300 Beer, Scientifically and Socially Considered. [July, 



are, for the most part, beyond the reach of our working men ;" and 

 although much of the blame rests with the operatives themselves, 

 who prefer to give 6d. per quart for bad beer at a public-house, 

 rather than the same price for the finest Burton ale, which they 

 could easily procure by combination, yet it is perfectly true that a 

 large proportion of the beer now sold to the masses is totally unfit 

 for consumption. If any of my readers are disposed to doubt this, 

 let them read the following paragraph which I have extracted from 

 the proceedings of the Liverpool Select Vestry, as reported in the 

 Liverpool ' Daily Post ' of January last : — 



"poisonous beer and lunacy: a brewer's testimony." 



" A conversation as to the cost of pauper lunatics arose, and 

 Mr. Glover, addressing the committee, said he thought that, with 

 regard to lunacy, they began at the wrong end. He had visited 

 the lunatic asylums in Lancashire within the last three or four 

 months, and he had asked the masters of the institutions what was 

 the cause of the increase in pauper lunatics? The answer was 

 drunkenness, and he (Mr. Glover) believed that that was the case. 

 He thought the health committee ought to be asked to appoint 

 some sort of an inspector to look after the quality of the drink sold. 

 They appointed inspectors of meat and fish, and they condemned 

 bad fruit, but bad drink was ten times worse than all of them. 

 There was a law which, if put in force, punished people for using 

 poisonous ingredients in the making of beer — preventing them from 

 using grains of paradise, nux- vomica, oil of vitriol, ammonia, and 

 other things that were used in making beer. That was in addition 

 to malt and hops, but if only malt and hops were used there would 

 be no lunatics from drink. His impression was that all a working 

 man could spend in honestly brewed beer would not kill him or 

 drive him mad, if the beer were good. There were some dishonest 

 publicans as well as dishonest brewers ; and there were some pub- 

 licans who rode handsome chargers, and their wives were driven 

 about in splendid equipages, and they were doing great injury to 

 people and filling the workhouses. He believed the drink they 

 sold was not honest drink, but contained some of the things he had 

 described. When a brewer had beer that would not keep long, he 

 said to his customer, when it got a little sour, that he would change 

 it. It was taken back to the brewery when sour, and then the dis- 

 honest publican bought it for 10s. or 1/. a barrel. He then 

 went to the druggist's shop, and got something that neutralized 

 the acid ; and, was not the poor creature who afterwards drank 

 the beer likely to go mad ? If a man had a pint or two of good 

 honest beer, he would never go mad. The health committee ought 

 to attend to the matter, and see that good beer was given to the 

 people." 



