6 



lords, allow me to wonder at the different conceptions of different 



understandings. It appears to me that, since the spirit which the 

 distillers produce is allowed to enfeeble the limbs, vitiate the 

 blood, pervert the heart, and obscure the intellect, the number of 

 distillers should be no argument in their favour; for I never 

 heard that a law against theft was repealed or delayed because 

 thieves were numerous. It appears to me, my lords, that really 

 if so formidable a body are confederate against the virtue or the 

 lives of their fellow-citizens, it is time to put an end to the havoc, 

 and to interpose, whilst it is yet in our power, to stop the 

 destruction. So little, my lords, am I affected with the merit of 

 that wonderful skill which distillers are said to have attained, 

 that it is, in my opinion, no faculty of great use to mankind to 

 prepare palatable poison ; nor shall I ever contribute my inte- 

 rest for the reprieve of a murderer because he has, by long prac- 

 tice, obtained great dexterity in his trade. If their liquors are so 

 delicious that the people are tempted to their own destruction, 

 let us at least, my lords, secure them from their fatal draught, by 

 bursting the vials that contain them. Let us crush at once these 

 artists in human slaughter, who have reconciled their countrymen to 

 sickness and ruin, and spread over the pitfalls of debauchery such a 

 bait as cannot be resisted." 



This statement is confirmed by Charles Buxton, Esq., an 

 English Brewer, and a Member of the House of Commons, who 

 100 years after in his essay, " How to stop Drunkenness," said — 



"Not only does this vice produce all kinds of positive mischief, 

 but it also has a negative effect of great importance. It is the 

 mightiest of all the forces that clog the progress of good. It is 

 in vain that every engine is set to work tha.t philanthropy can 

 devise, when those whom we seek to benefit are habitually 

 tampering with their faculties of reason and will — soaking their 

 brains with beer, or inflaming them with ardent spirits. The 

 struggle of the school, and the library, and the church, all united 

 against the beerhouse and the gin palace, is but one development 

 of the war between heaven and hell. It is, in short, intoxication 

 that fills our jails ; it is intoxication that fills our lunatic asylums ; 

 and it is intoxication that fills our workhouses with poor. Were 

 it not for this one cause, pauperism would be nearly extinguished 

 in England. 



Looking, then, at the manifold and frightful evils that spring 

 from drunkenness, we think we were justified in saying that it is 

 the most dreadful of all the ills that afflict the British Isles. We 

 are convinced that, if a statesman who heartily wished to do the 

 utmost possible good to his country were thoughtfully to enquire 

 which of the topics of the day deserved the most intense force of 

 his attention, the true reply, the reply which would be exacted 

 by full deliberation, would be that he should study the means by 

 which this worst of plagues can be stayed. The intellectual, the 

 moral, and the religious welfare of our people, their material 



