DRUNKENNESS. 353 



now converted by distillation into a poison; the highest medical autho- 

 rities, examined in great numbers before your committee, being uniform 

 in their testimony that ardent spirits are absolutely poisonous to the human 

 constitution ; that in no case whatever are they necessary or even useful to 

 persons in health ; that they are always, in every case and to the smallest extent, 

 deleterious, pernicious, or destructive, according to the proportions in which 

 they may be taken into the system ; so that not only is an immense amount 

 of human food destroyed, whilst thousands are inadequately fed, but this 

 food is destroyed in such a manner as to injure greatly the agricultural 

 producers themselves, for whose grain, but for this perverted and mistaken 

 use of it, there would be more than twice the present demand for the use 

 of the now scantily fed people, who would then have healthy appetites to 

 consume, and improved means to purchase nutriment for themselves and 

 children, in grain as well as in all the other varied productions of the 

 earth. 



" 13. The extensive loss of property by sea, from shipwrecks, founder- 

 ings, fires, and innumerable other accidents, many of which, according to 

 the evidence of the most experienced shipowners, nautical men, and others 

 examined by your committee, are clearly traceable to drunkenness in some 

 of the parties employed in the navigation and charge of such vessels, 

 where vigilance, had they been sober, would have been sufficient safe- 

 guards against their occurrence. 



" 14. The comparative inefficiency of the navy and army, in both of 

 which, according to the testimony of eminent naval and military officers 

 examined by your committee, intemperance is a canker-worm that eats 

 away its strength and discipline to the very core ; it being proved, beyond 

 all question, that one-sixth of the effective strength of the navy and a 

 much greater proportion of the army is as much destroyed as ifthe men 

 were slain in batHe by that most powerful ally of death, intoxicating 

 drinks; and that the greater number of accidents occurring in both 

 branches of the service, seven-eighths of the sickness, invalidirigs, and 

 discharges for incapacity, and nine tenths of all the acts of insubordination, 

 and the fearful punishments and executions to which these give rise, are 

 to be ascribed to drunkenness alone. 



" 16. The diminution of the physical power and longevity of a large por- 

 tion of the British population, by the destructive effects already described 

 as produced on individuals, the loss of personal beauty, the decline of 

 health, and the progressive decay of the bodily and mental powers; which 

 evils are accumulative in the amount of injury they inflict, as intemperate 

 parents, according to high medical testimony, give a taint to their offspring 

 even before its birth, and the poisonous stream of ardent spirits is conveyed 

 through the milk of the mother to the infant at the breast ; so that the 

 fountain of life, through which Nature supplies that pure and healthy nu- 

 triment of infancy, is poisoned at its very source, and a diseased and vitiated 

 appetite is thus created, which grows with its growth, and strengthens with 

 its increasing weakness and decay. 



" 17. The increase of pauperism in its most fearful shape, divested of 

 that sense of shame which would disdain to receive relief whilst honest in- 

 dustry could secure the humblest independence, and associated with a re- 

 gard of consequences, and a recklessness of all obligations, domestic or 

 social, which, according to the evidence of witnesses from the agricultural 

 districts, examined by your committee, has converted the pauper from a 

 grateful receiver of aid under unavoidable calamity (which was once the 

 general character of those receiving parish relief), to an idle and disorderly 

 clamourer for the right of being sustained by the industry of others, or a 

 profligate and licentious parent of illegitimate offspring. 



" 18. The spread of crime in every shape and form, from theft, fraud, 



