602 The Philosophy of Drunkenness. [JUNE, 



The fact is, that the drunkards of this class the " constitutional" are 

 not, constitutionally, drunkards alone, but men whose general round of 

 animal propensities have either been left unreforraed by education, or sub- 

 mit to its restrictions imperfectly only, and with difficulty. In most farni - 

 lies, above a certain rank in life, where there are many sons, the riotous 

 one long before he has began to think of " drinking" is destined for the 

 Navy. Such agents are capable of being controlled, and, from their power- 

 ful energy, become auxiliaries of the highest value where they are con- 

 trolled ; but they must be coerced with a discipline more stern and inflexi- 

 ble than that which society allows to be employed against its subjects in 

 general. The abundance of this character, it is among our British soldiers 

 and sailors, that even while, perhaps, it renders their physical available- 

 ness greater than that of any other fighting force in Europe makes the 

 means of enforcing strict and peremptory submission to command, indispen- 

 sable in our naval and military services. It was with perfect truth observed, 

 by Sir Hussey Vivian, in a late debate in the House of Commons, upon the 

 abolition of corporal punishment in the army that the soldier, who was 

 the first, when in quarters, to get drunk and break over the barrack-wall, 

 was also likely, upon an assault, to be first in the trenches of the enemy. 

 Military writers, and speakers upon military discipline or operations, 

 are apt enough to treat the soldier as a machine ; but they forget to con- 

 sider the rather necessary circumstance that he should be a fighting one. 

 Taking men as we take them for soldiers at hazard the ferocious and 

 combative spirit of the bull-dog, and the docility of the spaniel, are not 

 found united in the same individual. 



The second class of drinkers are the drunkards from misfortune : 



"The drunkard by necessity was never meant by nature to be dissipated. He 

 is perhaps a person of amiable dispositions, whom misfortune has overtaken, and 

 who, instead of bearing up manfully against it, endeavours to drown his sorrows 

 in liquor. It is an excess of sensibility, a partial mental weakness, an absolute 

 misery of the heart, which drives him on. Drunkenness, with him, is a conse- 

 quence of misfortune ; it is a solitary dissipation preying upon him in silence. 

 Such a man frequently dies broken-hearted, even before his excesses have had time 

 to destroy him by their own unassisted agency." 



The third, and most numerous class, are the drunkards from example and 

 habit : 



" Some become drunkards from excess of indulgence in youth. There are 

 parents who have a common custom of treating their children to wine, punch, and 

 other intoxicating liquors. This, in reality, is regularly bringing them up in an 

 apprenticeship to drunkenness. Others are taught the vice by frequenting drinking 

 clubs and masonic lodges. These are the genuine academies of tippling. Two- 

 thirds of the drunkards we meet with, have been there initiated in that love of 

 intemperance and boisterous irregularity which distinguish their future lives. Men 

 who are good singers are very apt to become drunkards, and, in truth, most of 

 them are so, more or less, especially if they have naturally much jovialty or 

 warmth of temperament. A fine voice to such men is a fatal accomplishment." 



The lower classes are said to be peculiarly addicted to liquor. The truth 

 is that intoxication is, or has been, the cheapest and readiest gratification, 

 always within their reach. Until within these few years there was 

 hardly an instance in which a Bolton or Macclesfield weaver could read ; 

 and many thousands the number is fortunately decreasing every day 

 are in that situation at present. Such a man had not, like the artisan 

 of London, half-a-dozen different cheap spectacles, or theatres, to enter- 

 tain himself at, after his work was over ; and the public-house was his 



