180 Value of Human Life in Canada. 



Again, it will naturally be supposed that the free use of liquor 

 in Montreal is a principal cause of its extreme mortality ; the 

 Catholic rural population being peculiarly sober in their habits. 

 How great is the effect of drinking on health, the two following 

 classes of facts will testify. The first is from an analysis of the 

 books of eleven Sick Clubs in the town of Preston, Lancashire, 

 of which 8 were open to all, and three were restricted to teetotalers. 

 They are each corrected to a scale of 1,000 members. 



Average of Preston 

 Benefit Societies. 



Number of 

 members sick. 



Temperance clubs, 

 General clubs, 



139 

 233 



Average time 

 of sickness. 



3 wks. 2 ds. 

 7 u 4 a 



Total weeks 

 sick. 



458 

 1770 



Cost to 

 the Club. 



$1013 

 $4012 



The second is extracted from the "Journal de Societe de la 

 Morale Chretienne" for Aug. 1847. The testimony is very accu- 

 rately ascertained, and gives a comparison of strong country 

 labourers where liquor was distributed, with sicMy inhabitants of 

 towns where the drink money was expended on better food. 

 Both parties were employed on government work. In the country 

 districts of Holstein, Mecklembourg, Oldenbourg, and Hanovre, 

 where drink was given, out of 20,952 labourers employed, 472 

 became sick, or one out of every 44. Whereas out of 7107 

 labourers from the towns of Brunswick, Oldenbourg, and the 

 Hanseboroughs, to whom drink was not supplied, there were only 

 70 sick, or one out of every 90. 



But the deaths in towns do not so much result directly from 

 drinking, as is shown by comparing Montreal with Toronto and 

 Ottawa, where drinking was just as much followed, and yet the 

 mortality continued low. The usual effect of liquor is to weaken 

 the constitution of its votaries, and thus render them an easy prey 

 to the various forms of town disease, which abstainers are fre- 

 quently able to avoid or at least to throw off. 



The early exposure of infants by Catholic parents, for baptismal 

 purposes, has also been assigned as a cause for the extreme mor- 

 tality of Montreal. But this cause will affect, to an equal or even 

 greater extent, the adjacent or rural districts; whereas, out of 

 every 100 deaths in Montreal, 43 are of children under 5 years of 

 age ; in the country only 37 : while in the Protestant cities of 

 Upper Canada, the mortality is much greater, varying from 47 to 

 56. In England the fourth column of the original table furnishes 

 a very exact guide to the amount of preventible mortality. In 

 Canada there appear anomalies which would perhaps be explained 



