698 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



criminally inclined, and who can not fairly be 

 included in the category of the miserable, it 

 is not true that crime and misery are to any 

 great extent chargeable to the use of alco- 

 hol. We said nothing about the number 

 who drink, nor did we refer to the quantity 

 of spirits or beer which may be taken with 

 impunity by the individual or that may be 

 distributed and consumed by the community 

 at large, these considerations being in our 

 opinion quite beside the question. The fact 

 should be sufficiently obvious that the prin- 

 cipal evil connected with the use of alcoholic 

 liquors lies in that excess which is commonly 

 known as drunkenness, the marked tendency 

 toward which is one of the most character- 

 istic features of the drinking habit. 



Concerning the aggregate of crime and 

 distress that is plainly traceable to this form 

 of indulgence, there is in the absence of full 

 statistics abundant room for a wide differ- 



ence of opinion, ranging from an almost 

 total disbelief in the vicious effects of alco- 

 hol, to an equally undiscriminating claim 

 that it is at the bottom of most human ills. 

 For ourselves, we are not in sympathy with 

 either extreme. But when we see the papers, 

 particularly of our large cities, containing 

 daily numerous accounts of crimes of vio- 

 lence of all grades from simple assault to 

 murder, committed in the frenzy of intoxica- 

 tion, it is useless to shut our eyes to the fact 

 that alcohol is a most potent inciter to this 

 form of crime. Add to this its acknowledged 

 action in the causation of disease even among 

 moderate diinkers, its debauching influence 

 on the lower classes, the poverty that sooner 

 or later is sure to overtake the victims of 

 its immoderate use, and there can be little 

 question that it is also a most important 

 factor in the production of human misery. 

 Editor.] 



gxXlt0V^5 "S^Ut, 



THE NATURE OF LIBERTY. 



TIME was when John Stuart 

 Mill's little book on the subject 

 of Liberty was thought rather ad- 

 vanced reading. It advocated indi- 

 vidualism the right of every man to 

 think his own thoughts, utter his own 

 views, and live his own life without 

 unnecessary control or intimidation 

 by law or public opinion. It was an 

 attack on every form of bigotry and 

 an earnest appeal to all that is best 

 and most generous in human nature 

 to assert itself and make the world 

 richer and better by doing so. That 

 idea of liberty, however, is to-day to 

 many of our social reformers an 

 outworn mode of thought, quite in- 

 adequate, they declare, to the needs 

 of the present time. An eminent 

 writer, Mr. W. D. Howells, has un- 

 dertaken to enlighten us on the sub- 

 ject in a recent number of The 

 Forum. Part of his article is very 

 much on the lines of certain chap- 

 ters in Mr. Spencer's Justice, but the 

 rest strikes out from those lines at 

 a wide angle. 



Mr. Howells tells us that he was 

 in Venice '* during the last years of 

 Austrian oppression," and was a 

 witness of the earnest longings of 

 the people for the liberty which 

 they anticipated from union with 

 Italy. With these longings he 

 strongly sympathized, though his 

 position being an official one, that of 

 consul, he could not venture to ex- 

 press his sympathy openly. He 

 says he had a suspicion that the peo- 

 ple were expecting more from ' lib- 

 erty " than they were likely to get 

 out of it ; but he assumed that '' by 

 and by, when they had been free 

 long enough," they would take the 

 American view of the matter and be 

 satisfied. "They would be able to 

 vote for this one and against that 

 one; to make their own laws or 

 choose legislators to make them; to 

 speak or to print anything they 

 liked ; to go and come without ask- 

 ing for a passport; and this would be 

 sufficient, though it was not all they 

 had expected of liberty. It did not," 

 Mr. Howells goes on to confess, 



