384 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



erned by a small, wealthy, land-owning aristocracy, wlio seemed 

 to take tlie most unbridled corruption in public, and tbe most 

 unrestrained dissipation in private life as a matter of course. It 

 was from the long years of peace under the Walpoles, during 

 the first half of the century, when the energy and industry of 

 the middle classes were able to exert themselves, and from the 

 protection of her insular position, that England obtained strength 

 to master her empire, not from any superiority in her governing 

 classes. 



For, all during the last century, drunkenness was the rule, not 

 the exception, in all classes of society. In the lower classes it 

 was actually encouraged. Did the troops win a victory, did a 

 prince come of age, " Go home. Jack," would say the master to 

 his servant, " build a big bonfire, and tell the butler to make ye 

 all drunk." It was quite a compliment to call an underling an 

 " honest, drunken fellow." And as for the gentlefolk well, we 



can hardly conceive 

 of the state of aif airs. 

 It was part of a gen- 

 tleman's education to 

 learn to carry his 

 port. One, two, three 

 quarts a night was a 

 proper and reason- 

 able supply. After 

 dinner the ladies re- 

 tired into another 

 room a practice still 

 observed so that the 

 men should have 

 no embarrassing re- 

 straints, and it was a 

 matter of course for them to drink one another under the table 

 as fast as was convenient. In the army and navy, in the learned 

 professions, among the gentry and nobility, and even in the royal 

 family, heavy drinking was the rule and not the exception until 

 well on in the present century. 



And they suffered from it. Their lives were shortened, their 

 usefulness impaired, their estates squandered, and then the gout ! 

 Nowadaj^s, with the example of Palmerston and Bismarck, Glad- 

 stone and Sherman before our eyes, it is hard to think of a time 

 when statesmen were incapacitated at thirty-five or forty. But 

 it was so. A gentleman who reached middle age without being 

 crippled was either unusually lucky or was a milksop. Lord 

 Chatham and many, nay most, of his contemporaries were hor- 

 ribly tortured by it. At critical periods in the nation's history a 



The Gout. (Gillray.) 



