at dinner,-after dinner,-at tea,-at supper. They are filled with beer to get as much work out of them in a given time as possible; they could not go through with what they do, but that their muscles and sinews are filled-drunk, to hold out beyond the capacity of nature. Now IS THE HARVEST OF THE PUBLIC-HOUSE. How many of the hands would pass the army surgeon? Consumption is never out of the cottage. Insanity in the rural districts, increases so rapidly that there is no accommodation in the asylums for the pauper lunatics, albeit they build large additions to them every year. Look at the calveless-legs, the great splay feet, the heavy unelastic gait, the gradu ally diminishing frame, the lean round shoulders, the premature agedness. Think of the condition sure to find in its mother one who knows how to nurse, who loves it devotedly, who knows nothing of beer, and scarcely anything of whisky; who, with scarcely an exception, has a cow and a garden to go to, and a meal-ark for wholesome cakes or porridge; and, as a rule, is in her house, not toiling in the fields. There is either coal, or peat, or wood for warmth, and homespun from the mountain sheep. As the child grows older it goes to school, and older still, just has task enough gradually to let him know that he is not to be idle all his life. When he becomes a man his diet is still the same. No beer, little whisky, milk and porridge, cheese and butter, broth and bacon, occasionally beef or mutton, fresh herrings and other fish. Intoxicating drink is never an article of diet with him, only an indulgence and recreation. He will not overwork himself for anybody; in winter he has much leisure; he feels that his strength and health are his capital, and he husbands them." of the boy who begins the morning with bread and beer. Think of the example set him by a father who clears the ale barrel, not by pints, but by gallons; or of the morals of the girl whose mother ever and anon recruits her exhaustion by a drop of gin. Do we exaggerate? do we say a word incapable of proof? We ask the farmers, we appeal to the market-gardeners, to say if they can contradict the general features of this description. And if they cannot, how grave is their responsibi lity. What right have they to complain of drunkenness, theft, impurity, pauperism, if they lend themselves to such a system? They get work, indeed, out of it; but does any man, with so much as a teaspoonful of brains, believe that beer ever gives to an employer a greater quantity of useful service, taking the aggregate of efficiency for the whole year? The evil will recoil on himself; indeed, he already feels it. His laborers become yearly less efficient; daily he gets less work out of them; daily the beer tempts them to do less, and to [From the Article entitled 'Labour find some other way of getting at it and Leisure."] than by working for it." §126. Take next the evidence of those in high station-the Peers and Statesmen of the realm. Lord ASHLEY (now Earl of SHAFTESBURY), in his speech in the House of Commons, on the Beerhouses, said :— "In spite of all that had been done, there remained a vast moral waste in the condition of the people. The Police returns of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, exhibited a frightful picture, especially as to the condition and habits of the juvenile portion of the community. The country was weary of mere palliatives: schemes of prison discipline and so forth; the evil was wider and deeper than could be reached by mere corrective processes, and if not graupled with, we might anticipate, in twenty years, a general convulsion and displacement of the whole system of society." The Earl of ABERDEEN, at a meeting in Edinburgh, said :"I shall not probably be thought guilty of exaggeration, or blinded by national partiality, if I say that Scotland, for a long series of years, has been eminently distinguished among the nations of Europe for the moral, religious, and intellectual culture of its people. But can we say that this is the case at the present moment ?* I grieve to say that the increase of crime has been greatly beyond the increase of population." *We hope his Lordship, if he reads our 32-38, will be enabled to perceive that it is the Liquor Traffic that has diseducated the people. He then goes on to notice that the Scotch, on the average, were then consuming three gallons of whisky to every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. But again we return to the question, What tempts to this inordinate consumption? The Traffic. The Traffic has undone Scotland, as it will most surely every country where it is permitted to take root and grow. The Earl of ALBEMARLE, in a public address at Banham (Sept. 1855), enters elaborately into the evil and degrading effects of largess at Harvest-homes. We cite a passage or two : "How do they return their thanks to God for a plentiful supply of food for another year? They get drunk.* Each man at the end of harvest receives a certain present from his employer, and then a party go round and ask for largess.' The largess man, having begged all he can, goes to the public-house to get drunk. I wont follow him in the orgies which take place at the public-house; but the immorality-the gross, shocking immorality of both sexes-ought not to be lost sight of. This is, I hope, the commencement of a new era in agriculture. We wish to do away with the hateful crime which is a blot upon our escocheon, and makes us a laughing-stock and an object of pity to other countries. We must do away with the present disgraceful system. In one town, where drunkenness prevailsPreston-it was stated that, for the last twenty years, one-third of the bodies exposed were those of persons who had died of drunkenness. But supposing the drunkard has escaped a painful bodily death, has he escaped all the evils which the consequences, perhaps, of harvest-home, have brought upon him? Are there no other evils to which he is subject? The details which, as a legislator, I am bound to know, tell a very different story. Drunkenness is the fruitful cause and source of the dreadful and horrible calamity of insanity. I know, as a county magistrate in the habit of attending at petty and quarter sessions, that a great proportion of crime arises from those habits of drunkenness which prevail among our rural population. I would affectionately press upon the occupiers of the soil-I would have it understood by all over whom I have any influence, that I wish them, if they consider it necessary to give a harvest supper, that that supper should be given under their own control; and that they should cut off the supplies from the hateful largess, and place the money thus withheld in the hands of the committee of the village harvest-home fund. I do not wish to save the pocket of the occupier of the land one farthing. I think that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and that he deserves some reward after he has done a hard spell of work; but I wish to save that laborer from the temptations to which he is at present exposed. I wish to strike a blow against the demoralizing effects which are produced by the present system, and to give the laboring man a shove up the steps of the ladder of civilization. I hope, also, that you will bear in mind that largess has got its deathknell, and that you will answer to every man who asks you for it for the future, Friend, I cannot give it you, because I will not be accessory to sending you either to the gaol, the hospital, or the lunatic asylum." It seems very strange to us, that my Lord ALBEMARLE, with his clear common sense and warm heart, does not see the further application of his doctrine,-"Cut off the largess-save the laborer from the temptations to which he is exposed." We can point out to his Lordship a broader, surer, and therefore "more * We should have said-not omitting the antecedents-They destroy the food in the Breweries and Distilleries-license houses for the sale of the seducing liquor produced-and get drunk by way of natural sequence. excellent way." "Let him cut off the temptations of all seasons and all days-summer or winter, Saturday with its work, or Sabbath with its rest-let him say, as LEGISLATOR, what he says as Landlord,-and say it to the LICENCE-MAN as well as to the Largess-man, "FRIEND, I CANNOT GIVE IT YOU, BECAUSE I WILL NOT BE ACCESSORY TO SENDING MY COUNTRYMEN EITHER TO THE GAOL, THE HOSPITAL, OR THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. § 127. Again, let us pass from general evidence to that given by witnesses who are officially or otherwise associated with the criminal business of the country; and who are, therefore, best entitled to judge. In the evidence taken before the Committee on Public-houses, 1st Report, p. 270, we find Mr H. DANSON, beer merchant, Liverpool, on behalf of 500 publicans, saying"If the Trade were thrown open, we do not know what amount "of Police we should require; in fact, the borough fund would "scarcely pay them." Before the same Committee, Mr THOMAS WRIGHT, of Manchester, who for sixteen years has devoted himself to visiting gaols, endeavoring to reform criminals, and find them the means of living on their discharge from prison, speaks strongly of the intimate connexion between intoxicating drinks and crime. "He has found that the majority are criminals from their youth (No. 2126); that there is a large class who give themselves wholly to drinking, who send their children out begging, and from begging to pilfering for them. All the children in gaols speak of the neglect of their parents (2132); he has never found any cause for that neglect but drunkenness (2141); 18 out of 20 of our criminals are from that class (2124). Amongst the convicts at Portland, he could not find two out of 20 who could say they had had a good mother; the mother was generally a woman who had neglected them in childhood and youth from drunkenness. "Of 27 men convicted of murder with whom he had conversed, there was but one who said that his mother was a good woman (2127, 2128). There is a race of women in the world who do not care where the money comes from so they can get it for drink (2142). Some of them encourage their children to be prostitutes; he has seen them in the gaols as early as ten years of age, and conversed with them (2146-7); they all tell of the drunkenness of their parents, especially their mothers (2151). One lad spoke of his mother sending him out begging, and from begging to pilfering; she did not care where she got the money if she got it for drink; that child was seven times in gaol, and he was only 12 years of age” (2140). The following is extracted from Mr VILLIERS' Report : "Mr ROBERTSON GLADSTONE, referring also to the connexion between intoxicating drinks and crime, states that the subject has so frequently come before the magistrates at Liverpool, that they know, that in beerhouses, as well as in licensed public-houses, many thefts and robberies and other crimes are arranged and |