DRUNKENNESS. 359 



Which of the two, therefore, is it to be ? 

 " Drink deep, or taste not ?" 



We find we cannot take leave of the select committee without 

 giving its prospective remedies. Having, as we have seen, almost 

 closed the gin-shop door, and made a public walk from it into a 

 museum or reading room having taken off the duties on tea and 

 coffee, and abolished the taxes on knowledge not to mention the 

 temperance societies and the national system, in which children are 

 taught to loathe the sight of spirits they come upon us with their 

 ultimatums, and their fleerings, and flirtings. 



" 45. The ultimate or prospective remedies which have been strongly 

 urged by several witnesses, and which they think when public opinion 

 shall be sufficiently awakened to the great national importance of the 

 subject, may be safely recommended to include the following. 



" 46. The absolute prohibition of all distillation of ardent spirits from 

 any foreign country, or from our new colonies, of distilled spirits in any 

 shape. 



" 47. The equally absolute prohibition of all distillation of ardent spirits 

 from grain, the most important part of the food of man, in our own 

 country. 



" 48. The restriction of distillation from other materials, to the purposes 

 of the arts, manufactures, and medicine, and the confining the wholesale 

 and retail dealing in such articles, to chemists, druggists, and dispensaries 

 alone." 



It is a good joke, we doubt not, if we could but see it. Where- 

 fore are there prospective remedies ? They would have saved the 

 necessity of the immediate contrivances. But before it all goes, gen- 

 tlemen of the select committee, and as we shan't see it " never no 

 more," don't you mean to leave a little " except as medicine, under 

 the direction of the medical officers." 



We think, after all, we must consent to procure our spirits from 

 the shops about to be established under the immediate remedy 

 system, and lay in a small stock, that the transition may not be too 

 violent, when the ultimate or prospective remedy is applied. 



Mr. Buckingham,, we perceive, concludes his preface to the report 

 in these, words, addressed to the British public : 



" If they have doubts, let them read the evidence given before the 

 committee, which will soon be published ; and if every man, woman, and 

 child in Britain, who can be brought to examine it in the fair spirit of a 

 desire to know the truth, shall not think strong measures of legislation 

 necessary to cure the evil, I will abandon all hope of social and moral im- 

 provement, and admit that human nature is incorrigible, and all virtue but 

 an idle dream." 



This is a strange conclusion at which to arrive. One might have 

 imagined that the concurrent testimony of every man, woman, and 

 child in Britain examining evidence in a fair spirit of a desire to 

 know the truth, even though it were given against one's own con- 

 victions, might absolve humanity from the arrival of so fearful a 

 scepticism. Under such circumstances, Mr. Buckingham might 

 much more reasonably conclude that his own vanity was incorrigible, 

 and that his hope of shining as a legislator was but an idle dream. 



