590 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 







decent and honorable citizens turned into law-breakers ; no per- 

 sonal and paternal statutes to evade^ and so no statute evaders. 



But until we wipe out all these present restrictive liquor laws 

 we can not hate the drunkard. We must be charitable with him, 

 even cherish as well as pity him ; we must even respect him as a 

 man who is upholding the liberty of the subject at the expense of 

 his health ; as a sort of public martyr. We must reverse many a 

 popular maxim in his behalf. Instead of " Drunkenness leads to 

 poverty/' or " Drunkenness leads to wretchedness/' we must read 

 it " Poverty leads to drunkenness/' " Wretchedness leads to drunk- 

 enness." Instead of worrying lest the horrible inebriate go home 

 and brain his family and smash his furniture, we must cry, " Poor 

 man, he is out of employment," " Poor man, he has an unhappy 

 home, a shrewish wife and bad children, and there was nothing 

 left him but drink/' " It is not his fault, it is the fault of that 

 horrid liquor seller." And so on, as if the selling of liquor and 

 not the besotting of one's self with liquor, were the crime ; as if 

 the seller and not the drinker were the criminal ; as if one who 

 would not drink could be made a drunkard by the selling of 

 liquor ; or as if the fruits of the earth expressed or distilled were 

 unholy and abhorred, when in any other form they were God's 

 best gifts to man. 



Like most admirable servants, liquor is apt to be a bad master 

 if allowed the upper hand or permitted to get into politics. But 

 there are many persons, not habitual drunkards themselves, who 

 actually believe that malarious and impure water is a circulator 

 of disease, but can be disarmed and rendered safe by the dilution 

 with whisky. The boards of health of cities (New York city, for 

 example), in their printed directions to the public for the preven- 

 tion of cholera, advise that the water given to infants and very 

 young children in the heated season be diluted with a few drops 

 of whisky. But liquor laws are legislation, not against sick 

 babies, but against the few drops of whisky which might save 

 their little lives, and if the poor parents can not afford to pay a 

 physician for a slip of paper giving the Latin name of whisky, 

 the poor baby must die, or run the risk of death, by drinking ma- 

 larious water. If there is any such thing as a salutary liquor law, 

 not derived from excise or police jurisdiction, it would be per- 

 haps a statute insuring the purity of liquor ; reviving that old 

 English functionary, the " ale-taster," with his care over all drink- 

 ables publicly offered for sale. This would be a legitimate and 

 a constitutional law, as providing for the public safety (which is, 

 after all is said, the origin and the summit of all laws). There is 

 no greater charm to the tourist in rural England than the cer- 

 tainty that, no matter how small the village through which he 

 passes, he will find at the inn refreshment and comfort, " eatable 



