LIFE OF DR. EOLLESTON. lvii 



denombrement of all the circumstances of your case admits of, 

 or rather calls for, more than one additional application in this 

 investigation. When we come to deal with statistics of drunken- 

 ness we come to deal in reality with statistics of police-courts, 

 and therein with a set of exceedingly deceptive and not alto- 

 gether pleasant " personal equations." Now, it has been observed 

 by competent observers, that if part of the fine inflicted after 

 conviction for drunkenness be awarded to the functionary who 

 has brought such offenders to justice, such arrests are more 

 frequent (in Sweden) than they are under a regime which trusts 

 simply to that innate loathing for drunkenness and aversion to 

 disorder which make up the ideal of the genuine policeman. 

 But of late in Gothenburg, as I was informed, the former plan, 

 with its appeals to self-interest, has been laid aside ; and a form 

 of night and day blindness, undescribed by oculists, has, as I 

 was also informed, been observed to have fallen upon members 

 of the force. It is right, however, to add that previously those 

 functionaries may have been a little too Draconian in their 

 arrests ; and I was told of sailors, and especially of English 

 sailors, who were arrested on charges of drunkenness on no 

 better evidence than that of a hilarity little exceeding that which 

 a Bishop sometimes shows in an after-dinner speech, and of an 

 unsteadiness of gait which the accused avowed was but their 

 ordinary nautical walk.' 



Rolleston's advocacy of the Permissive Bill brought him in 

 several ways into contact with practical politics. When Bruce's 

 Act for the early closing of public-houses came into operation 

 it caused much excitement among the publicans, and led 

 to some rioting and smashing the windows of prominent tee- 

 totalers. The hostility of the liquor trade to the Liberal Party 

 had much to do with the opposition to Sir W. Vernon-Harcourt's 

 re-election when he vacated his seat on being made Home Secre- 

 tary in 1880. At any rate Mr. Hall, who then ousted him, 

 was an influential local brewer, and the Daily Neius attributed 

 the reversal of the former election to ' pot-boy politics,' so 

 that a fair inference may be made as to the motives of Professor 



