THE HISTORY OF ALCOHOL. 383 



wet, temperate climate of England people might drink heavily of 

 beer or wine, and still in fair measure retain their health and 

 their capacity for work ; but, under the reign of gin, vice and 

 misery and disease increased so fearfully that Parliament finally 

 passed a law practically prohibiting its use. 



This famous " Gin Law," passed in 1736, is interesting as the 

 earliest severe blow at liquor dealing among civilized nations. 

 It levied a tax of twenty shillings a gallon on spirits, and a 

 license of fifty pounds for any one selling or dealing in it. And, 

 being in advance of public opinion, it failed much as other, more 

 stringent, prohibition laws have failed in our own day. For the 

 cry was at once raised that it taxed the poor man's gin, and let 

 the rich man's wine go free. Every wit, every caricaturist, had 

 his fling at it. Ballads were hawked round, telling of the ap- 

 proaching death of Mother Gin. The liquor shops were hung 

 with black, and celebrated uproariously Madame Geneva's lying 

 in state, her funeral, her wake, and so on. The night before the 

 law went into effect, so the contemporary journals say, there was 

 a universal revel all over the country. Every one drank his fill, 

 and carried home as much gin, besides, as he could pay for. 



To evade the law, apothecaries sold it in vials and small 

 packages, sometimes colored and disguised, generally under false 

 labels, such as " Colic Water," " Make Shift," " Ladies' Delight." 

 There were printed directions on some of these packages e. g., 

 " Take two or three spoonfuls three or four times a day, or as 

 often as the fit takes you." Informers were very prominent and 

 exceedingly offensive, inventing snares to catch lawbreakers for 

 the sake of the heavy rewards, and spying and sneaking around 

 in a way particularly distasteful to the English mind. In conse- 

 quence, they suffered in their turn. The mere cry " Liquor spy ! " 

 was enough to raise a mob in the London streets, and the in- 

 former was lucky if he escaped with a sound thrashing and a 

 ducking in the Thames or the nearest horse pond. Indeed, such 

 an outcry was made about the matter that the ministry became 

 very unpopular, and the law was not enforced after two or three 

 years, and was largely modified in 1743, after seven years' trial. 



While the lower classes in England were thus being demoral- 

 ized by gin, the upper classes were suffering almost as much from 

 the introduction of the strong, sweet, fiery, heavily brandied 

 wines of Portugal, thanks, in part at least, to some favoring 

 clauses in the Methuen treaty, early in the eighteenth century. 

 It is curious to read in the contemporary journals and diaries 

 and in the histories and descriptions of the last century as, for 

 instance, in Trevelyan's Life of Fox how terribly demoralized 

 was the state of English society during the period of England's 

 greatest colonial and material expansion. The country was gov- 



