One of the New Voters 



course try the body and weaken the digestion. To 

 distend the stomach with half a gallon of this liquor, 

 expressly compounded to ferment, is about the most 

 murderous thing a man could do murderous because 

 it exposes him to the risk of sunstroke. So vile a 

 drink there is not elsewhere in the world ; arrack, and 

 potato-spirit, and all the other killing extracts of 

 the distiller are not equal to it. Upon this abomin- 

 able mess the golden harvest of English fields is 

 gathered in. 



Some people have in consequence endeavoured to 

 induce the harvesters to accept a money payment 

 in place of beer, and to a certain extent successfully. 

 Even then, however, they must drink something. 

 Many manage on weak tea after a fashion, but not 

 so well as the abstainers would have us think. Others 

 have brewed for their men a miserable stuff in buckets, 

 an infusion of oatmeal, and got a few to drink it; 

 but English labourers will never drink oatmeal-water 

 unless they are paid to do it. If they are paid 

 extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for 

 them gratis, some will, of course, imbibe it, especially 

 if they see that thereby they may obtain little 

 favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. 

 By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a 

 present now and then food for themselves, cast- 

 off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is a 

 remarkable feature of human natural history, the 

 desire to proselytise. The spectacle of John Bull 

 jovial John Bull offering his men a bucket of oat- 

 meal liquor is not a pleasant one. Such a John BuD 

 ought to be ashamed of himself. 



The truth is the English farmer's man was and is, 

 and will be, a drinker of beer. Neither tea, nor 

 oatmeal, nor vinegar and water (coolly recommended 



93 



