ll

*ivh5Q 2B

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
Gift of
the Beinecke Foundation
in memory of
Edwin J. Beinecke
Class of 1907

CATHOLIC STUDIES IN SOCIAL REFORM

A SERIES OF MANUALS
EDITED BY
THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL GUILD

VII.
THE
DRINK QUESTION

BY THE
REV. JOSEPH KEATING, S. J.
Editor of " The Month "

LONDON
P. S. KING & SON,
ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER
1914

Mvkso 7 .

CONTENTS
CHAP. „ PAGE
PREFACE .  5
I THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 9
II THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION:
STATE INTERVENTION ... 28
III THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION:
VOLUNTARY EFFORTS ... 44
IV THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION . 54
V THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 73
VI THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION . 89
BIBLIOGRAPHY  106

PREFACE
In discussing a subject which, in the case of many
people, touches purse and person very nearly,
which threatens to alter cherished habits and inter
fere with liberty, which for at least a century has
been the battlefield of rival theories and interests,
it is necessary at the outset to state one's point of view
and to disclaim, as far as may be, any irrational and
unfounded prejudice. A teetotaler should obviously
make it his aim to write about the Drink Question
with sobriety. Whatever convictions he holds on
the matter should not be asserted without adequate
proofs : views which, for lack of conclusive evidence,
are still disputable, should not be stated as certain ;
the whole field should be surveyed ; objections should
be duly weighed and carefully answered. Above
all, his very zeal for the removal of the evils he
deplores should prevent him from weakening his
cause by the introduction of principles which are
unsound or statements that are inaccurate; and
the remedies he proposes should be essentially
practical, taking into account the unalterable facts
of human nature and what is unalterable in human
conditions. Like every other good cause, that of
Total Abstinence has suffered from the advocacy

6 PREFACE
of the fanatical and the ill-instructed. Much of the
prejudice with which it meets is due to the Pharisee-
ism or Manichseism of certain of its upholders, which
has betrayed them into assertions either grossly
exaggerated or wholly contrary to fact and prin
ciple. As we have said, it shares that fate with
others. The cause of Peace, of Kindness to Animals,
of the Emancipation of Women, nay, of Religion
itself— all these are frequently exposed to injury at
the hands of injudicious defenders ; so true is it
that zeal unregulated by prudence— w's consili
exfters — is self-destructive.
In the teaching of the Catholic Church no coun
tenance is given to fanaticism. While steadily
upholding the ideal, she confines her requirements
to what is at the moment practical. She does not
commit the folly of confounding counsel and precept :
maintaining the essential obligations of morality for
all, she recognizes degrees of perfection and varieties
of vocation. On the other hand, well- versed in the
frailties of human nature, she knows, too, the power
of Divine grace. Consequently she brings to the
consideration of the problem under debate profound
knowledge and mature wisdom, and none of the
remedies she suggests or approves will be found
lacking either in moderation or in insight.
The following pages, in accordance with the
general aim of the series, are an attempt to give a
clear analysis of that vast sociological problem, the
Drink Question, and to state to what extent and in
what way Catholic principles are concerned in its

PREFACE 7
solution. It is a matter of interest to every sincere
Christian. The authorities of the Church give every
encouragement to the Catholic Temperance Move
ment, which alone shows that it is in accordance
with her spirit. As lately as last April, 250 delegates
from the " International Catholic Anti- Alcoholic
Congress," assembled in Rome, received from the
Pope a most cordial letter of approval and support,
wherein His Holiness commends especially the
utility of showing
" what a scourge alcoholism is, in its economical, moral and physio
logical effects, by displaying its connexion with the deterioration
of the individual, whose health, intelligence, conscience and
liberty are diminished and ruined by it ; its connexion with the
deterioration of the family, in which it engenders confusion and
disorder ; with the deterioration of society, whose most important
interests are menaced by it " ;
and he concludes : —
" Hence among social works there is none more pressing than
this." On a right understanding of this problem, there
fore, very much must depend. Its ultimate solution
must come in these democratic days from a sane and
enlightened public opinion, approving of just and
prudent legislation. As a contribution to that right
understanding, the present discussion of the question
is under the auspices of the Catholic Social Guild,
respectfully submitted by
THE AUTHOR.
31, Farm St.,
Berkeley Sq., W.

THE DRINK QUESTION

CHAPTER I
THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION
i. The Problem stated.
The Drink Question concerns in varying degree both the
individual and the community, and so it has many aspects
— moral, sociological, economic, historical, political. It
may sometimes be the duty of the individual to determine
very definitely in his own interest to what extent he should
make use of alcoholic beverages : it is always the task of the
community, in view of the general welfare, to settle how
far it should permit the drink-traffic. The question arises
in regard to no other article of diet, liquid or solid. There
is no meat-problem or tea-problem — except, indeed, the
problem created for the indigent by the lack of such com
modities. It is the character itself of alcohol that calls for
consideration and action : it is the existence in nature of a
chemical compound, the constituents of which are widely
distributed and therefore easily procured, and which, ad
mitted into the human system, has certain strong and
immediate effects upon both body and mind — it is this that
demands the control both of the individual conscience and
of those responsible for social welfare. For, joined to the
fact of the existence of this substance, which is, speaking
generally, pleasurable in its immediate but harmful in its
remote effects, we have the fact that many of the com
munity, if left entirely to themselves, cannot be trusted
to use it properly and to avoid excess.
9

io THE DRINK QUESTION
2. What is "Strong Drink" ?
To understand the Drink Question, then, we must first
determine clearly what is meant by strong drink, and what
both experience and medical science have taught us of its
effects on the human body and mind. Strong drink is the
name given to liquid substances into the composition of
which enters a notable amount of alcohol. It is the presence
of this ingredient that differentiates the compound from all
other liquids, and is responsible for the physical and social
phenomena associated with its consumption.1 The chemical
formula for ordinary alcohol is C2H80, showing that it is
a compound of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Why
these elements, which in other combinations enter into
the very constitution of the human body, should, thus
compounded, have intoxicating or poisonous effects need
not be investigated here. It is enough to say that the same
harmless elements enter into the composition of the acknow
ledged poisons, strychnine, morphine, etc. ¦ Alcohol does
not exist in nature as a separate substance. It is a manu
factured compound, obtained by the fermentation of sugar
or starch, a process which liberates carbon dioxide from
the sugar solution and leaves water and alcohol in the
proportion of 87 to 13. That is to say, when the alcohol
set free reaches 13 per cent of the whole, fermentation, which
is caused by a vegetable process, viz., the growth of the
yeast plant, automatically ceases. Fermented liquors,
therefore, i.e., beers and wines, can never contain more than
13 per cent of alcohol as a result of the process, although, of
course, a greater quantity may be added subsequently.
Alcohol in a larger proportion is obtained directly by dis
tillation, i.e., by heating fermented liquids so that their
alcohol passes off in vapour which is again condensed.
Thus are produced the many varieties of " spirits." In
beers the percentage of alcohol ranges from 4 to 7 per cent,
1 At the same time, amongst the vast variety of beverages contain
ing alcohol, many have other toxic ingredients as well — " malt
liquors, for example, irritate far beyond their alcoholic strength "
O'Malley, The Cure of Alcoholism, p. 7 (Herder).

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION n
in ordinary wines from 9 to 22 per cent, in spirits from
40 to 56 per cent.1 However, as far as results are con
cerned, the process of manufacture makes no matter:
it is the presence of alcohol in greater or less proportion that
constitutes strong drink.
3. Is Alcohol a Food? No.
There has been and still lingers a prolonged controversy
amongst medical men as to the final classification of alcohol.
Is it to be reckoned as a food or not ? — a food being some
thing that can be assimilated and used by the human
organism for the supply of waste. A lay person cannot well
interfere magisterially in such a dispute ; still, such a one
is competent to judge of its general upshot as declared by
responsible authorities. We may first quote the expert
employed by the Encyclopedia Britannica (XI edition), who,
writing on " Alcohol " {Pharmacology, Toxicology, and
Therapeutics of), says, in regard to one branch of its use :
" The desirable effects produced by alcohol on the stomach are
worth obtaining only in cases of acute diseases. In chronic
disease and in health the use of alcohol as an aid to digestion is
without the support of clinical or laboratory experience, the
beneficial action being at least neutralized by undesirable effects
produced elsewhere."
Then, after pointing out its value as a drug in cases of syn
cope, he continues :
" The drug exerts a noteworthy action upon the body-tempera
ture. As it dilates the blood-vessels of the skin it increases the
subjective sensation of warmth. The actual consequence, how
ever, is that more heat than before is necessarily lost from the
surface of the body. Alcohol also diminishes the oxidation which
is the main source of the" body heat. It follows that the drug is
an anti-pyretic, and it is hence largely used in fevers as a means

1 It is well known that various patent tonics, medicated wines,
" meat extracts," and the like, even those warranted " free from
alcohol " and" recommended for inebriates," contain a high percent
age of this substance. See analysed list of 60 American proprietary
tonics in O'Malley, op. tit., pp. 5-6.

12 THE DRINK QUESTION
of reducing the temperature.1 The largest amount of alcohol
that can be burnt up within the healthy body in twenty-tour
hours is i \ oz., but it must be consumed in great dilution and
divided into small doses, taken every four hours.
Testimony to the same effect is given in the Catholic En
cyclopedia under " Alcoholism," where it is claimed that :
" Modern knowledge justifies the belief that in health alcohol
is never a food in any sense, be the quantity great or small, but
is always a poison, biologically or physiologically speaking;
in disease it is neither a food nor a poison, but may be a suitable
or helpful drug. It should be rightly called what it rightly is, a
drug, and not a drink : a narcotic, and not a tonic."
This opinion is endorsed by many medical pronouncements,
both corporate and individual, and it would appear that
there is a growing consensus in it favour.
In the year 1903 an international manifesto, signed by
634 doctors, including some of the most eminent names
in Europe and America, was published to the effect that :
" (1) Experiments have demonstrated that even small quanti
ties of alcohol are injurious and that it is not a food ; (2) that it
increases liability to disease and shortens life ; (3) that all animal
functions are best performed without alcohol, any contrary
opinion being a delusion ; (4) that alcohol injures the offspring
and leads to the deterioration of the race, especially when taken
by mothers."
A still more significant document of British origin was
issued in July 1904. This was a petition signed by 14,718
registered doctors and presented to the English Board
of Education urging that instruction on various points of
hygiene, and particularly on the harmful nature and results
of alcohol, should be made compulsory in public elementary
schools. In accordance with this petition a Temperance
1 It would seem from hospital practice that its use in fevers is
becoming less recognized. Whereas in 1895 the London Metropolitan
hospitals spent ^80 per 1000 fever patients on " stimulants," in 1909
the expenditure was £g, and the decrease in the interval was practi
cally uniform. Horsley and Sturge, Alcohol and the Human Bodv
pp. 7, 8.

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 13
Syllabus came into force in 1909. Three years earlier the
Irish Education Commissioners had introduced a similar
syllabus, and a year later the Scottish Department followed
suit. Moreover, in March 1907, at a largely-attended meeting
of medical men in London, very strong condemnatory views
of the use of alcohol in health were expressed.
4. Is Alcohol a Food? Yes.
But now occurred one of those incidents which inevitably
throw a certain amount of discredit on all medical assertions
of this sort. The Lancet at the end of the same month pub
lished a manifesto claiming to represent " the opinions of
the leading clinical teachers as well as of the great majority
of medical practitioners." After eulogizing alcohol as a
" rapid and trustworthy restorative in disease " the mani
festo proceeds :
" As an article of diet we hold that the universal belief of civ
ilized mankind that the moderate use of alcoholic beverages is,
for adults, usually beneficial, is amply justified."
Attached to this document were the names of sixteen
eminent physicians, men who, like Sir W. Bennett and Sir
James Crichton-Browne, are at the top of their profession in
their respective branches. A counter-statement of this
kind, claiming to voice the opinions of the bulk of the
faculty, would go far to show that the true nature of alcohol
is still undecided. On the other hand, it remains, as far
as we know, a solitary pronouncement on that particular
side, and it was itself immediately challenged with the
utmost vigour by other equally experienced physicians, like
Sir Frederick Treves and Sir James Barr. Their mani
festo, which also appeared in the Lancet, stated with regard
to the previous document : " We gravely dissent from such
of its teaching, nor can we accept it as an authoritative
statement of recognized medical opinion on the matter " ; and
they proceeded : " We strongly believe that alcohol is un
necessary as an article of consumption in the case of healthy
men and women, and that its general use could be dis
continued without detriment to the world's welfare "—a

14 THE DRINK QUESTION
cautious statement which gathers weight from its studious
moderation.1
5. Balance of opinion against the Food-value of Alcohol.
When we turn to the assertions of individual physicians
we find, naturally enough, the same phenomenon— a series
of weighty pronouncements condemnatory of the use of
alcohol,2 and a number, not so large nor perhaps so weighty,
of pleas for its use. This indecisive note regarding a matter
which has been under close observation for at least a
century is somewhat disconcerting to those who seek for
guidance, but it would seem due, partially at least, to the
vagueness of the word " moderate " in connexion with
drinking, to a confusion between the effects of strong drink
in health and in disease, and to its claims to be a food as
well as a drug. Still, by this time the lay mind has a right,
one would think, to expect from the faculty a reasoned
and fairly unanimous decision as to the physical effects of
the consumption of alcohol in whatever quantity or com
bination. 3
6. A Medical Indictment of Alcohol.
No doubt some physicians have responded to the call.
1 Other more recent and more emphatic declarations might be
cited, that, for instance, of 10 1 doctors in North Wales (May 19 10)
deprecating use of alcohol even in disease ; that of 50 Birmingham
doctors (Jan. 1912) condemning its use even in small quantities; that
of 160 Midland doctors in 1913, denying that alcohol is useful either
as a food or a drug.
8 See Doctors and Drinking, id. (U.K. Alliance). The Drink
Handbook (Irish Messenger Office).
8 We are still told of the nourishing qualities of this or that alcoholic
beverage. " There is more nourishment in a bottle of porter," said
an Irish Guardian of the Poor recently, " than in a whole sheep."
(Quoted by Rev. W. J. Mulcahy, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, August
1913. Porter, as a matter of fact, contains less nourishment than
ale, and in one pint of Bass there are 8284 grains of water, 449 of
alcohol, 400 of dextrine or gum (sugar), and a few grains of albumen.
Baron Liebig's testimony is better worthy of credence : " As much
flour or meal as will lie on the point of a table-knife is more nutritious
than nine quarts of the best beer. . . . Beer, wine, spirits, etc., furnish
no element capable of entering into the composition of blood, muscular
fibre, or any part which is the seat of the vital principle."

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 15
No student of the subject can ignore Alcohol and the Human
Body, by Sir Victor Horsley and Dr. Mary Sturge,1 which is a
calmly scientific and thoroughly exhaustive discussion of
alcohol in illustration of its effects upon the nervous system,
the intellect and various intellectual processes, the digestion
and internal organs, the blood and the heart, and the general
health of the whole body. The investigation is very minute
and well supported by experiment and observation, and the
result pronounces against the use of alcohol all along the
line. We have seen no detailed answer to "this book : only
general statements to the effect that one cannot argue from
the effects of pure alcohol to its effects in combination, or
from the effects of alcohol on plants and irrational animals
to its effects on human beings. Individual contentions to be
found in the book have been disputed, as, for instance, the
impaired vitality of the children of drunken parents,2 but it
remains the most formidable indictment of the use of
alcohol ever penned. Perhaps, however, the summary
which we take from Dr. O'Malley of the chief distinctions
between food and alcohol will command a wider acceptance
as being less dogmatically expressed :
" 1. The same quantity of food will always produce the same
effect in a healthy body : the quantity of alcohol must
be steadily increased to produce the first given effect.
"2. The habitual use of food does not induce a desire for an
ever-increasing amount : such use of alcohol induces
this desire.
" 3. After habitual use of food a sudden abstinence causes no
derangement of the central nervous system : such
abstinence from alcohol after habitual use causes this
disturbance.
" 4. Foods oxidize slowly in the body : alcohol oxidizes rapidly.
"5. Foods are stored in the body : alcohol is not stored.
" 6. Food increases the activity of the muscular and cerebral
cells : alcohol diminishes this activity.

1 Fourth Edition, 191 1 (Macmillan, is.).
' See correspondence in The Times initiated May 21, 1911, by
Dr. Karl Pearson, whose contention is refuted by Sir Thomas
Whittaker in " Drink and Degeneracy " (Alliance Year-Book, 191 1,
p. 17).

16 THE DRINK QUESTION
" 7. Food increases the excretion of carbonic acid : alcohol
"8 FoiTsSengthens and steadies the muscles: alcohol
weakens and unsteadies the muscles.
7. Disuse of Alcohol in Hospital-treatment.
There remain two other evidences as to the effects of
strong drink, which, being in a sense impersonal and quite
objective, may carry more weight than the warnings of
individuals. These are the growing disuse of stimulants
in public hospitals, and the attitude of the insurance com
panies towards the drinker. A few words on each will
suffice. Statistics 2 from seven large London hospitals show that
the expenditure on alcoholic liquors dropped in the forty
years ending 1902 from £7,712 to £2,925, whilst that on
milk rose from £3,026 to £9,035 in the same period, the
numbers of patients continually increasing the while. In
thirty years at the Wandsworth Union the annual cost of
wine and spirits fell from £37r to £2 js. $d., whilst the
patients increased fourfold. In twelve Dublin hospitals
the expenditure on stimulants totalled in 1909 £321 is. gd.
whereas in 1884 it had been £1,330 16s. yd., a decrease of
82 per cent. The per capita expenditure in the Leeds
General Infirmary was 6s. bd. in 1869, and in 191 2, only 2d.
There seems no doubt that this experience is general, and
it obviously argues greater abstinence from stimulants
amongst the staff and a decreasing employment of them
for the patients.
8. Witness of Insurance Societies against the Drinker.
Health Insurance Societies, with their careful investi
gations and prolonged and widespread experience, afford
perhaps the most striking testimony against the benefit to
health and longevity of intoxicating beverages.

1 The Cure of Alcoholism, by A. O'Malley, pp. 11-12.
* Quoted in Alcohol and the Human Body, pp. 4—8.

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 17
From Insurance statistics quoted by Norman Porritt,1
we gather that total abstainers have a greater expectation
of life over the average " English life," ranging from about
seven or eight years at the age of sixteen to two or three
years at the age of fifty. Moreover, 7 per 1,000 non-
abstainers, and only 5 per 1,000 abstainers die at the age
of twenty-five, whilst at the age of sixty the mortality
per 1,000 is — non-abstainers, 39 abstainers 25. Similar
results are obtained in regard to sickness liability,
in spite of the additional years of the abstainers, showing
that life is not only more prolonged, but healthier, if lived
without alcoholic stimulants. Now, the number of habitual
drunkards amongst voluntarily insured people 2 is not large,
because the percentage of the population thus addicted is not
itself very great, and of these very few are admitted to
insurance ; hence the invalidity and abbreviation of life
borne out by these figures, which give us exact knowledge,
is directly traceable to alcohol taken in moderation. Apart
from accident and other abnormal circumstances, the
drinker, even though he does not rank as immoderate, has
on the average an appreciably shorter and less healthy life
than the abstainer.
9. Summary of General Effects.
Our study of the nature of the drink question has brought
us thus far, viz., that the substance which gives to
intoxicating beverages their attraction must be ranked with
the poisons, not with the genuine foods ; moreover, that, to
make it innocuous to the human system, it must be taken
in very small quantities and copiously diluted. It is
useful, or at any rate still used, as a remedy for certain
diseases : the healthy human body, most doctors will say,
is better without it. But being pleasant in some of its
immediate effects on body and mind, it is used habitually
by a vast number of people, by many of them to excess.
1 Article on " National Insurance and the Drink Problem," Alliance-
Year-Book for 1913. See also Fifty Doctors against Alcohol, p. 90 ;
Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, article "Drunkenness."
2 The figures above do not rest, of course, upon the returns of the
present National Insurance Act. B

18 THE DRINK QUESTION
This fact forms the second element in the problem which we
must now consider.
10. The Proper Function of Natural Appetites.
The restraint which organized society must exercise on
those of its members who are, generally speaking, too
morally weak to withstand constant temptation to
anti-social excess arises from the nature of temptation itself.
Temptation in general is an appeal to passion or appetite
to gratify itself at the expense of higher or wider interests.
Body and soul alike, we are equipped with various desires
and exigencies, the due satisfaction of which promotes our
development. The race would perish but for the sexual
instinct ; the body would grow feeble and waste away
but for the craving for food and drink ; the mind would
stagnate into atrophy but for the impulses of curiosity.
Still, all these tendencies are instinctive, not rational.
They react uniformly in presence of their appropriate
objects, irrespective of all other circumstances. As means
to an end, not ends in themselves, they need the control
and guidance of reason to attain the object for which they.
are intended. For of themselves they provide no check
save that which arises from exhaustion. If over-exercised,
they become blunted and deadened, requiring a growing
intensity of stimulus. Thus, apart from any higher law,
enlightened self-interest counsels moderation.
n. The Abuse of Appetite.
But few individuals are uniformly led by what is best in
the long run, and mankind in the bulk is always ready to
forgo future advantage for the sake of present enjoyment.
Consequently, in the general interest, the State has to enact
a variety of restrictive laws, the object of which is to lessen
the force of temptations leading to injurious excess, either
by diminishing the occasions of wrong-doing or adding
positive penalties to those induced by nature. As regards
its citizens the State acts as wise parents do in regard to their
children. Before reason begins to operate, children are
ruled entirely by the will of others. When reason dawns

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 19
it is appealed to, and the better trained the child is, the
less external law is needed to control it. A perfectly
educated child not only knows what is right but does it
easily and willingly. The operation of conscience obviates
to a large extent the necessity of a rule imposed from without.
But what is possible in the small community of the family
is not to be looked for in society at large. The whole
history of the world shows that, under whatever religious dis
pensation and in whatever degree of material civilization,
many men elect to guide themselves in certain particulars
by appetite rather than by reason and law. Because
the Creator has attached pleasurable sensations to certain
bodily functions to secure their being duly employed,
many people exercise those functions merely for the sake
of the pleasure, disregarding or even counteracting the
ordained end. Liberty of choice, joined with the power of
shutting one's eyes to remoter consequences, takes, as a
matter of historical fact, this particular direction, and it
would be flying in the face of all experience for those in
authority to leave this out of consideration.
12. The Duty of the State.
Law has been defined as "a regulation according to
reason promulgated by the head of a community for the
common welfare." J
Therefore, the more one is ruled by reason the less will
he need the control of law. But, until reason is universally
restored to its lawful pre-eminence, its dictates must be
supported by external authority clothed with the pre
rogative of force. Mankind is still, morally considered, in an
infantile condition, not because men have not come to the
use of reason, but because they will not use the reason they
have. " Quarry the granite rock with razors," cries New
man, " or moor the vessel with a thread of silk : then may
you hope, with such keen and delicate instruments as human
knowledge and human reason, to contend against those
giants, the passion and the pride of man." There is much
truth in Paine's dictum — " Society is produced by our wants
i St. Thomas, Summa Theol., i-n, 90, 4,

20 THE DRINK QUESTION
and Government by our wickedness." And even were the
vast majority reasonable and temperate, still, the presence
in society of others who had thrown off the moral law, would
of itself necessitate much restrictive legislation. Law is for
the repression of the wicked and the help of the weak, yet its
yoke must also be borne by the strong and the good, because
we are all members one of another. Immense sums must
be spent by the community in maintaining a police force
because otherwise certain of its members would rob, or
murder, or violate social justice in other ways. Again, human
law must come to the aid of morality in its narrower sense
owing to the sad perversion of the means of reproduction
which, too prevalent as it is, would be far more common
and disastrous if wholly unchecked. And, in regard to our
immediate subject, the appeal made to bodily appetite by
alcoholic liquor proves, and has always proved, too strong for
many people to resist. Therefore the State contrives to
make such drink comparatively dear and somewhat diffi
cult of access. It hedges round its sale with various
restrictions as regards time and place and quantity. More
over, it punishes the individual who drinks to excess,
especially if his condition is a danger to others.
13. The Boundaries of Liberty and Law.
One aspect of the Drink Question, therefore, is how far,
for the interests of the weak and the correction of the vicious,
external authority can proceed by restrictive legislation
without unduly interfering with personal liberty, and thus
creating a greater abuse than that which it seeks to remedy.
In times of martial law many abuses are swept away which
would be immovable by process of ordinary leglislation, but
to live permanently under such summary jurisdiction would
be to pay too dearly for its advantages. Thus, granting
that there are many who can be trusted to use alcoholic
liquor in moderation, we may question whether general
sobriety would not be purchased at too high a price by total
and drastic prohibition of the manufacture of strong drink.
Is the abuse so general and so harmful and otherwise so
irremediable as to justify the abolition of the use ? Tern-

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 21
perance reformers in many lands have come to that con
clusion, with what grounds in fact and principle we shall
afterwards consider.1 On the other hand, many, especially
those interested in the sale of drink, will be found to regard
further State interference as encroaching too far upon the
liberty of the subject.2
14. The great Importance of Liberty.
For liberty, self-determination, freedom of choice, is a
real good, a treasure to be jealously guarded as the highest
prerogative of man and necessary for the accomplishment
of his end. Unless there is freedom to choose, there is no
merit in choosing aright ; were there no temptations to
excess, there were little credit in being moderate ; if the
penalties of wrong-doing were immediate and overwhelming,
then virtue would be practically compulsory. It is no
function, therefore, of the State, even were it possible, to
remove every form of temptation and to apply to vice here
below the sanctions which Providence has ordinarily re
served till the next life. No doubt, human Government
would be easier if the possibilities of going wrong were
diminished, but life would proportionately cease to be a
school of character and a seed-plot of merit. The tendency
of every authority is, in the interests of efficiency, speed,
and economy, to override and suppress everything that
cannot be reduced to system. The State, which in the
divine order exists for the individual, in order to secure for
him the mental, material, and social surroundings necessary
for his development, is always under the temptation to
1 See later, pp. 89, 90.
2 On this point it is well to record that the preposterous notion
of free-trade in strong drink, actually advocated to-day by certain
opponents of temperance legislation, was repudiated more than
half a century ago by the " Licensed Victuallers' Protection Associa
tion," who declared in their annual report : " Your Committee
are anxious that every part of the community should feel and say
that to throw open ' The Trade ' would be to throw open the
floodgates of vice and drunkenness, which would have the effect of
counteracting the efforts made to instruct and elevate the people of
the land." Whether dictated by regard for morality or monopoly,
this statement is equally valuable. It is merely a question of degree
of restriction.

22 THE DRINK QUESTION
look upon itself as an end in itself. One need only mention
in illustration the later Napoleonic regime. Consequently,
there is a real necessity to keep careful watch upon this
tendency, lest under such an hallucination the State should
sacrifice to mere symmetry much that is precious and indeed
essential to progress.1 There is always danger in rooting
up tares, lest the wheat should also be destroyed.
A distinction must further be made which has a direct
bearing on this question. Laws which aim at repressing
what in itself is an evil thing, like robbery or impurity, are
at once more necessary and more tolerable than those which
merely aim at checking the abuse of something lawful.
Greater vigilance is, therefore, needed in the latter case to
prevent encroachment on liberty. Only burglars can
complain of legislation necessary to protect property, whereas
many reasonable men may feel aggrieved at Prohibition
laws. This aspect, viz., the lawfulness of strong drink in
moderation, viewed as a means of giving pleasure, is one
which has been much obscured by earnest advocates of
temperance, possessed of zeal not according to knowledge.
It will be discussed more fully in the chapter on the Ethics
of the Question.2
15. Economic Complications.
Hitherto, we have considered the matter merely from the
point of view of the individual. If weak, he is safeguarded,
if wicked he is checked, if strong he is incommoded by the
methods adopted to diminish temptation. The balance of
advantage, as we shall see later, rests with some degree of
restriction. What the moderate man loses as an individual,
he more than recovers as a member of a community kept
from grave disorder by such legislation. But there is also
the standpoint of the community as a whole to be considered.
Besides the gain to order and decency which is received by
l A uniform system of State education would presumably make
for cheapness and success, but since religion necessarily enters into
education, and since this is a country of mixed religions, the attempt
to enforce uniformity results in tyranny and injustice
8 Infra, p. 54.

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 23
lessening the abuse of strong drink, the State is benefited
financially by the heavy taxes which it levies on this article
of widespread consumption. The Drink Question is there
fore complicated by the fact that the revenues of the com
munity would suffer to a large extent were the demand for
drink to be notably decreased. This point need only be
mentioned here to indicate the presence of one factor in
the problem which constantly operates to hinder or delay
reforms — legal vested interests, public as well as private.
Its force will be estimated later.
16. Results in spite of Preventive Efforts.
Now having briefly indicated the general factors involved
— the existence of pleasant yet harmful beverages, the
liberty and feebleness of the individual, the need of restraint,
the function of the State, the conflicting claims of finance
and social well-being, etc. — we may turn to the actual
condition in which we find the Drink Question to-day.
We have said that, men being what they are and strong
drink being what it is, moral considerations alone do not
prove powerful enough to prevent the former misusing the
latter. It is a conclusion that might be established a priori.
Let us now bring forward testimony in support of it, con
fining our attention mainly to the state of affairs in the
British Isles.
Remembering that indulgence in strong drink is for most
people a luxury, something — to put it in the mildest form —
that is not necessary for bodily well-being, that can be given
up without inconvenience or loss, we find that in the past
three years the community spent £491,000,000 in this
unnecessary fashion, the amounts for 1911, 1912, 1913 being
respectively, £162,797,229, £161,553,330, ^^^i^oo.1
The expenditure necessary for maintaining during the same
period all national charges — the Army and Navy, Education,
Law, and Police, Poor Law, Old Age Pensions, Insurance,
Interest on the National Debt, etc., etc. — was £539,167,000,
1 The "Drink Bill " is estimated by the amount of liquor retained
for consumption reckoned at retail prices and not allowing for
adulteration.

24 THE DRINK QUESTION
i.e. only about £48,000,000 more. In other words, if this
voluntary tax on wages and income were abolished nearly
enough money would be set free to pay all other national
charges ! 1 Moreover, the bulk of it, over £100,000,000, is
provided by the wage-earners— by those, that is, the whole
of whose wages and more is generally needed for the decent
upkeep of themselves and families. This vast sum, there
fore, spent on an article of luxury does not represent a
surplus which might be spent or saved, but is withdrawn
from what is required properly to feed and clothe and house
those who spend it and their dependents. There are other
forms of improvidence and extravagance, as we well know,
but surely none that so gravely violates social order and
justice.
17. Other Evil Consequences.
Our point is that this expenditure is excessive, in many
cases absolutely, in very many relatively. The innocuous
minimum of alcohol is habitually exceeded by those who
drink, and more money is nearly always spent than can be
afforded. And naturally the evil economic effects are most
keenly felt by the wage-earners. The well-to-do may, and
do, waste money and health in excessive drinking, but the
social results of their folly are not so marked and manifest.
The wage-earner, by drinking more than his body or purse
allows, decreases his own productiveness, fives a more sickly
life, dies earlier than he need, begets fewer and weaker
children, and rears less advantageously those he has.
These are some of the natural ill consequences. How
greatly a habit of bodily self-indulgence injures, in the case
of all classes, the spiritual faculties need hardly be pointed
out. Man's perfection lies mainly in his spiritual develop
ment, in self-discipline, which means the supremacy of
reason over appetite, in the cultivation of the mind and soul
1 The State would, as just indicated, lose the revenue raised by the
Drink Traffic, some ^40,000,000, but much more than that would be
saved in the reduction of various palliatives and remedies — hospitals
asylums, poor-houses, police and magistrates, law-proceedings —
necessitated in large measure by excess : see p. 76.

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 25
— all of which pursuits are hampered, if not positively
counteracted, by serving and fostering beyond due limits
a mere bodily desire, which not unseldom develops into an
almost irresistible craving.
18. Why, then, do People drink to Excess ?
This phenomenon forms part of the Drink Question and
has been already touched upon. To resist a strong and
persistent temptation a continued effort is necessary, which
best takes the shape of devotion to a harmless counter-
attraction of some sort. Owing to their imperfect and often
de-Christianized education and the general circumstances
of their lives, the bulk of those to whom drink is a strong
temptation rarely have access to any counter-attraction.
Their upbringing and environment make ±,hem weak of will.
They need recreation, and in present conditions drink offers
them the readiest and cheapest means of relief from the
misery and monotony of their daily lives. We may cast
much of the blame on this misery and monotony, not upon
its poor victims. The Drink Question, after all, is not the
most fundamental problem with which modern civilization
is faced. It is true that excessive drinking intensifies all
the other evils we deplore, but it is not the cause of them all.
Sweating, bad housing, insufficient food, imperfect education,
excessive facilities for excess, adulterated liquor even — all
the de-humanizing elements that disgrace our industrial
system, enter essentially into the Drink Question, and the
remedies for all, to be effectual, must be sought simul
taneously. A rise in wages, unaccompanied by a rise in
recreative ideals, would but intensify the evil.
But drinking habits cannot altogether be put down to
miserable environment, else excess would be unknown else
where. Ignorance of the true character of alcohol, fostered
by secular tradition and not yet adequately dispelled by the
medical faculty, goes for very much. Inveterate social habits,
buttressed by centuries of literature, both poetry and prose,
in praise of strong drink, count for something also. There
is no doubt that alcoholic liquor breaks down the control
which a person has over his own faculties, and therefore

26 THE DRINK QUESTION
removes that caution and self-regard which are apt to be a
restraint on social intercourse. The reformer will gam
nothing by shutting his eyes to the convivial qualities of
strong drink. For their sake, the wage-earner will often
waste his very substance, toil hard and late, go cold and
hungry and steel his heart to the claims of his family. It
is often the only pleasure he knows ; it is certainly the
easiest attainable : it is unfortunately one which enslaves
while it pleases. So the drink problem will not be solved
by mere exposition of the evils of excess : those who seek
their pleasures so must not only be shielded by legislation1
from unnecessary temptation, but must be given other and
better means of recreation ; must, indeed, if moral reforma
tion is to be effective, be given other and higher motives
than mere self-regarding prudence.
19. Urgency of the Problem.
The Problem remains in spite of centuries of legislative
effort — a salutary testimony to the fact that physical
remedies and external force will not cure moral disorders,
although they may help. The State can do much to lessen
the incidence of temptation : religion alone can adequately
strengthen the will.
The Drink Question concerns the world as a whole.
Nearly all other countries exhibit the same phenomena as
do the British Isles. Germany is said to spend on intoxi
cants three times as much as she does on her Army and
Navy, and seven times as much as on her schools. The
United States, in spite of vigorous restrictive legislation,
consumes but little less per capita than the United King
dom. The amount in 1911 was $1,568,470,514 2 — one and
a half times the National Debt. In France and Russia,
under systems of, practically, Free Trade and State Mono-
1 In face of much foolish denial we have to insist on the need and
the effectiveness of wise legislation in keeping the Drink Traffic
under due control. Finland, fifty years ago the most drunken nation
in Europe, has been sobered in two generations by wise laws both
constructive and prohibitive.
' The American Grocer, quoted in O'Malley, op. cit., p. 127.

THE NATURE OF THE QUESTION 27
poly respectively, the expenditure on alcoholic liquor is
increasing rapidly. The problem confronts us every
where : it is a real peril to Christian civilization, a real
drag on Christian progress. The constant and determined
efforts of so many nations show that the question is not the
creation of a few Puritanical faddists. Congresses, National and
International, against Alcoholic Excess, are of yearly occur
rence : war is being everywhere waged against the traditional
ignorance of ages in regard to the nature of this problem,
and against the malign influence of personal profit that
exploits the disastrous drinking habit. The campaign has
been a long one. For our present instruction we may glance
at its past progress, conducted as it has been both by the
regular and volunteer forces of the community, by the State
and the temperance organizations.

CHAPTER II
THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION : STATE INTER
VENTION
i. Scope of the History.
Before the use of alcoholic beverages became general,
there was obviously no Drink Question, so its history begins
when demand gave rise to brewing on a large scale. In
this record, therefore, must be included an account of
the growth of drinking habits amongst the people, of the
official efforts made by the State to check them, and of the
various voluntary agencies which have arisen both to safe
guard individuals from the ravages of drink, and, by creating
a public opinion adverse to its abuse, to prepare the
ground for efficient legislation.
2. Drunkenness an ancient Phenomenon.
The exact date of the discovery of fermented liquor
cannot, of course, be determined, but the story of Noah in
Genesis shows that it was known shortly after, if not before,
the Deluge. In the earliest literatures of every land are
to be found references to drunkenness. The Scriptures
of the Old Testament contain many warnings against the
abuse of wine : Greek and Roman poets, and moralists
in pagan times, were well aware of its dangerous qualities :
the other Aryan races who overran the north of Europe
brewed their own forms of intoxicants — beer and mead
and cider. And in early Christian times we find, in the
Apostolic writings and the subsequent commentaries upon
them, a full recognition of the grave evil of drunkenness
and some indication of its prevalence. St. Augustine, in
the fourth century, preached against the vice in North
28

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 29
Africa with all the vehemence of a modern reformer ;
tracing the evil customs of celebrating feasts by excessive
drink to the survival of Paganism. St. Caesarius, in the
south of France a hundred years later, initiated a temperance
crusade amongst the half-civilized and lately converted
barbarians who had subjugated the province. The Ger
manic races, as all records show, were much addicted to
excess. But we may perhaps consider in more detail
and with greater profit the spread of drunkenness amongst
the earlier inhabitants of these islands. Although it would
not be safe to take pulpit denunciations quite literally —
the preacher, contemplating the ideal and carried away by
feeling, does not always qualify his assertions as they
demand — still, the testimony of early missionaries to
Britain is too explicit and too consistent to leave room for
doubt that there Christianity had to contend against the
drunken habits of centuries of heathenism. St. Boniface,
who was a Saxon, writing to Cuthbert, Archbishop of
Canterbury, in the eighth century, says, " It is reported
that in your dioceses the vice of drunkenness is too fre
quent," affecting, he goes on to say, some of the pastors
of the Church. " This is an evil," he continues, " peculiar
to pagans and to our race. Neither the Franks nor the
Gauls, nor the Lombards, nor the Romans, nor the Greeks
commit it." J The successive conquests of the land by
Danes and Normans did nothing to mitigate the evil.
The Danes had nothing to learn from the English in this
matter, and the Normans proved their apt pupils. William
of Malmesbury attributed the downfall of Saxon England
to the drunkenness of its people, and says that their con
querors also fell victims to the habit.2
Less information comes to us regarding the drinking
habits of the ancient Irish. Gerald Barry, the Welsh
writer (1175-1200), whilst praising the general zeal and
decorum of the Irish clergy, insinuates that they made up
for it by nightly potations, but he gives no evidence for
his charge, and his anti-Irish bias largely discredits his
1 Quoted by Bridgett, The Discipline of Drink, p. 77.
1 Bridgett, ibid., p. 78.

30 THE DRINK QUESTION
testimony. The ancient Irish penitentiaries cited in
Cardinal Moran's Essays on the Early Irish Church, gives no
indication of the frequency of drunkenness, nor does Bl.
Edmund Campion, who wrote his Account of Ireland m 1571,
speak of the people at large as being given to this vice. A
more hostile witness, the poet Spencer, is equally silent. It
would seem, however, that the general use of distilled spirits 1
as a beverage, a use which has profoundly modified the
whole question, began in Ireland in the sixteenth century
or earlier. But even there, owing to State action, its use
became very much restricted until much later. The cus
toms of Scotland resembled those of England, except that
its close connection with France created a practice of
drinking wine rather than ale.
3. The Reformation and Drinking.
It will not be denied, even by those who hold that the
Reformation as a whole made for righteousness, that the
general loosening of religious bonds and overthrow of
ancient traditions which characterized that epoch, brought
about a great increase in public vice. This result was
inevitable. Remove or discredit the accepted traditional
sanctions of sin, and temptation acquires a double force.
By the Reformation the old penitential discipline of the
Church was swept away and nothing effective put in its
place. The consequence in regard to this particular form
of immorality, excessive drinking, was most marked, and it
has been commented on by most historians.
Cecil, in Elizabeth's reign, complained that " England
spendeth more in wines in one year than it did in ancient

1 Distillation, i.e. the extraction of the volatile essence of a sub
stance by vaporizing and subsequently condensing it, seems to have
been practised by the Arabians in early times, but the result as re
gards alcoholic liquids was looked upon as a purely chemical sub
stance, when it was hit upon in the thirteenth century, and, on
account of its potent qualities, styled aqua vitce. Its manufacture
seems to have reached greater perfection in Ireland in the sixteenth
century, so that certain Irish distillers were brought over and settled
in Pembrokeshire,

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 31
times in four years." 1 Whatever restraining influence the
ancient Church had exercised was now withdrawn, wholly
as regards England and Scotland, where her power was
practically shattered, and to a large extent in Ireland,
where she was grievously crippled by persecution. From
this time onwards drunkenness becomes a menace to the
State, and from this time, as we shall presently see, dates
the series of legislative enactments in restraint of the drink
traffic, of which we have not yet seen the term.
4. The Growth of Spirit-Drinking.
We do not maintain that the overthrow of the ancient
Church was the only cause of this. Another cause, indi
cated above, must take a large share of the responsibility,
i.e. the gradual introduction of spirits as a beverage. On
account of the immensely higher percentage of alcohol in
this concentrated form, the effects of the drug so partaken are
at once more marked and more speedily attained. Spirit-
drinking, as will be seen presently, became a general practice
in England precisely at a time when religious influences
there were at their lowest ebb. We may best gather the
growth and prevalence of the vice in post-Reformation
England by considering the action of the State in its repres
sion. But we may first cast a summary glance at what
the community had hitherto done to control a practice,
always dangerous to the welfare of the community
5. The Action of the pre-Reformation Church.
Before the religious dissensions of the sixteenth century,
which set the State in opposition to the Church Catholic
and created a subordinate ecclesiastical organization to
take the place of the latter in these lands, the care of the
moral welfare of this community was largely in the hands of
the Church. The Government found her its most efficient
ally in the maintenance of social order. Education was
practically under her sole care, the poor were her particular
charge, sins, which were also crimes and offences against
public order, had remedies provided by her canonical
1 Quoted by Green in his History of the English People, p 388.

32 THE DRINK QUESTION
legislation. Amongst these latter, drunkenness stood prom
inent, and her discipline was, if not successful m abolishing
it, at least capable of keeping it from being a serious menace
to public well-being. The ancient penitentiaries, as well
as the pre-Ref ormation English Church Synods, contain much
condemnation of excessive drinking, from the law of St.
Anselm (1102) that " priests should not go to drinking
assemblies nor drink down to the pegs,"1 up to the eve
of the Reformation.2 The discipline imposed in the con
fessional upon repentant sinners doubtless did much to
check the practice, especially as this penance generally
included a period of total abstinence. In any case, it was
not till this influence was removed that legal action in the
way of suppression, as distinguished from mere regulation,
was considered necessary. By breaking with its old com
rade and helper, the State at the Reformation became
saddled with many duties which it was ill-suited by nature
or training to perform well. The Elizabethan Poor Law
and the Edwardine Grammar Schools may be cited as
typical examples, but perhaps the most striking is the
largely unsuccessful combat then undertaken by the State
against the evils of drink.
6. The New Functions of the State.
We have implied that, until the breach with the Church
and the advent of spirituous beverages, the State was
mainly concerned with the interests of the consumer,
legislating against adulteration and inferior quality in
every form. We have an early sample of this legislation
in Scotland. The customs of the principal Scottish burghs
were codified in the reign of David I (1124-1153) and became
universally recognized law in that reign. Many are con-
1 Ad pinnas, i.e. the pegs fixed at intervals in drinking horns by
order of King Edgar to denote the lawful limit of a single draught.
It is difficult to imagine that such a piece of legislation could ever
have been effective.
2 See a selection of these decrees in Bridgett, op. cit., p. 167 sqq.
An Irish Synod, that of Ardpatrick, as late as 1678 enacts " that no
Priest drink distilled waters in any tavern or public meeting under
pain of a fine of ten shillings."

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION" 33
cerned with the licensing of " brewsters " (originally women)
and the appointment of " tasters " and overseers, and on
the whole " the trade " of the day was subjected to a closer
supervision than its modern successor would easily tolerate.
In England, on account of the French possessions of the
Norman Kings, a considerable amount of wine was im
ported, and the civil power, whilst encouraging this, also
began to impose slight duties upon such goods, and thus
arose the financial concern of the Government with the
liquor traffic. Still, the securing of a fair price and a good
wholesome article formed the chief aim of the State, indi
cating how early two main characteristics of the drink traffic,
— adulteration and desire of excessive profits — began to
display themselves.
7. State Restrictions on the Liquor Trade.
To turn now to the State legislation inspired by the
desire, not to provide the citizens with good liquor, but to
prevent them abusing such liquor as they got — as we
have said, the first indication of the change is seen in the
reign of Edward VI, when the licensing system was formally
established as a remedy against public disorder, a system
which has been needed, and which has remained, ever since.
In 1552 it was enacted that —
" forasmuch as intolerable hurts and troubles to the Common
wealth do daily grow and increase through such abuses and dis
orders as are had and used in common ale-houses and other houses
called ' tippling ' houses " —
Justices of the peace could abolish such houses and none
were to be opened without licence. Two years later the
necessity of a licence was extended to wine sellers, and the
number of public-houses was restricted to two in each
borough, exceptions being granted in the case of large towns,
such as London, which had forty. Wine, moreover, could
not be consumed on the premises. However, the legislature
is generally more active than the executive, and these
enactments seem to have done little to prevent the multipli
cation of taverns, which were very numerous at the end of
Elizabeth's reign. Still, the need of some check was univer-
0

34 THE DRINK QUESTION
sally recognized. The historian Camden, writing of the
year 1581, claimed that, in comparison with the past,
when "of all the Northern nations [the English were]
the most commended for their sobriety," the drunkenness
then so prevalent was still a recent vice, and with some
show of reason ascribes it to the Dutch wars — " they first
learnt in their wars with the Netherlands to drown them
selves with immoderate drinking." There, we may note,
they may have acquired a taste for gin or " Hollands."
Other Elizabethan writers, such as Nash, confirm the fact
and trace it to the same source. Iago does not trouble
himself with origins, but emphasizes the result — " In Eng
land they are most potent in potting. Your Dane, your
German and your swag-bellied Hollander are nothing to
your English." x
The phenomenon noted by all these writers was probably
but the expression of the greater licence induced by bad
example and the absence of religious restraint. Spirituous
drinks, which were doubtless plentiful in the Netherlands,
had already become an article of commerce in Scotland.
In 1557 a licence was issued in Edinburgh for the sale
of aqua vitce, which had hitherto been a monopoly of the
chemists. But even there the use of spirits spread very
slowly. Over a hundred years later Glasgow began to
raise money by licensing whisky sellers, but this was prob
ably done to check the growing practice of unlicensed
manufacture.
8. Legislation under James I.
Elizabeth was not a drunkard as was her successor
James, yet under that monarch Parliament continued its
endeavours to get a firmer statutory control of the drink-
traffic. A distinction was asserted between inns, i.e., places
of refreshment for travellers, and public-houses, the
resort of idlers for the purpose of drink, and a drastic bona- fide
law was passed which aimed at ending the latter, only
" travellers and travellers' friends and labourers at their
dinner-hour and lodgers " being allowed to be served with
1 Othello, II. 3.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 35
liquor. Each successive law complains of the ill-success
of its predecessor-—" abuses still do and are likely to in
crease," " the loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness is
of late grown into common use," "the inordinate and
and extreme vice of excessive drinking and drunkenness
doth more and more abound," being common phrases in
these Acts. The upshot was that at the close of the reign
there were no less than 13,000 licensed public-houses in
England 1 — a number enormously in excess of the statutory
amount, and, in view of the fact that home-brewing was
still common, considerably in excess also of the needs of
the population, then numbering about five millions. The
licensing system was applied to Ireland in 1634 : Parliament
in that country had as long before as 1554 confined the manu
facture of " usquebaugh " to certain specified classes.
9. Ill-advised action of the " Revolution " Government.
What turned out a most disastrous policy was inaugurated
by the English Government towards the end of the seven
teenth century. Hitherto spirits had been an imported
luxury from France, Holland, and Ireland : high duties
put them beyond popular use, and the home-manufacture
was severely restricted. Consequently, the prevalent
drunkenness fed solely upon ale and wine. Now, the
Government of the Revolution, out of hostility to France,
forbade in 1689 the importation of foreign distilled liquors
and removed most of the restrictions on home distilleries.
The result indeed was not immediately apparent. The
populace still clung to its beer, of which, according to Lecky,
the consumption was prodigious.
" It was computed in 1688 that no less than 12,400,000 barrels
were brewed in England in a single year, though the entire
population probably little exceeded 5,000,000. In 1695, with a
1 James' own country was not behind his new in this matter, if
me may judge from an Act passed in the Scots Parliament in 161 7
" for the restraynt of the wild and detestable vice of drunkenes dailie
increasing to the heigh dishonour of God and gryit harme of the
haill realme." This Act made drunkenness in itself, apart from its
consequences, a crime, punishable by fine or imprisonment.

36 THE DRINK QUESTION
somewhat heavier excise, it sank to 11 350.000 barrels, but even
then almost a third of the arable land of the kingdom was devoted
to barley." 1
Not until the next generation did English distilling begin
to assert its claims, but then it did so effectually enough.
Lecky continues :
" It was not till about 1724 that the passion for gin-drinking
appears to have infected the masses of the population, and it
spread with the rapidity and violence of an epidemic. Small
as is the place which this fact occupies in English history, it was
probably, if we consider all the consequences that have flowed
from it, the most momentous in that of the eighteenth century —
incomparably more so than any event in the purely political or
military annals of the country. The fatal passion for drink
was at once, and irrevocably, planted in the nation. The average
of British spirits distilled, which is said to have been only 527,000
gallons in 1664 and 2,000,000 in 1714, had risen in 1727 to
3,601,000, and in 1735 to 5,394,000 gallons." !
These are the words, not of a teetotal fanatic, but of a
responsible historian, who goes on to cite instances in
plenty of the moral degeneration that was caused by the
gin-epidemic, and to tell of the frantic efforts of the legis
lature to bring it under control. Spirit-bars had been
brought under the licensing system in 1701, heavier duties
and licences imposed in 1728-9. In 1732 it was found
that in London one house out of every six was licensed for
the sale of alcoholic liquors : there were 15,288 drinking-
places for a population of about 750,000 ! The high excise
duties were repealed in that same year, as they gave an
enormous development to illicit manufacture, but another
desperate effort of the same kind was made in 1736 by
the famous " Gin Act," imposing a duty of twenty
shillings a gallon on all spirituous liquors and taxing
retailers at £50 a year. The state of affairs which led to
this enactment is thus described in a petition presented by
the Middlesex magistrates, who declared :
" that the drinking of geneva and other distilled waters had for
1 England in the Eighteenth Century, I. 3, 478.
* Lecky op. cit., I. 3, 479.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 37
some years past greatly increased : that the constant and exces
sive use thereof had destroyed thousands of His Majesty's sub
jects : that great numbers of others were by its use rendered
unfit for useful labour, debauched in morals and drawn into all
manner of vice and wickedness."
10. Results of the Gin Act.
But the gin-drinkers were not to be made sober by Act
of Parliament. The enforcement of the Gin Act was met
by violent riots, and, although the spirit that paid duty sank
next year by about two million gallons, the clandestine
trade, having public opinion behind it and being much
more profitable, flourished all the more. In 1742 more
than seven million gallons were consumed. Then the
legislature in 1743 rushed to the other extreme, reduced
the duty from twenty shillings to one penny, and the licence
from fifty pounds to one pound, the idea being that the
illicit trade must at all costs be destroyed. Naturally,
drunkenness was not diminished, nor, apparently, was
smuggling much affected by this measure, for in 1749, as
Lecky relates, more than 4,000 persons were convicted of
selling spirits without a licence. Finally, it was computed
that at the mid-century the annual consumption of this
harmful beverage was eleven million gallons.
At last, in 1751, the evil was attacked at its source and
with more success. Distillers were prohibited, under
penalty, from being retailers themselves or selling to un
licensed retailers. A check was put on exorbitant profits
and credit-giving by making debts under twenty shillings
irrecoverable at law. Restrictions as to the class of premises
and on the discretion of justices to grant licences were also
enforced and in many other ways, slight in themselves but
strong in their cumulative effect, the tide of evil excess
was stemmed, and to some extent brought under control.
In 1755-6 the licensing system was extended to Scotland.
11. Lessons of this mistaken Legislation.
The whole experience of that fearful half-century proves
two things conclusively, both of which are often forgotten
or ignored by disputants about the Drink Question. The

38 THE DRINK QUESTION
first is that legislation in violent opposition to public opinion,
if unsupported by other influences, is apt to miss its object,
and even to produce worse disorder; the second, that
legislation, judiciously framed and carefully applied, can
do much to rectify public morals. Still, in this case the
disease is not cured : drunkenness still remained a social
evil of immense force. According to Lecky : " Since the
beginning of the eighteenth century gin-drinking [he might
reasonably have included the drinking of fermented liquors
as well] has never ceased to be the main counteracting
influence to the moral, intellectual and physical benefits
that might be expected from increased commercial pros
perity." One may quarrel with the view that the natural
fruit of commercial prosperity is either moral or intellectual
good : one cannot deny the historical evidence for vast
wastage of all sorts of benefits, concerning body and soul
alike, involved in excessive consumption of strong drink.
The need still persisting, legislation in control of the
drink-traffic did not cease with the eighteenth century.
Much was done to introduce uniformity into the licensing
law, and also to give some measure of security to those
entrusted with licences against arbitrary action on the part
of the justices. The various changes are now of merely
historical interest and need not detain us at any length.
12. The Liquor Traffic as a Source of Revenue.
Early in history, as we have seen, State interference
assumed this double aspect. It aimed originally and chiefly
at regulating the traffic in drink in the interests of public
order, and its various monetary exactions had this object.
But the money raised by duty on manufacture and import,
and by licences for sale, soon reached a considerable amount,
and the drink-traffic came to be regarded as a useful aug
mentation of the State income. According to Shadwell
in the Encyclopedia Britannica (" Liquor Laws ") licensing
for State revenue was first introduced in 1660, at the same
time as duties on the manufacture of beer and spirits, but
at first it concerned wines only. In the early eighteenth
century licences were exacted for the sale of those other

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 39
varieties of alcoholic liquors, and by the end of it the system
of annual excise licences was firmly established.
13. More ill-judged Legislation : the " Duke of Wellington's "
Act.
In the nineteenth century several disastrous experiments
in liquor legislation, akin to that perpetrated in 1689, deserve
to be recorded. The experiences of the immediate past
had convinced the authorities that the nation at large
was much the worse for the habit of drinking spirits rather
than beer. High duties on the former were unavailing.
As usual illicit distilling was widely resorted to : this was
met in 1823, as regards Ireland and Scotland, by lowering
the duty per gallon from 6s. 2d. and 5s. 2d. respectively to
2s. 4f^., thus making it hardly worth while to incur the
risks of smuggling and illicit distilling. When in 1825
the duty in England was lowered from us. 8%d. to js.
a gallon, the apparent consumption rose at once from
seven millions to nearly thirteen, suggesting to what extent
the underground trade had been practised. Another plan
was, therefore, adopted to wean the people from over
indulgence in spirits, and that was to give them increased
facilities for over-indulgence in beer. In 1830 what became
known as the " Duke of Wellington's Act " was passed,
entitling any householder paying rates to sell beer, on or
off the premises, on the simple purchase of an excise licence.
The measure, it was hoped, would also do much to remove
the abuse of " tied-houses," i.e., drinking-premises owned
by breweries and distilleries, and under their control. It
did not even succeed in that modest aim, whilst in the
other it was ludicrously unsuccessful. The Bill passed on
October 10, and before the end of the year 24,000 licences
were taken out. Sydney Smith, writing on October 24,
thus describes its early results, no doubt with some humorous
exaggeration :
" The new Beer Bill has begun its operations. Everybody
is drunk. Those who are not singing are sprawling. The
sovereign people are in a beastly state."

40 THE DRINK QUESTION
More alarming portent, under this free trade in beer, the
consumption of spirits steadily rose. Amendments were
passed in 1834 x and 1840, but the Act as a whole gave a
fresh impetus to drink-habits and caused an excessive multi
plication of beer-houses. The measure was repealed only
in 1869, when the retailing of beer was put once more under
the control of the justices.
14. " Grocers' Licences."
With such an example within their experience it is strange
that statesmen should still continue to think that, by open
ing the door in one direction, they could automatically close
it in others. Yet so it was. The great excess of public-
houses created by the Wellington Act was a grave menace
to public order, and in i860 Mr. Gladstone sought to avert it
by his " Wine and Refreshment Houses " Act, whereby any
shopkeeper on taking out an excise licence could sell wine
free of duty for consumption off the premises. Thus the
drinking public, it was hoped, would give up the drinking
of beer in riotous public-houses and take to drinking light
wines in the quiet bosoms of their families. As before,
the experiment was unsuccessful, and like the beer licences,
the grocers' had to be brought under the jurisdiction of the
justices again in 1869.
15. Sunday Closing.
Still the legislature was kept busy with the problems
created by the Drink Question. It would be tedious to
enter into details of the various measures, all hereafter in the
direction of increased stringency, passed with a view to con
trolling what, uncontrolled, was seen so to threaten social
welfare. The different Sunday-Closing Acts are samples of
these. The "Forbes-Mackenzie" Act of 1853 closed the
public-houses of Scotland on Sundays (except to travellers
and lodgers) altogether, and restricted the weekday hours to
1 In 1834, long before the evils of strong drink had been scientifi
cally studied and when alcohol was still considered a healthy food,
it is curious to note, a select Parliamentary Committee on the Drink
Question made recommendations for the suppression of intemperance
so drastic that many of them are still unattempted.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 41
the interval between 8 a.m. * and 11 p.m. This Act was ex
tended to Ireland (except the five chief towns) in 1878 and to
Wales in 1881. The Sunday hours of English public-houses
were reduced to seven in 1872-4, and a determined effort is
being at present made to restrict the number further.
16. Children's Acts and Reduction of Licences.
Equally prompted by a desire to confine the contaminating
influences of the public-house, as it now is, within as narrow
limits as possible, is the series of Acts which aim at keeping
children of tender years out of its reach. And a similar
spirit is at work in the tendency to reduce the number of
public-houses in proportion to the population served. It
has been calculated that the number of persons per public-
house (" on-licences ") in England and Wales was 50 in 1731,
168 in 1831, 204 in 1871, 312 in 1901, 399 in 1912. The de
crease is even more noticeable in Scotland, where in 1829
there were 17,713 on-licences, whereas in 1912, with double
the population, there were only 6,671 . Even in Ireland where
the licensing bench is scandalously lax, there is a progressive
decrease, but as the population also is decreasing the net re
sult is practically stationary. With a smaller population
than Scotland by some 400,000, Ireland in 1911 had 10,000
more public-houses ! In 1831 , when the population was over
three millions more than at present, there was one public-
house for every 395 persons : now there is one per 249.
17. Statutory Recognition of the Principle of Private Profi t in
the Drink Traffic.
By the Act of 1904, when the discretion of the justices was
much restricted and when the principle of compensation for
renewals, refused on grounds of superfluity, was admitted, a
distinct change of fundamental idea was introduced into the
licensing system. The theory heretofore was that the sale
of intoxicants should not be licensed except for the public
good : now the motive of private profit was legally recog-

1 The recent (1913) Scotch Temperance Act has raised the morning
limit to 10 a.m.

42 THE DRINK QUESTION
nized. As a result, the Trade could afford to allow greater
progress to be made in the reduction of licences, the more so
this precedure has been accompanied by a notable in
crease in the number of " clubs." Accordingly the net result
cannot as yet be readily determined. The higher duties
of the Finance Act of 1910 lessened the legal consumption of
spirits, but did not do much to diminish the total spent on
drink.' No one can safely assert that the State has yet
ceased from its endeavour to get proper control of the Drink
Traffic. As an indication of the trend of modern temperance
legislation the Bill of 1908, establishing " Local Option " in
England and Wales, which was thrown out by the Lords, and
the Act of 1 91 3 giving " Local Option " to Scotland [to come
into force in 1920], may here be cited.
18. State Education on the Drink Question.
One department of State action in this matter calls for
special mention as likely to have considerable effect in the
future — that is, the teaching of the benefits of temperance in
the State schools. A syllabus was put into force in Ireland
in 1904, in England and Wales in 1909, and in Scotland in
1 910 : if clearly and soberly expounded by earnest teachers,
the young generation will be in less danger of acquiring habits
of drink unconsciously and unnecessarily.
19. Lessons of this Sketch of Government Action.
The object of thus briefly summarizing the history of State
efforts to prevent the Drink Traffic from being abused to the
detriment of social welfare has merely been to indicate the
teaching of experience that, in this particular traffic and the
practices it maintains, there exists a danger that calls for
State intervention. What we have written about the Brit
ish Isles is paralleled in the British Colonies and in all the
great nations of our day. In each, as before stated, the legis
lature is busy with devices to counteract actual or threatened
disaster connected with the consumption of alcoholic liquors,
showing that the same coefficients — a pleasurable practice
attended with ulterior ill effects, and a large number of
thoughtless or morally weak or dehumanized persons — are

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 43
everywhere at work. It will be clear also from the record
how comparatively ineffective is external legislation which is
not backed up by the approval of the great majority of those
affected. It remains to trace the gradual origin and growth
of this public opinion, which has been the inspiration of legis
lative actions hitherto, and on which, more than on external
enactments, the cause of temperance must rely.

CHAPTER III
THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION : VOLUNTARY
EFFORTS
i. Whence Law derives its Efficiency.
The efficiency of a law depends upon the willingness of the
community as a whole to obey it. This willingness may be
induced either by the benefits of the law being appreciated
and welcomed on their own merits, or by the realization
that resistance will be inevitably punished, or by both
motives, in a proportion varying with the moral develop
ment of the individual. It follows that if the whole com
munity rejects a particular law, there is no means of enforcing
it : it becomes a dead letter. And the difficulty of enforcing
a particular law will obviously vary with the number and
influence of those who resist it. This has a direct bearing on
the Drink Question. Laws regulating the consumption of
alcholic liquor are necessarily of a restrictive character, and
if they are to win acceptance, they must either recommend
themselves by their reasonableness or be backed by an
adequate force. We have already referred to the moral
influence of the Church in keeping drunkenness in check.
Her denunciation of it as per se a grave sin, her penitential
discipline in regard to it, her general teaching on fraud,
scandal, co-operation in guilt, neglect of relative duties,
and the sanctions of the life to come, served to counteract
the influence of convivial habits and to keep alive the sense
of the spiritual dangers that lurk in strong drink.
2. Result of Withdrawal of Church Influence.
Practically speaking, all that influence was suppressed at
the time of the religious upheaval in the sixteenth cen-
44

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 45
tury. Not that there lacked moralists to emphasize the
plain Scripture teaching. Acts of Parliament themselves
condemned drunkenness as "a loathsome and odious
vice." Milton, in his Tetrachordon (1644), exclaims, " What
more foul common sin among us than drunkenness ? "
In 1658 was published a tractate entitled — The Blemish of
the Government, Shame of Religion, Disgrace of Mankind,
or a Charge drawn up against Drunkards, and presented to His
Highness the Lord Protector in the name of the Sober Partie
in the Three Nations. Other similar pamphlets, such as
England's Bane or the Daily Danger of Drinking (1673),
showed that the moral sense of the nation was still alive,
but, lacking the support of effective religious institutions,
it could do but little. Public opinion was in want both of
instruction and of an authoritative means of expression.
And so it remained for over two centuries during which
Catholicism was practically extinct in Great Britain, and
what little religious zeal existed found a home in the various
Nonconformist sects, themselves the objects of religious
persecution. There was no religious body to preach temper
ance as a principle of ascetics. And medical science had
not yet discovered the real character of alcohol : fermented
liquors were generally regarded as ministering to health,
and the chemical title aqua vitce long disguised the true
nature of spirits.
3. Early Medical Teaching about Alcohol.
But the excesses of the eighteenth century stirred the
doctors to a sense of their functions as guides to health.1 In
1725 the Royal College of Physicians presented a Remon
strance against the common sale of spirits. The London
doctors in 1750 stated that they had met in their experience
no less than 14,000 cases of practically irremediable illness
directly due to gin drinking. Out of this abundance of
observation some tardy fruits began to appear towards the
1 Medicine is largely an empirical science, and one, therefore, in
which tradition has great influence. When we reflect on the long
prevalence of phlebotomy, now universally discredited as a remedy,
we are not so surprised at other cases of professional ignorance.

46 THE DRINK QUESTION
end of the century. Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, and Dr.
Trotter, of Edinburgh, both published papers, in 1785 and
1788 respectively, on the dangers of spirit drinking. But
the first organized voluntary effort to save the Common
wealth from this danger took its rise in the United States in
the formation at Boston in 1826 of the " American Temper
ance Society."1
4. Beginning of Temperance Societies.
In that country, owing to the revolutionary war and the
false notions abroad concerning strong drink, drunkenness
during the late eighteenth century was even more wide
spread than in the British Isles. The Boston example, which
had a wonderful effect in the States, was speedily followed
in Ireland. Dr. John Edgar, a Presbyterian, and the Rev.
G. Kerr, a Quaker, founded Temperance Societies at Belfast
and New Ross respectively in 1829. The same year saw
established by John Dunlop the " Glasgow and West of
Scotland Temperance Society," 2 and in 1830 an English
organization was founded by Henry Forbes at Bradford,
and others in London and Bristol. It may be noted that
all these bodies, having set out to combat spirit drinking,
allowed their members the use of fermented liquors. It took
some time before the illogicality of attacking alcohol in one
form and embracing it in another got home to the mind
of the day.
5. Rise of Total Abstinence.
Total abstainers first appeared at Preston in 1832 under
the advocacy of Joseph Livesey. There, too, the word
" teetotal," a reduplicative and intensive form of total,
originated. The progress of the movement was hampered,
not only by the foolish legislation of the period, but by the
1 Other smaller organizations of limited scope and transient
effect had preceded it in that country. A Total Abstinence Society,
founded in 1817 at Skibbereen, still existing in Father Mathew's time,
was in essence a Benefit Society.
"This Society supported a paper which in 1829 contained the
first ^estimate of the National Drink Bill, £40,619,082, the average

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 47
strife between the anti-spirit party and the teetotalers. The
heroic attitude of total abstention was felt by the original
reformers to be likely to repel public opinion, and a schism
occurred in the British and Foreign Temperance Society
which resulted in the formation in 1836 of the New B. &
F.T.S. on the basis of total abstinence and the gradual
disappearance (culminating in 1850) of its rival. For in
England as well as in America it was seen that no effective
stand could be made against the ravages of drink on any
other ground than entire abstention. It was found that
any decrease effected in the consumption of spirits by the
movement was followed by a proportionate increase in the
consumption of beer. Breweries increased as distilleries
closed, whilst much spirit was doctored and sold as wine.
Another cause of dissension amongst these non-Catholic
societies was the prevalent idea that alcohol was something
intrinsically evil, a common misapprehension which is by no
means extinct yet. It led to interminable disputes, and a
vast literature grew up on the question whether the wine
mentioned in the Bible was fermented or not. 1 It caused
the paralysing dilemma — if we license the Drink Traffic we
are co-operating in an immoral thing : if we don't license
it we set it free from control ! This Manichaean heresy and
the general connection of non-Catholic temperance propa
ganda with other forms of Puritan intolerance have gravely
prejudiced the whole movement with the public, general and
Catholic, as well as wasted the energies of many earnest
reformers. Yet the movement in every country shows a
steady advance. The Parliamentary Committee of 1834
estimated the membership of Temperance Societies in Eng
land at 101,448, but when the total abstinence line was
adopted the cause made more rapid progress. A particular
aspect which merits special mention was the enrolment
of the young of both sexes in " Bands of Hope," which,
' J In 1876 a " Sacramental Wine " Association was formed in
Scotland with the object of introducing unfermented wine in the
Communion Service. In 1877 Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, for
bade the use of such wine, but legal opinion declared against him.
We have heard of fanatics celebrating the Communion with tea !

48 THE DRINK QUESTION
inaugurated in 1847, now have a membership of over two
million.
6. Catholic Total Abstinence Propaganda.
Not until nine years after Emancipation, towards the end
of 1838, was the first Catholic Total Abstinence Society
formed in England. A certain Rev. T. Sisk, a priest of
Chelsea, was its founder, and he no doubt was inspired by
the phenomenal success of Fr. Theobald Mathew, the famous
Capuchin friar, in his Irish temperance campaign, which
began in that year. The history and the lessons of that
movement stand for all time both as a stimulus and a
warning to temperance reformers. Ireland, with a popula
tion of about eight millions (more than half the then popula
tion of England and Wales, and more than three times the
population of Scotland), consumed as a yearly average in
1835-9, I:r<595>536 gallons of spirits. Fr. Mathew began his
propaganda in 1838, but it did not spread far till 1839 ; in
1840 the consumption of spirits was 7,401,051 gallons; in
1841, 6,485,443 gallons ; in 1842, 5,290,650 gallons. At
the close of 1844 it was computed that there were over three
million abstainers in Ireland. The apostle visited Scotland
in 1842 and England in 1843, enrolhng hosts of his co
religionists in his crusade and starting many parochial
Temperance Societies.
7. Arrest of the Movement.
But political agitation, which grew intense in the later
forties, a lowered duty on spirits after 1842, and the shadow
and substance of the Great Famine which was already
threatening in 1845, began to undermine the stability of
what was, as all such sudden and universal movements must
be, largely permeated by emotion and enthusiasm. Fr.
Mathew has no one to organize and consolidate the victory he
had won. He was not adequately supported by the natural
leaders of the community, the upper and middle classes :
even the clergy themselves to some extent held aloof.
In 1845 the expenditure on spirits rose by more than two
millions, and when Fr. Mathew started his two years' crusade

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 49
in America in 1849, during which he admitted half a million
to the pledge, the seeds of failure in his home enterprise were
aheady fully developed. Still, his inspiration remains and
is operative to-day, as we shall presently see.
8. Change in the general Character of Temperance Propaganda.
The mid-century was an epoch of revolution abroad and
political unrest at home. When a calmer period ensued
there was a noticeable change in the spirit of the Temper
ance Movement. There was much less appeal to the emotions
and the religious interests of the individual ; temperance
began to be advocated on scientific grounds as essential to
bodily and social well-being. In 1851 the famous Pro
hibition Law of Maine, U.S.A., was passed, marking the aim
of the extreme temperance reformers. In 1853 the " United
Kingdom Alliance," the object of which is " the total and
immediate legislative suppression of the traffic in intoxicat
ing liquors as beverages," was founded in Manchester. This
indicates an extension of temperance methods from a direct
appeal to the individual, with the aim of ultimately creating
a favourable public opinion in regard to reform, to concerted
action with the object of influencing the legislative. What
was, in fact, discovered, or unconsciously felt, was that
emotion, not supported by sound religious principles nor
maintained by grace-conferring religious practices, could not
be relied on as a permanent source of growth in the move
ment. The appeal outside the Church, therefore, became
less emotional, more rational and constructive and, in a
sense, more material. Women and children were formally
enrolled, international co-operation was sought ; 1 above all,
the whole question of inebriety and other alcoholic effects
was profoundly and scientifically studied. Thus powerfully
organized and ably equipped, the temperance party in every
land, particularly in the United States, has been able to bring
strong influence to bear on legislation, and by its immense
output of literature and other means of propaganda to
modify public opinion as regards the nature of alcohol.
1 The fourteenth International Congress against Alcoholism was
held^at Milan in 191 3. D

50 THE DRINK QUESTION
There is no longer any great likelihood of hearing beer
praised in the House of Commons, as it was when the Wel
lington Bill was discussed, as " good malt and hops, that
could injure nobody." The medical profession, as we have
seen, has made up for past neglect by incessant attention to
the alcohol problem, with the result that its character as an
essentially narcotic drug is now practically established.
9. Effect of this Change.
All this is to the good from the temperance point of view.
To deprecate indulgence as injurious to bodily health, to
mental and moral vigour, to the pocket, to social welfare,
to national prosperity, is to appeal to motives which all can
appreciate. Yet it may be doubted whether such prudential
considerations alone will ever effect so much as the appeal
to the ascetic principles inculcated in the Gospel of Christ.
Happily, the religious motive is still kept in the forefront
in many religious bodies, but particularly in the various
Catholic temperance organizations which, especially in
Ireland and America, well maintain their vigour.
10. Modern Catholic Associations.
In the former country Father Mathew's work was revived
by Bishop Delany, of Cork, in 1869, whilst the Irish Hier
archy in 1875 issued their famous Joint Pastoral on Drink,
which effectively aroused public attention to its perils. In
more recent times, several highly practical organizations
have been set on foot in that island, of which the earliest
and one of the most flourishing is the " Pioneer Total
Abstinence League," inaugurated in 1898 by Fr. James
Cullen, S.J., and numbering now (1913) about 200,000
members, who have all passed a two years' probation, and a
proportionately great number of ' ' aspirants. ' ' The Pioneers,
it is gratifying to record, number many adherents among
the clergy and ecclesiastical students. In 1905 the Irish
Hierarchy called upon the Capuchin Fathers, the religious
brethren of Fr. Mathew, to take up anew his work, which
they have done with no little of his success in the "Father

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 51
Mathew Total Abstinence Association." Still later, the
Bishops of the Western Province founded " St. Patrick's
League of the West," a carefully-designed organization
covering the whole of that district with a network of par
ochial associations. At the moment of writing (June, 1914) a
great National Temperance Convention is on the eve of being
held in Dublin, wherein no doubt all Irish temperance work
will be consolidated, and the workers further inspired to
make Ireland sober as well as free.
Catholic temperance work in the vast community of the
United States takes a prominence commensurate with the
Church's growth and success there. Unity and co-ordination
was secured in 1872 by the Baltimore Convention, out of
which grew " The Catholic Total Abstinence Union of
America," with which the various local associations have
gradually become affiliated. It is noteworthy that this great
organization, whilst admitting Prohibitionists into its ranks,
refuses to countenance officially this method of promoting
temperance. Of this attitude a few words will be said in
another chapter. The C. T. A.U. admits women and children
to its ranks and has a large section composed of the clergy.
The Catholic Temperance Movement in England in modern
times is closely associated with the names of Cardinal Man
ning in London and Mgr. James Nugent in Liverpool, who
combined to found a total abstinence organization called
" The League of the Cross " in 1873. During the lives of
its founders, this organization flourished exceedingly and
wrought an immense amount of good wherever it was
established. Much of its initial enthusiasm, which was
accompanied with a certain amount of external parade, has
now, as might have been expected, disappeared, but the move
ment is solidly organized at headquarters and is so con
stituted as to be capable of indefinite parochial extension.
What has hitherto been needed in this country is co-ordina
tion of all the various local bodies, and a few years ago that
want was recognized and sought to be supplied by the
establishment of a" Federation of Catholic Temperance
Societies." The General Council of this body is at work
on the registration of the whole Catholic temperance forces

52 THE DRINK QUESTION
of the country, and at elaborating a scheme for a National
Juvenile organization to be established in every parish.
At the moment, another important departure is being
debated, viz. whether the " League of the Cross " as a
Catholic body should officially co-operate with other non-
Catholic organizations with the same end. Several of
Cardinal Manning's lieutenants still remain working vigor
ously for their ideal, and many new recruits amongst clergy
and laity have joined in this good work. The " Father
Mathew Union " is an organization confined to priests and
clerical students which took its rise in 1908. Another body
in the North is the Salford Diocesan Crusade, which includes
" strictly moderate " drinkers as well as total abstainers, and
was established by Bishop Vaughan in 1875. In 1910, his
present successor, Bishop Casartelli, gave it a new impetus.
Mention, too, should be made of the Catholic Temperance
Crusade, a wide-spread organization founded in 1896 by Fr.
F. C. Hays, a nephew of Mgr. Nugent, who has worked and
travelled indefatigably to promote it ; and of the smaller
independent parochial bodies which are numerous through
out the land.

n. What is most vital in the Catholic Appeal.
In all these bodies the appeal is mainly religious, the
teaching and example of Christ are made the chief motive,
a motive which influences the good and morally strong, as
well as the moral weakling. Self-sacrifice for the sake of
the brethen is inculcated, and the Sacraments are frequented
as furnishing a constant supply of moral strength and
enthusiasm. The Church knows very well that, whether
to reclaim a drunkard or to fortify a character against temp
tation to drink, an all-round good life is necessary. Temper
ance is only one of the virtues, and it would be impossible
to cultivate it properly whilst neglecting any of the others.
Consequently the spiritual side is put prominently forward
in all Catholic organizations. Many exact regular and
frequent participation of the Sacraments ; all are associated
with the promotion of some religious end.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUESTION 53
12. Summary and Scope of Voluntary Effort.
Such is a brief summary of the progress of voluntary
effort, here and in America, amongst Catholics and others,
in the cause of temperance. It is designed to supple
ment that of the State by instructing the public mind
and modifying the public manners, and also to urge
upon the Government measures which experience has
shown to be desirable in the struggle against excess in
clrink. Its influence has been very great and is likely to
grow greater, but being largely confined to Church bodies,
it does not directly reach the great multitudes who have
drifted away from religion. On the other hand, so much
organized effort has naturally put the liquor trade on its
defence. The Alliance Year-Book for 1914, enumerating
the " Temperance Organizations of the United Kingdom "
(and as regards Ireland, at least, its summary is by no means
exhaustive), reckons eighteen which are Legislative and
General, fifteen which are Sectional (Army, Navy, Medical,
etc.), twenty-five identified with different religious bodies,
fourteen which are Orders or sects in themselves (Rechabites,
Good Templars, etc.), ten confined to women, eight juvenile
societies, sixty-seven country and 174 town societies (the
latter two including only England and Wales), in all, 328.
Arrayed against this army and fighting with similar weapons
— books, newspapers, tracts, memorials, political agitation,
etc. — stand the embattled forces of " The Trade," enumer
ated by the Alliance Annual as including ten main associa
tions and 700 local societies throughout the Kingdom. The
atmosphere thus engendered is not favourable for calm
discussion. It is all the more important that a clear state
ment of the ethical questions involved should be made, for
no Catholic would desire to advocate temperance on grounds
that were not morally sound. It would be a strange and
unchristian thing to seek to advance the virtue of temper
ance whilst offending against those of prudence and justice.

CHAPTER IV
THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION
I. The Attitude of the Catholic Church.
It has aheady been remarked that it behoves the tem
perance advocate of all men to be temperate in his advocacy,
for he is aiming at interfering to some extent with personal
liberty and at restraining pleasurable indulgence. Accord
ingly unless his arguments are thoroughly sound, his facts
certain, his inferences logical, and unless necessity and expe
diency, precept and counsel are kept perfectly distinct in
his recommendations, the flaws in his reasoning will reflect
discredit on his cause itself, and give men a ready excuse
for turning deaf ears to his pleading. To try to impose a
yoke for which there is no warrant, naturally disposes
the victim to discard the yoke which should be borne.
Hence the great advantage which the Catholic reformer
has in the fact that the moral principles which he invokes
are drawn from the tried and traditional teaching of the
Church and are both definite and well established. Hence
too the caution which the Church exercises in regard to the
individual co-operation of her children with temperance
work, based on principles which she cannot admit or exclud
ing those which are most fundamental and important.
She has expressly prohibited Catholics joining the " Sons
of Temperance " in the United States and the " Good Tem
plars," " Rechabites " and similar societies in the British
Isles,1 because she cannot wholly approve of the motives
of these zealous reformers nor has she any guarantee of
the soundness of their methods. And even when the
Temperance cause is dissociated from any specifically reli-
1 Bridgett, op. cit., 202.
54

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 55
gious propaganda, this does not make it altogether unob
jectionable from the Catholic point of view. For in such
a case the merely natural virtue of temperance is thrust up
into an unnatural prominence and its cultivation tends to
be made a religion, either of itself or in combination with
those other bugbears of ultra-Puritanism, betting, smoking,
card-playing and theatre-going. Accordingly it may be
useful to state formally in this chapter the main lines of
Catholic teaching on temperance.
2. Doctrine about Alcohol.
Naturally we take first the subject of alcohol itself.
What does the Church teach about that ? The Church
lends no countenance to the idea that alcohol is anything
evil in se. Nothing that God has created is or can be evil
in se, however much it may be abused. Of all that He made
it is written, " He saw that it was good." The Manichseans
asserted a dual origin of material things — a good and an
evil principle — and their heresy is revived by those tem
perance bodies who hold, as some apparently do, that alcohol
is intrinsically an evil thing, or so inevitably bound up with
evil that they cannot practically be dissociated. If that
were the case it would be easier, no doubt, to urge its aban
donment ; one's plea could then be based strongly upon
conscience and the moral law ; but the Christian's is the
harder task of discriminating between use and abuse, of
enforcing law without unduly infringing liberty. So Catholic
advocacy of temperance is never disfigured by this false
plea. Alcohol has its lawful place in the scheme of things
and its claims however limited must be recognized.
"Drink," says Fr. Bridgett, " is the work of God, drunken
ness is the work of man."1
3. Heresies on the Subject.
Heresy on the matter of strong drink made its appearance
very early in the history of Christianity, being one phase
of that strange medley of errors concerning the body and
its functions taught by the early Gnostics. Tatian {d. 174)
» Op. cit., p. vii.

56 THE DRINK QUESTION
founded a sect called the Aquarians who would not use wine
even in the celebration of the Eucharist. St. Clement of
Alexandria had expressly to prove that this view was con
trary to the teaching and practice of our Lord and the Apos
tles, as recorded in the New Testament. The heretic as
we know, from Judaizer to Jansenist, has ever been prone
to concentrate his attention on external observance, whilst
allowing his spirit all the more freedom from control. St.
Augustine had to wage war on the Manichaeans and, when
in the twelfth century, the Albigenses revived that old mis
belief, they found a vigorous opponent in St. Bernard.
" They are heretics," he said, " not because they abstain
but because they abstain heretically.1 And finally, not to
multiply authorities in a matter which is beyond dispute,
Cardinal Manning in an address delivered in 1872 emphasized
the common teaching as follows : —
" I repeat distinctly that any man who should say that the
use of wine or any other like thing is sinful when it does not lead
to drunkenness, that man is a heretic condemned by the Catholic
Church. With that man I will never work."
It is a singular thing that, whereas the false prophet
Mahomet elevated abstinence from strong drink into a
necessary condition for salvation, none of the many varie
ties of ascetic rule in the Catholic Church has recommended
it explicitly even as a counsel.
4. The Catholic Teaching on Drunkenness.
But whilst guarding with extreme care against Mani-
chaeism, which in effect denies the existence of God, the
Church has been equally alive to the necessity of condemn
ing all abuse of intoxicants. She teaches that complete
drunkenness is as such a mortal sin, one of the deadly seven.
The reason is this : God has endowed man with intellect
to be the guide of his conduct ; it is unlawful, therefore, for
him to withdraw from that guidance by such over-indul
gence in drink as results in the temporary loss of reason and
reduces him to the level of the beasts or below it. He
1 Sena. 66 in Cant.

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 57
is evading his responsibilities as a servant of his Creator.
Temporary deprivation of consciousness, of course, is not at
all the same thing. By the natural process of sleep we
become actually unconscious, but we can be recalled to the
use of reason in a moment : the faculty remains potentially
operative. Besides which, sleep normally puts an end to
all our other activities as well ; we are no longer capable
of acting even irrationally. And the same thing may be
said of the anaesthetics used in medical science, the primary
effect of which, besides, is to suspend sensation and thus
avert shock, but which have also the concomitant effect of
suspending consciousness. On the other hand since there
are many stages in formal drunkenness before the sleep
of stupor is reached, the drunkard, whilst lost to the control
of reason, is still able to carry out the promptings of his
lower appetites. If, therefore, a person consciously and
willingly drinks to excess, so that he is no longer capable of
distinguishing between good and evil, he sins greviously,
even though his incapacity does not lead him into further
wrong-doing. Moreover, he is accountable for any evil he
may foresee that he will do in that state. Even the civil
law holds him responsible for his conduct, nay even more so ;
unless indeed he can prove he became drunk accidentally.
" As for a drunkard, who is a voluntarius demon, he hath
no privilege thereby : but what hurt or ill soever he doeth,
his drunkenness doth aggravate it."1
5. The moral Measure of Excess in Drink.
According to the degree of deprivation of reason is the
gravity of alcoholic excess measured. But there are also a
number of other offences almost inseparably connected
with this excess which serve to determine and increase its
guilt. As reason is the instrument by which we recognize
the presence of temptation and our obligation to shun it,
any interference with the working of this instrument puts
us in some danger of sin. Again, although anything short
of complete drunkenness as defined cannot in itself be
grievously sinful, still excess is always sinful to some extent
» " Coke on Lyttleton," 247a.

58 THE DRINK QUESTION
and it may be gravely wrong in its consequences. These
accidental effects of whole or partial intoxication arise from
our life in community, i.e., from a man's position amongst
his fellows which cannot but entail a number of duties of
justice and charity in their regard. Justice, for instance,
demands that he should not defraud, by his devotion to
drink, those dependent on him, or those that employ him,
of their due. Moreover, a man's circumstances may be
such — his income so small, his health so precarious, his
time so much occupied, his official character so dignified —
that what would be moderate expenditure of time and
money and physical well-being in another, would be excessive
in him. Therefore it does not always require technical
inebriation to constitute a serious fault.
6. Further Determination of Excess.
To exceed in drink is, therefore, to take more than is good
for one. What is good for one is settled by reference to
many considerations. For instance, drink is not good for
one morally if it commonly leads one into sin, whether of
itself by the want of control it induces or accidentally by
causing one to associate with bad characters, or even to
waste time, to give scandal or to omit religious duties. Nor
is it morally or financially good for one, if it leads to spend
ing, even in small quantities, what is not one's own but due
in some way to tradesfolk or dependents. Nor is it physically
good for one, if it causes a notable and permanent diminu
tion of health. Even, therefore, if a man remains well within
the medical definition of excess, and consumes no more than
an ounce of alcohol in the day, he may easily exceed in a
variety of other ways, and sin through indulgence in drink.
He may sin, too, however little he drinks himself, by spend
ing what he should not spend in treating others and perhaps
doing harm to them, or by challenging or encouraging
others to drink to their own detriment in one or other of the
above ways, or by disedifying the young and causing scan
dal generally on account of his age or position. And all
this applies with at least equal force to women, in whom

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 59
intemperance of any sort is especially loathsome because of
the greater refinement and spirituality of their sex.
Now, considering the individual apart from his family
and social relations it may be useful to inquire to what
extent he is bound to regard his own bodily health in this
matter. If his quickness of brain or skill of hand, on the
strength of which assets he gains his salary, is impaired by
even moderate drinking, then obviously he is doing injustice
to those who employ him. But, apart from external obli
gations, is the injury to health, asserted with such weight
of medical evidence to follow moderate indulgence in
strong drink, a sin against that proper self-regard which
our Maker expects ^us to have concerning the bodies He
has lent to us ?
7. The Claims of Well-being.
Bodily health, being a good in the natural order, is conse
quently not the chief good of life. Taking for granted that,
whatever be the benefits of strong drink in certain diseases
no healthy person really suffers in health on account of ab
stinence, we infer that, for such persons it is in no sense a
necessity or even a convenience, but rather partakes of the
character of a luxury. Moreover, in the case of very many,
it is a luxury which does actual physical harm, greater or
less and more or less permanent, according to the strength
of the constitution affected. The ethical point is — is a
person justified in seeking the pleasure physical and psychical
which strong drink affords even though it injures, at least
to some slight extent, his bodily health ? As this question
enters very fundamentally into the whole drink problem,
it will be necessary to consider it pretty thoroughly. In
what circumstances and to what extent is a person justified
for the sake of some other honest end, in imparing his
physical well-being ?
8. Cases wherein Health may be disregarded.
It is plain that the interests of the soul come before those
of the body If therefore a course of action which benefits
the soul rendering the will stronger against temptation

60 THE DRINK QUESTION
and more amenable to God's law, is found also to damage
in some degree the body, that disadvantage may be disre
garded in view of the higher good. This is a common-sense
principle which comes to us recommended by the teaching
of the Gospel and by the uniform practice of the Saints,
some of whom for their better spiritual development mal
treated their bodies in extraordinary ways, and all of whom
to some extent employed what goes by the significant name
of corporal mortification. This Christian asceticism has a
good object — the bringing of the body into subjection to
the spirit or the desire to imitate and share the atoning suf
ferings of Christ — and must on no account be confounded
with the practice of some early heretics who mutilated
themselves so as to get rid of fleshly temptations, or of
those devotees of false religions who undergo hideous self-
tortures by way of propitiating an evil deity who is supposed
to delight in the spectacle of human suffering. There is
nothing morbid about true asceticism : it is always regulated
by prudence, always supposes a careful consideration of
one's obligations and is never an end in itself.
Its lawfulness will be the more apparent if we consider
how readily, in pursuit of merely temporal ends, men ex
pose their bodily health to injury. We may safely say that
heaping up treasures on earth has done much more to impair
human vitality than heaping up treasures in heaven. What
reckless expenditure of health and even life has marked
the extension of trade and the pursuit of gold throughout
the world. And not only the pursuit of wealth, but even
the search for a livelihood induces men to undertake
tasks which cannot but injure their health. There
are dangerous trades like mining and unhealthy trades
like file-making, to engage in which many are persuaded by
the pressure of necessity or the high rate of wages. Men
have always thought that it is better to live with less strength
and vigour than not to live at all. Bodily well-being, in fact,
though a great good, is freely and lawfully neglected in view
of goods which are considered to be higher. There are
many other such goods besides those we have mentioned.
Consider how health is sacrificed to advance the cause of

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 61
science and extend the sphere of knowledge, either by ex
ploring1 the unhealthy regions of the tropics or the poles,
or by investigating the cause of disease. Experimenting
with the X-rays, for instance, cost a brave doctor his arm.
We may class, too, amongst the victims of science those
many pioneers in the art of aviation who have perished in
testing various new mechanical devices and conditions.
And of course the performance of their duty often demands
disregard of health, and sometimes even of life, in the case
of public servants — priests, soldiers and sailors, police, fire
men, nurses too, and doctors. Still more to the point —
in pursuit of many forms of bodily enjoyment — hunting,
climbing, wild-game shooting, football, sport in general —
all sorts of damage to health are occasioned or risked, yet so
long as devotion to these pursuits does not cause us to
neglect our duties, whether to God or man, who will say
that the preference of such pleasure to health is in itself
sinful ? It may often be folly, a sacrifice of the future
to the present : but then, not all folly is sin, though all sin
is folly.
9. Can Drinking be included in these Cases ?
So we cannot condemn any object of desire on the sole
grounds that the pursuit of it injures health. It may of
course, be urged that the objects mentioned above —
spiritual progress, material benefit, growth of knowledge,
the public service, sport even — are all worthy objects, for
the gaining of which it is not unfitting to pay the price of a
certain loss of health, whereas mere pleasure of the palate
such as is caused by drink, does not in itself justify the sacri
fice.1 Nevertheless, this plea cannot be admitted without
strict qualification. Pleasure is attached to the use of all
our senses, and although their primary object is to place
the soul in communication with the external world, still
1 St. Augustine seems to hold that it is always sinful to gratify
the senses of taste and touch unless with reference to the end ior
which pleasure was attached to their employment. But most
modern moralists agree with St. Thomas that such gratifications is
lawful in itself, provided it is regulated by temperance.

62 THE DRINK QUESTION
they may also be used with moderation for the sake of the
pleasure of exercise. We may blamelessly delight our eyes
with beautiful scenery or pictures, our ears with fine sing
ing, our sense of smell with the perfumes of the flowers— why
not our taste with strong drink ? The truth is that where
goods are of the same order and there is thus some sort of
proportion between them, where, moreover, no other consi
derations limit his choice, man is free to choose, free there
fore to prefer the less good to the greater, the more immediate
to the more remote. No doubt the range of choice is more
limited in matters which concern the bodily appetites and
the senses of touch and taste, ministering as they do to our
lower nature and thus calling for greater restraint, but
even there we must allow a certain degree of freedom. Con
sider the alternative. If we were morally bound to make
health our first consideration in all matters of dietary — we
should be ensnared in a legalism more stern than that of
Leviticus, and every conscientious person would feel bound
to acquire an unwholesome knowledge of alimentary pro
cesses ! In this respect eating and drinking are on a level.
Even though an individual may know that certain nice
foods and drinks are not for him altogether healthy, he
is not obliged under sin to abstain from them. He may
lawfully choose the pleasure which comes from an actual
moderate use of them, in spite of the future resultant
physical discomfort. No one is bound under pain of moral
fault to choose the most perfect of all courses open to him.
In fact, it is precisely because eating and drinking cause
physical pleasure, a pleasure which may be lawfully accepted
if taken in moderation, that there is in regard to it, at one
and the same time, necessity for the virtue of temperance,
and scope for the virtue of abstinence.
10. The Claims of Health not to be exaggerated.
Consequently, we cannot rest our oppositon to excessive
drinking mainly on the grounds that alcohol is a poison and
injurious to health. Even though the whole medical
faculty were united in that opinion, man would not be
morally bound to avoid strong drink. He is free to reckon

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 63
the pleasure to the palate, the glow of the body, the exhi
laration to the sentiments, the breaking down of reserve,
the temporary stimulus to thought, the oblivion of care
and trouble, which he has found to be its immediate effects,
to be worth the diminution of health that is its consequence,
supposing those ill results are slight or not permanent.
We cannot say that strong drink in moderation is so mani
festly injurious that a man fails in due self-regard by its
use. The effects above mentioned are not wrong in them
selves and therefore they may be sought by means which
are not wrong. Great harm has been done to the cause of
temperance by the attempt to make all alcoholic drinking
necessarily sinful and by exaggerating the obligation to
avoid what is unhealthy. The attempt is foolish, for it
goes against common sense and common practice, sanc
tioned by many of the holiest of mankind. Total absti
nence is not a sine qua non of perfection, nor necessarily a
means to it.
We have laboured this point somewhat, because the
terrible nature of the evils caused by drink, and the zeal and
earnestness with which the sight of those evils inspires them,
are prone to make reformers turn to compulsion rather than
to persuasion, and condemn those who do not wholly side
with them. There is nothing in Catholicity that counten
ances this intransigent attitude. Appetite, in connexion
with eating and drinking, is designed to make us attend
to the duty of promoting our physical development. Be
tween eating and drinking to live, which is our bounden duty,
and living .to eat and drink, which is an abuse of a natural
instinct, there is a fairly wide field which may be occupied
without reproach. The enlightened temperance reformer
has in present circumstances many reasons for abstinence
to urge upon the " moderate " drinker, but he will never
condemn him for using his liberty, unless there are other
extrinsic considerations in the case, which make that use
unlawful. 11. Extrinsic Reasons for Abstinence.
These considerations we have already touched upon.

64 THE DRINK QUESTION
They concern our relations to God and to our neighbour.
As the property of strong drink, even in small quantities,
is to weaken the control of reason over appetite, it may be
necessary for some men to abstain altogether if they are
to avoid the occasions of sin. In other words, the epithet
"moderate," employed in connexion with indulgence in
alcoholic drink, is strictly relative. As some bodily constitu
tions are capable of resisting or repairing its injurious effects
with comparative ease, so some characters are so strongly
grounded in good, have such confirmed habits of well-doing,
that even in " moments of expansion" they oppose, as it
were instinctively, the suggestions of evil. "Moderation"
in regard to such characters, so far as the claims of conscience
are concerned, obviously need not be pitched so low as in
the case of those who are largely governed by impulse and
prone to follow the line of least resistance. It is a matter
of personal experience and for personal regulation. One's
finances, one's family, one's physique, the peculiar character
of one's work, the obligation of setting a good example —
all these, as we have seen, are circumstances which operate
to modify the extension of " moderation," and to enforce
the necessity of making a careful determination as to what
it means in one's own case. The technical definition of
excess is the imbibing a greater quantity than the body can
dispose of in twenty-four hours, viz., about one ounce of pure
alcohol.1 Those who have ever given even a slight atten
tion to the subject must be convinced that, judging by this
standard, there is a very widespread abuse of strong drink
in the world, and that many who consider themselves
" moderate " in its use would stand convicted of excess in
one or more of the above particulars if tried by an impar
tial tribunal.
12. Other Cases of wasteful Excess.
But note that this is not the only case in which the moral
ist must cry out against vicious excess — would that it were
so ! Immense sums of money are wasted on other luxuries
— such as fashion which ministers to vanity, tobacco which
1 See supra, p. 12 : also Chap. V., p. 78.

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 65
ministers often to mere self-indulgence, betting and gamb
ling which are largely influenced by avarice, — and much
preventable misery is caused by culpable ignorance and
improvidence in the use of money. But none of these evils has
such a hold upon its victims or causes such widespread in
dividual, family and social evils as drinking to excess.
Society can recover, as it were automatically, from the
harm done by others : to oppose this, it must be organized,
instructed, and inspired, or it stands in danger of perishing.
13. Total Abstinence not an Extreme.
It will be gathered from what we have said that it is a
mistake and a harmful one to regard total abstinence as
one extreme and drunkenness as the other, whilst modera
tion occupies the golden and virtuous mean. Yet there is a
speciousness about this assertion which no doubt has kept
many from becoming teetotalers : no one likes to be
labelled a fanatic. Yet, it is easy to show that, although tem
perance may be advocated fanatically, in itself it is not
fanatical. The Aristotelian doctrine that virtue lies
between two vicious extremes, one indicating defect, the
other excess, of the quality constituting the virtue, has its
roots in the fact that all virtues, except the divine virtue
of charity, are means to an end, and their pursuit must
therefore be regulated by reference to that end. Too much
of the quality overshoots, too little falls short of, the object
desired, and accordingly both are vicious as failing to attain
it. Now, we might deny altogether that this doctrine is
applicable to the matter in hand, since drinking strong
liquor for pleasure's sake cannot surely be reckoned a virtue,
but, assuming that in the physical order it is not a bad
thing as satisfying a bodily appetite, the " virtue" of the
practice will consist in taking just so much drink as benefits
the whole organism, whilst the vicious extremes are,
respectively, taking too much or too little for that purpose.
But, since it is practically certain that alcoholic drinks
do not, in health at least, benefit the body at all, the " virtue "
in this case surely lies in abstinence, and so even moderation,
not merely drunkenness, becomes an extreme. That there

66 THE DRINK QUESTION
is no negative extreme in this case, in other words that we
cannot fail in our duty to our bodies by taking too little
alcohol, simply shows that the doctrine cannot really be
applied. One might as well say that chastity is a vicious
extreme over against illicit indulgence, with moderation
in the shape of the holy state of matrimony occupying the
mean However, as we have said, men may lawfully sacrifice
some degree of the material good of bodily health for the
sake of another material good, bodily pleasure.
14. There is Nothing necessarily wrong in the Trade in Strong
Drink.
It follows, as bearing on the morality of the subject,
that the manufacture and the selling of alcoholic liquors
are lawful trades. No exception can be taken to the brewer
or the publican as such on moral grounds. Provided their
business is conducted justly, the liquor sold is what it pro
fesses to be, the price fair, and no inducements to excess
held out, they have as much right to pursue their trade
as the grocer or the tobacconist or the haberdasher. They
are engaged in supplying a demand, which demand is in
itself legitimate. The denunciations we hear of breweries
and distilleries arise from their over production and the
exorbitant profits connected with them. The outcry
against the public-house in the British Isles and the saloon
in America is largely inspired by the malpractices often
connected with the conduct of such establishments, and
their unhealthy character in themselves. But there is
no need of their being either ill-conducted or unhealthy.
15. The Public-house as a Temptation.
There remains a further matter bearing on the ethics of
the drink question, viz., the morality of multiplying faci
lities for indulgence. It should hardly be necessary to state
what psychology, common sense and experience combine
to emphasize, i.e., that, ceteris paribus, the more frequent
the temptation the greater the risk of falling, and therefore
the greater facilities offered for getting drunk the more

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 67
drunkenness will result. Yet reduction of the number of
public-houses has been opposed on the strange ground,
supposed to be exemplified by statistics, that the fewer
the public-houses the greater the amount of drunkenness !
It is certainly the fact that there are districts of England
with few public-houses which greatly exceed in the number
of convictions for drunkenness those where public-houses
abound — hence the wild deduction that restriction breeds
excess. No better instance could be found to illustrate
the unwisdom of relying on statistics alone. For, apart
from the uncertainty introduced into this case by diversity
of police practice, it happens that those sparsely-provided
districts uniformly comprise mining, industrial, and seaport
towns, where indulgence in excess is naturally much more
common. Consequently the fewness of public-houses there
is a direct result of the vigorous efforts of the justices to keep
the prevalent excess within as close limits as possible.
Tfie prevalent drunkenness, in other words, is occupational,
not local. Of course no moralist denies that restriction,
pushed to an extreme and unsupported by popular opinion,
has a tendency to produce worse evils than those it aims
at suppressing, and therefore prudent schemes of temperance
reform must always take into account the tastes and dis
positions of the people for whom they are framed.
16. The State and its weaker Subjects : the Native Races.
But the community is obliged to see for the sake of its
weaker members that temptations to excess in drink —
and, practically speaking, every public-house, as things
are at present, is such a temptation — are kept within decent
and reasonable limits. The State, as we have seen, has
entrusted this work to the Justices of the Peace, who can
not be said to acquit themselves well of the task, although
they have shown of late years more sense of responsibility.1
Inadequate as is the protection thus afforded to the com
munity at home, it is unfortunately very much more than
has ever been given to the subject-races with whom the
1 See Chapter VI, The Solution of the Problem, p. 93.

68 THE DRINK QUESTION
white man has come into contact. Few civilized States in
extending their rule and influence over barbarous peoples
have ever taken efficient measures to preserve those peoples,
whose ignorance and want of training might have claimed
for them the consideration given to children, from the
ravages of alcoholic liquor.1 It is characteristic of the little
influence which Christian morality has over international
dealings that not until the Brussels Conference of European
Powers in 1889-90 did statesmen show much sense of respon
sibility in this regard for the natives of their various depen
dencies, and then only at the instigation of Christian mis
sionaries and temperance societies. Then, and since then
— many generations too late to prevent the evil becoming
widespread and inveterate — laws have been passed pro
hibiting or restricting the sale of spirituous liquors to the
different native populations. These laws are, of course,
constantly being evaded by unscrupulous traders,2 as had to
be confessed by a Committee of Inquiry which sat (in 1909)
on the Liquor Traffic of Southern Nigeria, with the result
that gin has actually become in that country a substitute
for currency ! In North America and in Australia the native
races are on the eve of extermination because " civiliza
tion," instead of protecting them against the dangers of
drink, gave full rein from the start to an unchristian com
mercialism. If the public consciousness had been practi
cally Christian, and if — we must allow this much in excuse —
the true nature of alcohol had been earlier recognized, the
first act of every civilized government would have been to
keep it as far as possible out of reach of the inferior races.3

1 The much-maligned Congo Government, however, did keep out
the Liverpool gin -traders.
2 Aided, it must be added, by ignorant or subsidized State officials.
In a Blue Book issued by the " Commercial Intelligence Department "
of the Board of Trade in 19 13, British distillers were urged to produce
a " new cheap spirit " so as to undersell Holland and Germany in
Southern Nigeria !
3 How far the iniquity of multiplying occasions of certain evil has
been ignored by statesmen may be seen in the notorious Opium War
of 1840, as the result of which the British Government, in the interests
of the Indian Opium Traffic, forced China to continue to allow the

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 69
But morality is apt to be set aside when the chance of making
money on a large scale is offered.
17. The Question of the " Pledge."
We have now seen what is the duty both of the individual
and of the State in the matter of strong drink : a duty summed
up in the words, stringent control and moderation. For the
individual in normal circumstances, total abstinence
is only a matter of counsel or expediency to which he is to
be earnestly invited, but not compelled. This suggests a
word about the value and obligation of what is commonly
known as the " pledge." In its widest acceptation, the
pledge is the deliberate expression of a resolution to abstain
from the use of intoxicating liquors. It may vary in strin
gency and extent, may be made, for instance, for life or
for a certain definite period, may make exception of some
particular beverage of low alcoholic strength, may even
regard only the place of drinking, or the time. But,
generally speaking, it is universal as regards drink, however
it may vary in regard to duration. So much for its defini
tion. A more complicated matter is the character of its
obligation, which is thus determined by moralists. If it
is a promise formally made to God, then it takes on the
qualities of avow, i.e., a deliberate engagement made with
Almighty God to undertake some action or course of conduct
which is good in itself, and better than its omission. The
obligation of a vow, i.e.,Vhether it is to bind under mortal
or venial sin, depends partly on the intention of him who
makes it and partly on its subject matter. A person
can bind himself either seriously or lightly in a serious1
matter, but only lightly in a light matter. Applying this
accordingly to the promise of total abstinence, which is a
sufficiently weighty undertaking, one can clearly bind
oneself either under mortal or venial sin. On account of
importation of that pernicious drug, an iniquity tardily recognized
in 1909, when a limit to the importation was officially fixed.
1 Certain vows, such as those of religion and of clerical celibacy,
have their grave character determined by the Church, independently
of the decision of those who take them.

70 THE DRINK QUESTION
the reverence due to God, the breach of any deliberate
promise made to Him involves at least venial sin. And,
of course, if the pledge is the only means by which a person
can keep himself from the sin of drunkenness, then the
obligation to take it is the same as that to avoid the sin.
But very often the pledge is not made to God, but taken
privately or before a priest, who is said to " administer "
it. What then? In the first case, a private resolution
cannot create any new obligation, nor add to the guilt of
violating the law of temperance, whereas in the second, as
the purpose is communicated to an official person, then
it becomes a " gratuitous " promise, and binds, venially,
ex fidelitate. The breach of such a promise becomes a
sort of falsehood.
In this matter of pledge-making ignorance sometimes
causes a false conscience, and it is well that the person who
is admitted to the pledge should understand clearly its
nature and force. The practical difficulty is that those who
are most prone to fail are also most in need of the strongest
sanction. A pledge which is recognized as a mere promise
made to man, or a personal resolution, will have less effect
against the strong trend of an evil habit, whereas the thought
that its violation involves serious sin will make the holder
careful about avoiding occasions. Consequently a pru
dent pastor always endeavours to enrol applicants for the
pledge, whether they are those who need to break a bad
habit or those who fear to establish one, or those who are
influenced by fraternal charity, in some association where
they will have the support of the like-minded, and where
other exercises of virtue are practised and encouraged as a
means of building up and safeguarding strong characters or
repairing those that are weakened.
18. The true Motives for Temperance.
This introduces the last element of our discussion of the
moral aspects of the drink question. Intemperance less
or greater is, like avarice and lust, essentially a moral evil,
and calls for moral remedies. In the alcoholized subject
an animal craving, which cannot even be called natural,

THE ETHICS OF THE QUESTION 71
since mere beasts do not ordinarily follow their appetites
to therr own destruction, has in this one point broken
down the control of reason : the damage is in the spiritual
part, and it is there that it must be repaired. Physical
remedies, the removal of temptation, the arousing of other
interests, are very useful and may be even necessary as
helpful conditions, but of themselves they will never restore
lost will-tissues. Consequently, as we have seen in our
sketch of Catliolic Temperance Organizations, the Church
insists on such societies being mainly religious, member
ship being confined to practising Catholics, and other objects,
such as sick-benefit, life-insurance, etc., being secon
dary. She holds out total abstinence as practically neces
sary for the victims of drink and as highly expedient for
the spiritual welfare of the self-controlled and self-sacrificing.
And, as long as these motives are prominent, we may trust
that the temperance movement will grow in strength and
influence. Utilitarian motives, of course, abound. A
prudent self-regard may prompt abstinence from what
does not benefit and may easily injure health, what is a
source of considerable expense bringing in no adequate
return, what experience has shown leads to loss of will
power and mental energy. Enlightened patriotism may
suggest personal withdrawal from the encouragement of
what, de facto, is a grave social evil. The premium set on
temperance by many prudent employers may influence
a man whose strength and integrity form a useful asset.
But these are not the supernatural motives which make
total abstinence an act of virtue. The desire to atone for
past excess, or to offer reparation for the excess of others,
or to encourage those who are in the grip of a bad habit,
or simply to assert command over an appetite apt to rebel
— these, on the contrary, all involve the interests of Almighty
God more or less explicitly and ennoble the conduct that
they inspire. Much more does the purpose to imitate the
Man of Sorrows, by denying oneself permanently for the
love of Him what ranks as one of the pleasures of life, elevate
total abstinence to the level of virtue, and associate the
abstainer in some degree with those who have left all to follow

72 THE DRINK QUESTION
Christ. Motives such as these, combined with the sense
that God who inspires them must also enable them to be
duly fulfilled, serve to keep total abstinence from being
merely one form of refined selfishness or a pharisaic assump
tion of superior virtue. They make an appeal to generosity
and unselfishness : at the same time, they depend upon
the practice both of humility and confidence.
The ethical bearing of the various systems proposed to
combat the ravages of the drink-habit will best be considered
in the chapter describing these suggested or attempted
measures. The Catholic principles that individual liberty
must be respected unless in any particular case it is incompa
tible with real social welfare, and that abuse, unless exceed
ingly prevalent, does not destroy the right to use, form the
main tests whereby to judge their morality.

CHAPTER V
THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION
I. The Range of Economics.
The true wealth of a State consists in the individual well-
being of all its citizens. To-day the fact that all the great
nations of the world, aiming at the social betterment of
their members, are concerning themselves more and more
with the Drink Question, is a sign that drinking habits are
now felt, more than ever before, to be an obstacle to progress.
The temporal well-being of its subjects is the raison d'etre of
the State. In the ideal commonwealth there should be no
preventable moral or physical disease ; the workers should
receive a fair wage, enabling them to live human fives in
decent surroundings, and to bring up their families in health
and vigour. No citizen, if the full aims of the State are to
be realized, should, by economic pressure, be so circumstanced
as not to have time and opportunity to develop the mental
and spiritual side of his nature. In our complex modern
organization the difficulty is, not to indicate what needs
reformation, but rather to suggest remedies which shall
effect their object without causing harm in other directions.
Maladies of long growth require time and patience for their
healing. And a further complication arises from the fact
that reform must proceed simultaneously in many directions.
An improvement in material conditions unaccompanied
by greater powers of self-discipline might ruin society, as it
has often ruined the individual. The abuse of alcohol
is not the cause of the present unjust and unstable industrial
organization : not the thirst for drink, but an even more
deeply-rooted appetite, the thirst for gold— awn sacra
fames— has produced at one and the same time the multi-
73

74 THE DRINK QUESTION
millionaire and the landless proletarian. The economic
ravages of intemperance are themselves often the effect of
unchristian social conditions.
2. Instances of Economic Waste.
However, we are here concerned with excess in drink
alone, and are endeavouring to estimate what economic
results it produces in a community such as this where it is so
prevalent. As before remarked, there are many other ways
in which material resources, represented by money, are
wasted. The natural virtue of thrift is not much cultivated
in these days of pleasure. Reformers are fond of calculating
how much could be done in the way of permanently useful
work if only people could be weaned from this or that form of
wasteful extravagance. What untold sums go in ribbons
and furs and feathers, let the enormous dividends of the
haberdashery companies proclaim. And as for tobacco,
the craving for which in so many cases is a voluntarily
induced necessity, an American writer has calculated that
in his country smokers
" spend in a single year twice the amount spent by the entire
country in railway travel, and about three times the amount
which it spends on its common school system ; they pay out
annually about three times the entire cost of the Panama Canal ;
they destroy directly about three times as much property as was
destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake ; their smokes and
chews cost them about twice what it costs to maintain the
government of the United States, including the interest on the
public debt."1
Much more harmful both to character and resources is
the passion for gambling which, like intoxication, is the
abuse of a permissible practice. Enormous sums of money,
reckoned at about £100,000,000, 2 are wasted every year
in this practice, wasted in the sense that, raised to a large
extent from the poorer sections of the Community, it is
spent without any adequate return, adding nothing to the
1 The Unpopular Review. No. 1. "Our Tobacco: Its Costs."
' Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, sub voce ; Hogge,
Betting and Gambling.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 75
permanent wealth of the community and enriching only a
small unworthy parasitic class.
3. Unique Character of Waste caused by Drink.
Whilst deploring, therefore, the immense waste of mater
ial resources involved in expenditure on drink, let us not
forget that it is only one way, if the chief, in which human
folly and short-sightedness display themselves. On the other
hand, those who try to turn the tables on the temperance
reformer by reckoning up the colossal sum spent on non
alcoholic beverages — tea, coffee, cocoa, mineral waters, etc.,
—which is estimated at over a hundred millions sterling,
do not reflect that these substances, when not actually
foods, are generally innocuous in their effects on bodily
and social health. No one ruins his health or beats his wife
or starves his children through devotion to cocoa.1 They
perform the proper functions of drink, refreshing, strengthen
ing, and stimulating, without doing harm to the partaker.
Whereas, owing to the incessant inducements to excess
and its consequent prevalence, the expenditure on strong
drink represents not only so much actual waste of money,
but the purchase of a host of other evils affecting the indi
vidual and the community. Add to this that the present
expenditure on strong drink has increased fourfold in a
century while the population has not doubled, is not de
manded in the interests of health or efficiency, not necessita
ted by climate or occupation, is a matter largely of custom
founded upon ignorance, yet one which may ultimately
become inveterate, and it will be seen how great is the
economic importance of checking this source of waste.
4. What is wasted in Money.
We may begin by stating the amount of what is called
the annual " drink bill " in the United Kingdom, a sum
calculated yearly by the Secretary of the " United King-
1 All the same if it is no more than a coincidence, it must be
deemed an unfortunate one that some of the prominent temperance
reformers in England are financially interested in cocoa. The fact
cannot fail to discount in this censorious world their zeal against
the traffic in strong drink.

76 THE DRINK QUESTION
dom Alliance," from the retail price of the spirits, beer and
wine retained for consumption. In one sense this is an
ex parte statement, for the Alliance only exists in order to
suppress the Liquor Traffic, but it is based upon the figures
supplied from official Government sources, and hostile
criticism, which at most knocks off a few millions, does not
materially affect it. We give the figures for the last five
years available : —
1909. 1910. 1911. 1912. 1913.
£155,162,485. £157,604,658. £162,797,229. £161,553,330 £166,681,000
Per capita —
£3 8s. n£i. £3 gs. s\d. £3 us. \o\d. £3 10s. gd. £3 125. tf.
In regard to the per capita estimates it must be remem
bered that children under fifteen, whose consumption of alco
holic beverages cannot be very large, total about 14,000,000,
and that a fairly large number of adults are total abstainers,
so that the amounts spent by drinkers should be consider
ably increased. It is a startling thing to realize that during
the past five years over eight hundred million pounds — about
£150,000,000 more than the National Debt — have been spent
in a practice, the moral or physical benefit of which is infini
tesimal when contrasted with its patent and enormous evil
and the immense good forgone. And our wonder is increased
when we reflect that, on a low computation, two-thirds of
this amount is expended by those who cannot afford it, if
they are to maintain a decent livelihood for themselves and
their families. We are not forgetting what sometimes is
ignored, that a considerable fraction of this huge sum is
recovered for the community for public purposes — over
£35,000,000 a year for the period under consideration. But
over against this must be set not only the loss of life and the
decrease of productiveness directly due to excessive drink
ing, but a large proportion of the cost of maintaining prisons,
police, the destitute, asylums, etc., a burden which is greatly
increased by alcoholic indulgence . The share of this that drink
causes is estimated in Hastings' Dictionary of Religion and
Ethics,1 as over £27,000,000 yearly, without including any
1 Vol v., sub voce, " Drunkenness," where detailed statistics are
given.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION y7
portion of the expenditure on Old Age Pensions. Con
sequently were drinking as a national habit abolished
to-morrow, the community would presently find itself more
than recouped by deliverance from a great proportion of
these heavy charges. They are not due merely to absolute
but to relative excess, which is determined by other
considerations besides the amount taken. Let us see in
more detail to what extent pauperism, ill-health, lunacy
and crime are traceable to excessive drinking. Obviously
we cannot here discuss statistics at any great length or give
the results of a prolonged personal investigation. It will
be enough to quote the testimony of competent observers,
as illustrating and confirming what we should expect
a priori.
5. The Economic Waste from drink-caused Poverty.
In regard then, to destitution, it is clear that in a country
where a large proportion of the wage-earners (nearly one
half) are, assuming all their wage to be used for their main
tenance, on or under the border line of want, and where two-
thirds of the national expenditure on drink comes from their
ranks, that the estimated average of over 6s. a week per
family spent on drink must bring very many well within the
zone of absolute indigence. The money spent by the work
ing-classes in this way is not, recollect, taken from their
reserve funds, for they have none ; it is taken from what is
needed often for bare existence and always for existence
under decent human conditions.1 So we have vast numbers
thrown on the rates under the Poor Law or on the resources
of charitable organizations who but for drink could support
themselves. To this effect is the testimony of the Poor
Law Commission of 1909, viz. —
" A great weight of evidence indicates Drink as the most potent
and universal factor in bringing about pauperism."
The Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, an acknowledged expert,
I Vid. sup., chap, i, p. 24.

78 THE DRINK QUESTION
in his volume, The Life and Labour of the People of
London, says : —
" Of drink in all its combinations, adding to every trouble,
undermining every effort after good, destroying the home and
cursing the young lives of the children, the stories [he narrates]
tell enough. . . . Drink must, therefore, be accounted the most
prolific of all causes [of poverty], and is the least necessary."
Marshall, in his Economics of Industry, maintains that —
" The prevalence of intemperate habits in a country diminishes
both the number of days in the week and the number of years in
his life during which the breadwinner is earning full wages."
Finally, Mr. P. Snowden, speaking of Liquor Taxation,
says : —
" The national revenue from the liquor traffic is simply an
indication of the extent of social waste and social poverty which
is caused by that traffic."

6. Economic Waste in the matter of Health.
As regards ill-health and premature death resulting from
alcoholic excess, enough perhaps has been said in the first
chapter. There we saw what average amount of alcohol
could be disposed of in twenty-four hours without risk of
harm, viz. about one oz. As a matter of fact a large majority
of public-house drinkers exceed this amount and must be
classed as chronic alcoholics, liable to all the internal
derangements connected with that state. O'Malley,1 a very
moderate writer, goes as far as to assert that to take habit
ually at one sitting a quart of English porter will almost
certainly induce chronic alcoholism. " A pint of champagne,
French claret, or of mediumly strong Rhine wine, about a
tumbler and a half of sherry, and about half a tumbler of
whisky ' ' reach the limit of harmlessness. " A man that takes
a pint of claret at dinner habitually is a chronic alcoholic,
1 The Cure of Alcoholism, p. 18.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 79
and is certainly injuring his health."1 Another American
doctor who favours the moderate use of alcoholic drinks,
considers the permissible quantity to be " one, or at most two,
glasses of wine (10 per cent, alcohol), or one pint beer, or
their equivalent in the twenty-four hours."2 Horsley and
Sturge will not admit a minimum dose at all. " It is quite
impossible to state that any given minimal amount of the
drug is harmless to our tissues."3 At the same time,
although alcohol, like other drugs, induces a craving,4 it is
easy enough, given ordinary circumstances and other forms of
recreation, to avoid forming a vicious habit of excess. There
are many moderate drinkers who remain strictly moderate
without any difficulty. To say that the ranks of the drunk
ards are recruited from those of the moderates, is simply
to state the truism that no one acquires an evil habit all of
a sudden. But there is no inevitability about the lapse.
The slight injury to health, the lowered vitality and lessened
power of resistance to disease, the bad psychological effects
of moderate indulgence, may all be counteracted by exer
cise and other remedies, or made inappreciable by a very
strong constitution. As before pointed out, the moderate
drinker is not per se morally blameworthy, he uses his free
dom, it may be less wisely, but still within permissible
limits. But excess in the individual case may at times be
committed through mere ignorance of the nature of alcohol or
of one's own particular bodily state. Medical and statistical
testimony concur, as we have seen, in declaring that, in the
aggregate, immense injury to bodily and mental vigour is de
facto done by the present drinking habits of the community.
Other evidence of this abounds. When bodily strength
and endurance is required, the abstainer provides it best.
1 O'Malley, op. cit., p. 18.
' Prof. Abel, in Critical Review of the Pharmacological Action of
Ethyl Alcohol.
3 Alcohol and the Human Body (1911), p- 16.
* This is one of its most dangerous characteristics. ' ' Alcohol, " says
Sir Frederic Treves, " is a curiously insidious poison in that it pro
duces effects which seem to have only one antidote — alcohol again.
This applies to another drug equally insidious, and that is morphia
or opium." Hence the tippler's proverb — "Take a hair of the
dog that bit you."

80 THE DRINK QUESTION
Arctic explorers are practically unanimous concerning the
harmfulness of strong drink in their particular work. Sir
E. Shackleton says, " that alcohol in any form in the Arctic
or Antarctic regions is most injurious and is never used."1
Similarly, Nansen writes : " My experience leads me to take
a decided stand against the use of stimulants and narcotics
of all kinds." 2 The use of strong drink lessens the soldier's
value. Sir Frederick Treves, accompanying the 30,000
men who marched to the relief of Ladysmith, noted that the
first to leave the ranks were the drinkers. " They dropped
out as clearly as if they had been labelled." A well-known
saying of Von Moltke's — " Beer is a far more dangerous
enemy to Germany than all the armies of France " — was not
meant to depreciate French prowess. The discouragement
of drink in the British Army and Navy points in the same
direction.3 7. Economic Loss in the matters of Mental Energy and
Mechanical Skill.
Experience, too, has shown that mental efficiency is
impaired by alcohol. Von Helmholz felt that the smallest
quantity checked in himself all creative mental activity.
Various other observers have ascertained that minute doses
quicken mental action for a short time, but then retard it
below the normal standard. Huxley is even more emphatic
against its employment. " For no conceivable considera
tion would I use it to whip up a tired or sluggish brain."
Once more, where manual skill and dexterity are con
cerned, alcohol proves to be a disturbing factor. Professor
Kraepelin, of Heidelberg, conducted a series of experiments,4
tending to show that even small doses have a cumula
tive effect in lessening efficiency. And, as a practical
1 Letter quoted in the Times, September 8, 1909.
* The First Crossing of Greenland.
3 In the Navy men may choose a money equivalent for the grog-
ration. It is said that over 40 per cent, of British soldiers in India
are teetotalers. The Norwegian Storthing has just (June 1914)
passed a bill prohibiting strong drink in Army and Navy.
* Summarized in Alcohol and the Human Body, chap. v.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 81
recognition of the same fact, we see that workers on whose
skill and presence of mind the safety of the public largely
depends are in many cases obliged by their employers to be
teetotalers. Many of the great railways in the United
States require total abstinence from their men when on duty,
and not a few even when off. (U.K. A. Annual, 1913, p. 104.)
8. The Loss due to Premature Death.
It is plain then, without quoting further, that drink is a
prolific source of ill-health and loss of productiveness. That
it leads directly and indirectly to premature death is equally
certain. Directly by the diseases, such as acute alcoholic
poisoning and alcoholic neuritis, caused by the drug itself ;
indirectly by those ailments of which it is a determining
or contributing cause.1 Dr. Norman Kerr, in his Inebriety
(p. 381), estimates that from 100,000 to 120,000 deaths per
annum in the British Isles are traceable to the effects of
alcohol : 40,000 are due to the drug alone, without reckon
ing those (50 per cent, of suicides, 15 per cent, of total
accidents) in which it gave occasion for the action of other
causes. Our frail bodies have many other enemies. The
deaths from consumption alone are reckoned at about
50,000 per annum, but these, unlike those resulting from
drink, are due to a cause not yet wholly preventable.
On the other hand, nearly all the most fatal diseases —
consumption, pneumonia, cholera, etc. — are best resisted
by those who have abstained from all strong drink. The
" International Congress on Tuberculosis" (Paris, 1905),
resolved " that in view of the close connexion between
alcoholism and tuberculosis, this Congress strongly
emphasizes the importance of combining the fight against
tuberculosis with the struggle against alcoholism."
Statistics published by the Registrar-General (65th Annual
Report) show that the death rate from consumption
among those engaged in the retailing of drink is largely in
excess of that prevailing in all other occupations.2 As
1 Horsley and Sturge op. tit. enumerate (pp. 230-1) seven of the
former class and over thirty of the latter.
• The Alcohol Factor in Social Conditions, p. 39. Sir. J. Crichton-

82 THE DRINK QUESTION
regards pneumonia, Professors Osier and Macrae (1910)
write —
" It has long been known that habitual drunkards have a very
slim chance of recovery when attacked by pneumonia, and it is
noted that the mortality amongst moderate drinkers is higher
than among total abstainers." 1
And this statement is borne out by the mortality rate
in pneumonia, viz. : Total abstainers, 18-5 per cent ; moder
ate drinkers, 25-4 per cent ; intemperate, 52-8 per cent.
We have already (pp. 16-17) shown how the business
of the Insurance Societies accords with these medical
views. 9. The Loss through Insanity caused by Drink.
The connexion between indulgence in alcohol and lunacy
is also undisputed. The number of insane confined in our
asylums is increasing out of proportion to the population.
In 1913 it reached the figure of 138,377 (for England and
Wales), 21 -4 per cent more than the number 10 years ago.
In 1904 it was 117,199, of which number Dr. Robert Jones
demonstrated2 about 11,000 males and 6,000 females owed
their affliction directly or indirectly to drink. Before the
" Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration "
of that year, Dr. Wiglesworth, of Rainhill County Asylum,
testified that " Alcohol is an extremely potent cause of
lunacy." Then he gave as the result of eleven years obser
vation of cases admitted that 29-28 per cent of those were
drink cases. The Lunacy Commissioner's Report for the
whole of England and Wales gives the percentage as 24 for
men, 9-1 for women.3
Of the still greater number of the Feeble-minded (reported
by the Royal Commission in 1908 to number nearly 150,000,
Browne dissents from the view "that the regular use of alcohol in
creases the liability to all kinds of disease," but he allows that " the
irregular or immoderate use of alcohol predisposes to disease."
Evidently, here is a question of terms : what does Sir James consider
"immoderate " ?
1 Quoted in Fifty Doctors against Alcohol, p. 97.
2 British Journal of Inebriety, July, 1904.
3 Fifty Doctors against Alcohol, p. 145.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 83
or 1 in 217 of the population), it may be said that alcohol has
much to do with their state, not so much by direct action
as by the accident of their birth. Dr. Potts, giving evidence
before that Commission, declared that out of the life histories
of 250 feeble-minded children he had personally examined,
alcoholism figured in no less than 104. x
Thus, there is a vast wastage of the nation's life and energy
through this preventable cause. Not only do many people die
before their natural time, but many come into the world unfit
for ordinary existence and, during their life-time, they are a
burden on the resources of the community. Consequently,
the economic effects of the prevalence of drinking habits
as one source of moral and physical unfitness are very great
and very disastrous indeed.
10. Drink and Crime.
When sin ceases to be purely personal and has social
results as well, then it comes under the cognizance of the
State, has to be banned as crime, repressed, punished and
corrected by the exertions and at the expense of the com
munity. Sin is a rebellion, in the pursuit of personal
interest, against the law of God, and crime is selfishness
cultivated against the interests of fellow-citizens or of the
State. The claims of God and of the State alike are recog
nized by reason and accepted by will. Whatever diminishes
the control of reason and will in man ipso facto sets free
instincts and appetites which are purely self-regarding.
Man takes on the resemblance of an irrational animal,
of one moreover, not trained and disciplined to good be
haviour by education or instinct, but led only by its passions
and inclinations. We should expect, therefore, to find those
given to alcoholic excess exhibit a tendency to commit sin
and crime when occasion offers. Statistics and the deliber
ate testimony of experts bear out this expectation. The
following dicta of well-known judges have often been quoted,
but are worth recording again.
Justice Coleridge (1877) : " If we could make England
sober we might shut up nine-tenths of the gaols."
> Alcohol and the Human Body, p 254, where see other evidence,

84 THE DRINK QUESTION
Justice Hawkins (1883) : " The root of almost all crime
is drink. I do believe that nine-tenths of the crime com
mitted in this country — and certainly in this county
[Durham] — is engendered within the doors of the drinking
house." Justice Barnes, President of the Divorce Court (1906) :
" I am fairly convinced that if drink was eradicated, this
court might shut its doors, at any rate for the greater part
of the time."
Justice Alverstone (1909): "I have no hesitation in
saying that 90 per cent, of the crime of the country is caused
by indulgence in strong chink."
Justice Phillimore (1913) : " Of the evils of excessive
drinking, anjixxly who has been an employer of labour, a
man of business, and, above all things a judge in a criminal
court, is able to bear the very highest testimony. . . . Some
of the worst crimes I have had to deal with in an experience
of 15 years were crimes committed by men who had been in
that state which the police technically describe as ' in drink,
but not drunk.' "
One might fill a book with testimonies from police magis
trates as to the close connexion of drink with the varieties
of crimes against person, property and public order that
come before them, especially crimes of cruelty exercised
upon women and children ; but there is no need to elaborate
a point so obvious. At the same time it must be remembered
that these testimonies regard only our own time and coun
try. Drink is not the sole cause of crime ; man's passions
can be unchained by other agencies. Crime can and does
exist in lands noted for sobriety, as for instance in regions
peopled by Mohammedans. And we may repeat our warn
ing that, if drink is the cause of crime, the inhuman un
christian conditions of life in which so many of the workers
have to live are the cause of drink. When eminent judges
say that temperance would abolish crime, they imply that the
practice of temperance would enable the people to free them
selves from the wretched environment in which crime is
inevitably fostered. " Drink is the mother of want," said
Lord Brougham, " and the nurse of crime." A heartless

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 85
commercialism which treats human beings as " hands,"
not as " souls," is often the parent of excessive drinking, as
the one escape possible from the misery it engenders.
11. Drink in other Countries.
We have spoken hitherto of the economic loss the country
suffers from over-indulgence in liquor, resulting in fewer and
less healthy citizens and in widespread anti-social activi
ties. Of other countries some do not suffer in like propor
tion : others are in more desperate case. The Americans
drink heavily, yet they fall 70 millions a year short of our
standard. If we drank only as they do in Canada we
should save 120 millions a year. On the other hand, we are
better off in this matter of waste than France, Germany
and Belgium. We have considered how health and happiness,
money and morality are all squandered in pursuit of this
luxury. But there is another aspect, also financial, which
we have not yet dwelt upon, and that is the position of the
Licensed Trade itself in our midst.
12. The Liquor Traffic and the State.
The financial case against expenditure in drink is that
it is not only waste on a colossal scale of resources 1 which,
if spent productively, would alleviate most of the physical
miseries of the community, but that it positively induces
a number of woes peculiar to itself, which have no com
pensating advantages. Assuming, then, that the liquor
traffic is one which needs careful watching and strict
1 Amongst the waste of resources not previously mentioned must be
reckoned the immense amount of barley that is raised and imported
for brewing purposes. According to Horsley and Sturge (op. tit., p. 29),
65,000,000 bushels of barley are grown in the United Kingdom and
19 million cwts., or about 40 million bushels, are imported for brewing
and distilling. Thus over one hundred million bushels of highly nutri
tious food is converted into a substance which, whatever else it does,
does not nourish. Add to this the huge sums which are sunk in the
brewing, distilling and sale of alcoholic liquors, i.e., in the manufac
ture and distribution of an article of luxury which most people will
agree does much more harm than good. The nominal capital of
the drink industry is between 250 and 275 million pounds and it
is safe to say that the greater proportion of this could be far more
usefully employed.

86 THE DRINK QUESTION
control (and all experience proves this), the existence of
this vast, largely anti-social interest constitutes a very
difficult politico-economic problem. In the United King
dom there are 152 distilleries, producing 45 million
gallons of spirits annually, and 4,062 brewing firms,
manufacturing over 1,300 millions. The brewers employ
106,000 persons, the distillers 1,510 (Census of Produc
tion, 1907). The tendency is to get the control of the
wholesale trade into comparatively few hands. Thus some
ten of the distilling firms overshadow all the others, and the
number of wholesale brewers has decreased from 28,679 in
1870 to 4,062 in 1912,1 of which latter number 8 per cent
produce 80 per cent of the material brewed. The fact that
the control is in a few hands would not be in itself a disad
vantage (for a few, ceteris paribus, can more easily be reached
by law), were it not for the fact that the interest in the liquor
traffic is very widespread. Following on the successful
flotation in 1887 of the firm of Guinness as a public company,
many other liquor manufacturers followed suit, with the re
sult that the public invested extensively in what promised
so excellent a return, and consequently a great num
ber of people became financially concerned with the main
tenance and spread of the Trade. 2 This is obviously a great
hindrance to any reform which may be found necessary. In
any community the presence of a section whose interest is
bound up with the encouragement of an extremely waste
ful form of expenditure,3 indulgence in which is adverse to
moral and material well-being, cannot but constitute a grave
danger. The Trade and those connected with it, control-
1 Annual Parliamentary Return of Brewers' Licences.
2 " The shares are mainly held by the wealthy classes of the com
munity. In 1903 there were on the registers the names of 1,000
medical men, over 1,000 Army and Navy officers, over 1,200 clergy
of the Established Church, 163 peers, 880 knights and ladies, and
honourables not a few." G. A. Wilson in the Alliance Year-Book
for 1914, p. 62.
3 A Committee of the British Association, which discussed the
question in 1882, estimated that only about 20 per cent, of the expen
diture on drink could be economically justified, " the remainder being
either pure luxury or sheer waste." See The Temperance Problem
(Rowntree and Sherwell), p. 25.

THE ECONOMICS OF THE QUESTION 87
ling capital to the amount of £240,000,000,! and owning over
145,000 liquor shops (1909), organized into some half-score
large Federations and 700 odd local societies, " to protect
and advance its interests," maintaining a press with the same
object and having many of its leaders in both Houses of
Parliament, form a veritable imperium in imperio, and an
active anti-social element, which has and must have serious
economic results. It should not, we repeat, be to the in
terest of any section of the community that enormous sums
of money are wasted in luxury to the detriment of those
habits of thrift, prudence and self-control that make for the
welfare of the State. Just as the fact of the manufacture of
war-material being in private hands may contribute periodi
cally to the danger of war-scares, so does this element
of private gain connected with the drink traffic tend effec
tually to hinder temperance reform.
13. Excessive Profits unevenly divided.
Those gains are very large. We have seen how the State
in self-protection makes the manufacture and sale of strong
liquor dear (chap. ii.). But its very attempt to control
creates a monopoly by withdrawing the article from compe
tition. And hence in the actual disposal of its stock the
Trade makes enormous profits.2 In the first place, it pays
very poorly the labourers employed by it, besides employ
ing a much smaller number in proportion. The percentage
of wages to capital given by Pratt 3 is 15, which is very much
above that quoted for individual breweries. The percentage
in other trades, such as boot-making in Somersetshire, ranges
as high as 43. It is said that the firm of Guinness makes
six times the amount of its wages in profits. From 1887,
when it became a joint-stock concern, to 1910 this busi
ness, according to its own published balance sheet, made
£40,149,285 profit, drawn mostly from an already impover-
1 Brewers' Almanack, 191 1, p- 4°5-
2 According to Rowntree and Sherwell op. cit. 20 per cent, net is a
°^ The Licensed Trade : a standard book in its defence.

88 THE DRINK QUESTION
ished country. One may judge by the brewery dividends
quoted how general is this prosperity in the Trade. 1 It is not
a healthy prosperity. It is a heavy tax levied in the interests
of comparatively few on the weakness and misery of the
many, who would not be tempted to drink to excess unless
that were the only recreation open to them. The benefit
does not accrue to the purchaser who buys an intrinsically
worthless article at an enormously enhanced price. It
is estimated that a "proof"2 gallon of alcohol costs yd.
to manufacture, whilst the duties imposed on it amount to
22s. 6d. A man who spends fourpence a day on beer pays
in reality 19s. annually to the Exchequer and £5 to the
Trade. 3
We may defer the discussion of the economic effects of
the State regulation of the Liquor Traffic to the next chap
ter, which will deal with the Solution of the Question.
1 The Trade in 1909 turned over £121,000,000 after deducting
what it paid to the State ; of this £78,250,000 went in cost of manu
facture, wages, rent, rates, and material, leaving £42,750,000, about
one-third, for expenses of upkeep and profits. (Alliance Y 'ear-Book,
1911, p. 13.)
2 I.e., containing 57 per cent of pure alcohol.
3 G. B. Wilson, Alliance Year-Book for 1912, p. 28.

CHAPTER VI
THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION
I. A Multiplicity of Schemes.
The preceding pages, especially the chapters summarizing
the history of the temperance movement, will have given
evidence enough that the community, whether represented
by the Government or by voluntary agencies (inspired
generally by religious organizations), has long been earnestly
trying to remedy the evils connected with the habits of
drink. In practice, no complete solution has yet been
found, although the whole ground, from entire prohibition
of manufacture and sale right up to free-trade in alcoholic
beverages, has been covered with schemes. As the evils
of strong drink arise from the circumstances of the drinker
as well as from the drink itself, remedies, to be effectual,
must aim at removing both the proximate and remote
causes of excess, at strengthening the will as well as lessening
the force of temptation. In discussing the various acts
and projects having in view the elimination of the drink
evil, we must confine ourselves to those that directly concern
the manufacture and distribution of strong drink. Other
wise, we should have to include in our purview all that
is being done to improve the social circumstances of the
worker and to provide him, not merely with more adequate
wages — which alone would only aggravate the situation —
but to alter his ideals and provide more worthy means of
recreation than he finds to hand at present.
2. Catholic View at variance with that of U.K. Alliance.
In enumerating and criticizing various anti-alcoholic
measures, we assume, to start with, the Catholic doctrine
89

90 THE DRINK QUESTION
that the abuse of a thing is no justification for forbidding
its use, unless the abuse is so prevalent and so inevitable
as practically to admit of no other remedy than prohibition.
The " United Kingdom Alliance," one of the oldest and
probably, the most influential of non-Catholic temperance
organizations, has long ago despaired of the republic in this
regard. It maintains that the evil effects of the Drink
Trade in causing crime, extravagance, social corruption,
disease, and death, are so contrary both to public and
private welfare that it is the duty of the State to abolish
it root and branch, especially as -no system of regulation
has hitherto succeeded, nor can any in future hope to succeed,
in keeping it under due control. Moreover, as the bad
results are so inevitable, so " essentially mischievous,"
the Alliance holds that to draw profit, public or private,
from this traffic, which is " utterly wrong in principle," is
unjustifiable, and that its suppression is quite compatible
with rational liberty. Now, apart from such exaggerations
as " essentially mischievous," and " utterly wrong in
principle " which have no proper support in fact, even if
we grant the rest of the Alliance hypothesis, we cannot admit
the conclusion. For underlying its argument is the assump
tion that civil legislation is the only means by which tem
perance can be promoted. Whereas, as we have aheady
pointed out, at the root of the drink-evil there are others
still more fundamental, viz., ignorance of the character
of the article consumed, absence of the moral and religious
motives for temperance, the force of traditional customs,
and an iniquitous industrial system which makes so many
of our workers turn to alcoholic indulgence as the readiest
form of recreation available. The Alliance itself being
" non-sectarian " is doubtless prevented by its constitutions
from dwelling on the inward change of heart and will,
necessary for real reformation, only to be produced by
religious influences and not to be made up for by mere
external law, but surely its own record should show how
much can be accomplished by purely secular influences,
such as instruction in the harm done by drink and a widening
and elevating of the mental horizon of the toilers. At any

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 91
rate, the Catholic is more hopeful of the effects of legislative
intervention, direct and indirect, as a necessary means of
removing temptation and ."allowing free play for character-
development. From this standpoint he does not admit
either that the disease is generally so inveterate as to justify
the desperate remedy of State prohibition or that State
interference in the past (which he grants has often been
injudicious and harmful) has been wholly unsuccessful. In
this spirit he approaches the consideration of the existing
system and of the various modifications or substitutions
proposed the more effectually to attain its end, i.e. the
proper control, in the interests of the individual and the
State, of the trade in strong drink. Our purpose then is to
describe the chief systems as they are at present and test
them from the point of view of efficiency and morality.
3. The Licensing System.
This is by far the oldest plan and has its roots deep in
the historic past. Since 1552, the method used in this
country has been, roughly, that the State should control
the manufacture and sale, whether retail or wholesale, of
strong drink, and that the Justices of the Peace should select
from all applicants persons fit to be entrusted with the
retail. The State does not limit the amount manufactured,
except indirectly by the duties it imposes. Now, if the duty
exacted were such that the manufacturer or wholesale dealer
could not hope to recoup his outlay and make a profit by
the sale, then the State would be practically prohibiting the
manufacture.1 Similarly by exacting licences so high that
retailers could not gain a livelihood, it could equivalently
stop the retail. In practice, of course, the duties levied
on manufacture and by licence are not, though heavy, pro
hibitive. For whatever the charge made for duties and
licences, it is paid ultimately by the drinking public : the
' From 1 900-1 909 the consumption of spirits in the British Isles
dropped from 1 ¦ 1 to -88 gals, per head : in the year 1 909-1 o after the
imposition of a heavier duty the drop was from -88 to -58, representmg
a diminution of 10,000,000 gallons. It now stands (1913) at -67.

92 THE DRINK QUESTION
publican buys his licence and passes on the amount of
duties levied to his customers in the shape of enhanced prices :
we have seen that the profits of the Trade remain in all
circumstances disproportionately high. The public can
not resent high prices, except by confining themselves to
relatively cheap drinks or, better, by becoming abstainers ;
unless they take this latter step they must pay what the
Trade asks. For the inevitable result of the Licensing
System is to create a monopoly, and the amalgamation of the
manufacturing firms, and the control they have obtained
over retailers by the system of " tied-houses," x tends to
make the monopoly more absolute. A monopoly business
is more profitable than one under free competition and
hence it attracts capital and grows in strength through the
very number of persons interested in its welfare. If ever
what is called the " Liquor Interest " becomes predominant
in the House of Commons, as it is said to be in the House
of Lords, then legislation, by means of which public opinion
becomes finally operative, cannot be relied on to help the
temperance movement. No great financial interest can
be expected to take steps seriously to limit its own gains.
Theoretically, since justices' licences had the character of a
free gift which had to be asked for every year, they created
no vested interest, but popular feeling made them practically
renewable on demand unless grave misconduct compelled
then refusal. In 1904, as we have seen (p. 41), the right of
compensation for refusal on grounds of superfluity was for
the first time established by law, so that now the licence-
holders have practically a legal claim to renewal — a fact
which naturally hampers the work of reform. However, the
compensation fund, as is only just, is raised by a levy on

1 A " tied-house," generally indicated by " So-and-So's Entire "
being extensively advertised, is a public-house belonging to a brewery
and either leased to a tenant or run by a manager who is its servant.
Pratt (The Licensed Trade, p. 93) estimates that 92 per cent, of the
public-houses are " tied."
The legality of the managerial system has recently (April, 1914)
been denied by a Liverpool magistrate, but his decision may not be
upheld.

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 93
the Trade, which 'does not suffer, since the diminution of
licences increases the value of those which survive.
4. Efficiency of the Licensing System.
There is nothing in the Licensing System, as it is at
present, that the moralist can object to. Can we say that
it is also effective ? We must examine the results.
Acting on the sound principle that the more temptation
to over-indulgence, the greater the amount of excess, the
Justices of late years have begun to limit the number of new
licences they grant and to diminish the number of old.
The result of their action is a progressive decrease in the
number of licensed premises, which stood in 1912 at 113,664
in England and Wales, 10,302 in Scotland, and 23,207 in
Ireland. The corresponding numbers in 1896 were 130,000
(about) ; 11,399 '< 24,686. As these are net results, allowing
for new licences, they indicate that in these seventeen
years considerably more than 26,912 licences were abolished
as injurious or superfluous. Reckoned with reference to
each 1,000 of the population, the decrease has been from 3*34
to 2-45 in England and Wales, and (in regard to " on "
licences) from i-68 to 1^40 in Scotland, whereas in Ireland,
owing partly to the diminishing population and partly to
the irresponsible levity of the Bench in granting licences,
"on-licences" per 1,000 have risen from 378 to 3-84. J
The United Kingdom " Drink Bill " also has decreased
with occasional wide fluctuations (it was £185,927,227 in
1899 and £155,162,485, ten years later, in 1909) during
the same seventeen years from £170,426,467 to £161,553,330.
The wide variation, however (in 1913 it was £166,631,000),
shows that other causes, besides the number of licensed
houses, affect the drinking habits of the people. Prosperous
trade, for instance, full employment and good wages, are
reflected immediately in the increase of the " Drink Bill."
1 Vide supra, p. 41. In spite of a widespread and energetic reform
movement, organized public opinion has not yet reached the Irish
licensing Bench which seems incapable of considering the question
in the light of the national welfare. In a village near Cork the
writer last summer counted over sixty hcensed premises in the main
street.

94 THE DRINK QUESTION
5. Statistics of Drunkenness.
More evidence of success may perhaps be traced in the
official returns concerning drunkenness, although they are
generally of such a character as hardly to afford a basis for
accurate calculation. Some returns give proceedings for
drunkenness, others only convictions, and both numbers
must vary considerably according to the idiosyncracies
of the police 1 and the magistrates. Yet, making allowance
for such uncertainties, we gather from the reports that in all
three kingdoms proceedings for drunkenness in 1910 were
from 83 to 73 per cent, less than they were in 1890. There
is no doubt that public drunkenness (which it must be
remembered is only one form of excess) is gradually decreas
ing and little doubt that licensing reform has helped to this
end. Still, we cannot say yet that the present system has
brought the Drink Traffic under effective control, so as to
reduce its evil results to a minimum. The decrease in
inebriety is so very gradual. In 1911 there were 338,721
proceedings for drunkenness in the United Kingdom,
being 749 per cent, of the whole population ; in 1912 with
an increased population the percentage also increased
slightly, being 795 (whole number 363,434). 2 We must,
therefore, search for some other cause preventing the
diminution of opportunity having its natural effect. That
cause is the activity of the Liquor Trade which by adver
tisement and other means pushes the sale of drink. It must
do so to succeed and prosper. Any general diminution in
the amount spent upon drink in the country would result
in the failure of many brewery companies to pay dividends
or to exist at all. Moreover, without any inebriety, a very
great number of the people drink more than is good for them.
These two facts show, not only that it is vital for the Drink
Traffic not to allow the expenditure on drink to fall, but also
1 Mr. J. Chamberlain, speaking of police returns before the Lords'
Committee on Intemperance, said : " I could undertake to have the
statistics for Birmingham made ten times as bad as they were before :
just one turn of the screw would bring in ten times the number ! "
2 If the same individual, as often happens, is arrested time after
time, and oftener one year than another, the percentage goes up,
and the estimate becomes correspondingly misleading.

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 95
that thus a constant anti-social influence is at work to
defeat reform.
The extinction of licences, the restriction of hours, and
other repressive enactments have given rise to an increase
in the number of clubs which provide strong drink for their
members : many of these are merely public-houses under
another form of management and subject to much less
stringent rules. However, the whole number of clubs
which now (1913) amounts to 9,295 in the United
Kingdom, though increasing, increases far less quickly
than on-licences diminish. The net increase of clubs from
1905 to 1909 in England and Wales was 769, the net decrease
of on-licences, 5,231.
6. Difficulties of the Licensing System.
Such, in brief, are the results, so far, of the attempt to
restrain the drink-traffic by the Licensing System. Many
temperance workers are disposed to despair of this par
ticular machinery. Lord Loreburn, ex-Lord-Chancellor,
speaks of its control as " miserably inadequate," x and
certainly, even with the awakened sense of responsibility the
Justices now manifest, they have not effected much to
remedy the evils of excessive drinking. The obstacles
are many. The Trade is extensively represented on the
Bench, on Town and Borough Councils, on Watch Com
mittees, and in every position of local authority. Every
" Brewster Sessions " is the scene of a conflict between
this highly-organized body with its wide ramifications of
interest, and those who desire to lessen the consumption
of drink. The attitude of the Trade is one of righteous
defence. " There is nothing," its champions assert, " in
the present state of the licensing laws calling for inter
ference in the public interests ... the existing regulations
have been found perfectly sufficient for the purpose for which
they were intended. . . . The system should be left
alone, the public interests being well protected." 2 Which
1 Speech on October 31, 19 10.
a The Case for the Trade,

96 THE DRINK QUESTION
is equivalent to saying, in face of clamorous facts, that
there is no Drink Question.
Owing to this attitude, and the seeming impossibility
of making head against it under the present system, many
temperance reformers cry out for a change. The chief
methods proposed to replace it are the Swedish (or Gothen
burg x) system adapted to this country, State Monopoly as
in force in Russia, and Prohibition, general or local. A
word must be said on each of these plans.
7. The Gothenburg System.
The idea of the Swedish System (which was established
in 1855 and which applies only to spirits) is to eliminate
the element of private gain from the retail traffic. A mon
opoly is granted to a company of citizens of standing who
provide the capital, put in a manager, with a fixed salary,
and after deducting five per cent, from the profits, hand over
the rest to the municipality in relief of rates. It has been
found, alas ! that municipalities are not above acquiring
popularity by pushing the sale of drink in order to relieve
the rates, hence modifications have been introduced pro
viding that the bulk of the profits go directly to the State.
The system, although instrumental in effecting many im
provements in the conduct and character of the public-
house, has not been so successful as its promoters once hoped,
and a Swedish Commission is at present reopening the
whole question. Still, the essential idea is a good one, viz.,
that it should be no one's interest to maintain, still less to
extend, habits of drinking which are productive of such
widespread disaster.
This idea is embodied in the British adaption of the
Gothenburg system, which goes by the name of the " People's
Refreshment House Association," founded mainly by
Bishop Jayne of Chester, in 1897. This society has now
(Dec, 1913) control of 120 public-houses, wherein food and
non-alcoholic drink are provided and alcoholic beverages are
not pushed or advertised, since the manager has no interest
1 Gothenburg was the first municipality (in 1864) to adopt the
system.

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 97
in selling them. Associated with this society are local
"Public-House Trusts," with which the name of Lord
Grey is connected, run on the same lines, and numbering
about 180. Apparently the Association is flourishing
financially, pays its shareholders the maximum 5 per cent.,
has a large reserve fund, and made more than £10,000
profit in 1913. What proportion of this arose from the
sale of intoxicants does not appear, but it is admitted that
" catering in refreshments other than intoxicants is not very
remunerative except in the case of large central depots." l
The main idea underlying this scheme seems to be not only
to avoid the pushing of drink as the main object, but
also to do away with many of the accidental circumstances
of the public-house which serve to promote excess, viz.
the standing-bar, the absence of other distractions such as
music and games for money, and of eatables and non
alcoholic drinks, the crowded and inconvenient quarters,
and the impossibility of family reunions. In other words,
the object is to acclimatize in these islands the continental
cafe.
8. Criticism of the System of " Disinterested Management."
It seems to us that the ideals of this Association cannot
be wholly appoved of. Let us consider some of its draw
backs. First, the per capita continental consumption of
liquor is much higher in many European countries than it is
in the United Kingdom. The late Sir E. Durning-Lawrence
quoted, in the Brewing Trade Review for February, 1909,
figures taken from Government returns which show that, of
the Great Powers, France holds the worst record in Europe 2
for consumption of alcohol, and the United Kingdom nearly
the best. The figures range (reduced to proof gallons of
spirit) from 9.69 (France), 6.53 (Italy), and so on to Austria
(3.71), and the United Kingdom (342)- The same paper in
May, 1912, gave statistics to show that our annual drink
1 According to the Report of its Public-house Trust, in Cowden
beath for 1908, the Bar brought in £5,456, the Restaurant £176.
2 See also the Encyclopedia Britannica under "Temperance." The
figures indicate, not that there is more drunkenness, but that drink
is more widely distributed. G

98 THE DRINK QUESTION
bill of 160 millions odd would be enormously increased if we
adopted the drinking-standards of France, Germany, or
Belgium. So that we may conclude that the cafe system
does not lead to less consumption of liquor or less waste of
national resources. The other improvements suggested
for the public-house amount to this, that a great many
more people, especially young people and women, would be
exposed to the danger of acquiring a taste for alcoholic
drink. That vast army of abstainers who are so, not from
reasoned conviction, but simply because they have not
been taught to drink — children of both sexes — would become
familiarized with drinking as a means of recreation or as a
passport to maturity. To add to the attractiveness of the
public-house would be merely to add to the number of
drinkers, for those already used to strong drink would not
be likely to give it up, whilst a certain proportion of the
young would be sure to join them. Our natural suspicions
of these recommendations are confirmed by the fact that
they have been warmly advocated by brewers and others
interested in the maintenance of the liquor traffic. A body
calling itself the " True Temperance Association " came
into existence in May, 1909, with the ostensible object of
pursuing reform upon " common-sense lines." This
body, which has the approval and support of the Trade,
itself warmly supports the " continental cafe " system,
although such a system would be sure to result in a greatly
increased consumption of liquor, whilst, as no doubt it
would, it did away to some extent with the grosser forms
of inebriety now so common amongst us. " The True
Temperance Association " would not be welcomed by the
" Trade " if its object was to reduce the present excessive
waste of the national resources. A scheme, which would
eliminate private profit whilst; limiting and lessening the
consumption of strong drink, would not be approved of
by the brewers.
The objection, then, from the temperance point of view
to these particular " disinterested management " schemes
is that they rely for their fixed dividends on the continu
ance and spread of drinking habits ; that they transfer the

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION

99

interest " from the individual to the municipality or to
the State, and thus render it harder to control; finally
that they do not attack the evil at its source and moderate
the manufacture of alcoholic drinks. As long as brewers
and distillers may produce as much as they choose— they will
not so lessen production as to throw then valuable plant out
of work — so long will they manage to find a means to
dispose of their stock. A glance at some of their journals,
especially at the time of a General Election, will indicate their
intensely narrow point of view. They are united, organized,
and financed frankly for the " interests of the Trade " —
" in defence of our property and our homes."1 Their
motives are perfectly intelligible and reasonable on the
assumption that there is no Drink Problem ; their attitude
is thoroughly anti-social in view of the facts.2
9. State Monopoly.
The State, we always contend, should have control of the
Liquor Traffic because of the disasters and dangers it entails.
No more effective way of controlling it can be imagined than
that of retaining the right of manufacture and sale in its own
hands, as is done in Russia and, as regards the wholesale
Trade, in Switzerland. But it demands for its success an
enlightened Government. In Russia one-fourth of the
national revenue is derived from the State Monopoly, and no
Finance Minister has ever been found to do anything to
lessen the income from this form of taxation. Statemanship
there has not yet learned that it never finally pays to raise
money out of what lowers the national character. In Russia,
where reform would be so easy, the State is itself the obstacle.
Happily, stimulated by the Czar, the authorities have lately
begun to take action. The system, in any case, is not prac
tical politics, here or at present, and need not detain us.
10. Prohibition.
We come now to what is the real and final aim of many
1 Charles Walker, Chairman of the Licensed Victuallers Central
Protection Society, 'Fortnightly Review, May, 1893.
8 In other countries — France, for instance, where reform is even
more called for than here — the same anti-social force blocks the way.
*

ioo THE DRINK QUESTION
temperance reformers,1 and what consequently arouses
such fierce resistance on the part of the Trade — the policy
which is generally called " Prohibition " when applied on a
large scale, and " Local Option" or " Local Veto " when re
stricted to a definite locality. It is a system which has been
adopted widely in the British Colonies, America, Norway and
Sweden, but which does not occur at home, except in certain
restricted areas where the owners of large estates have exer
cised their right to exclude the traffic.2
When general, the prohibiting authority is the State legis
lature ; when local, a majority of the inhabitants of the local
ity. The assumption is that the trade in liquor should be
measured by the demand of those for whom it is immediately
intended — a sound enough economic principle, if it is applied
with discrimination. But the ethical soundness of total
prohibition, as we have aheady pointed out, is much more
questionable. If a commodity always and everywhere does
harm, were it merely physical, to those that partake of it, a
Government would only be doing its duty by suppressing
common trade in that commodity amongst its subjects.
Every civilized State does so with regard to opium and other
drugs. But evil as are the effects of strong drink and much as
it is abused, we cannot think that the abuse is so widespread
and so incurable by other means that total prohibition is
justifiable. Man is made moral not by depriving him of
liberty of choice, but by teaching him to use it aright. This
is the interpretation we must charitably put on Bishop
Magee's famous saying — " Better England free than England
sober " — a saying, however, which forgets that England en
slaved by drink would not be free. It does not belong to the
State, nor even to the Church, to insist on all its members
aiming at moral perfection. Otherwise, in view of the abuses
connected with private ownership it might make evangelical
poverty universal by confiscating all material goods. Ac-
1 As stated openly in the " United Kingdom Alliance " programme.
3 In more than a fourth of the civil parishes of England and Wales
in rural districts, no on-licences are issued. In urban districts the
" dry " regions are much less common. Toxteth Park in Liverpool
and Kennington Fields in London are the largest.

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 101
cordingly, although the benefits of strong drink are much
smaller and fewer than is generally imagined, and although
the numbers who abuse it are exceedingly great, to abolish it
altogether, supposing the policy practicable, would not be
morally justifiable. The Church has never officially sup
ported Total Prohibition, and never will, until she be planted
in the midst of a nation of habitual drunkards. In America,
the land in which the experiment has been most extensively
tried, the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, as already noted,
at its foundation in 1872 refused to countenance the policy.
11. Local Veto, or Local Option.
When, however, prohibition takes the form of a voluntary
system adopted by the people themselves or by any section of
the people in their own locality, it becomes quite another
matter. A community as a whole has a right to determine
according to reason the material conditions under which it
lives, provided always it does not unreasonably fetter the
liberty of those that differ from it. To act arbitrarily in in
different matters — to decide, for instance, that no one should
wear green garments — would not carry the force of a law,
for a law is essentially a reasonable regulation. But there is
often reason enough to prohibit the use of alcoholic drinks, if
not over the whole country, at least in particular localities.
Advantage has been taken by several of its constituent
States of the internal sovereignty accorded by the American
constitution to each, to enact "no-licence" regulations
within their borders, and thus to make the sale illegal ; but
the fact that up to 1913 they could not prohibit the importa
tion of liquor has made the experiment largely nugatory.
That their legislation is experimental and alternates vio
lently in different localities between different systems, and
that contradictory statements as to results have been con
stantly published on both sides,1 makes the history of the
question very complicated and uncertain. At present only
nine out of the forty-eight states appear to be " dry," but
1 The Trade in the States is exceedingly strong and fights vigor
ously both in the State legislatures and municipal bodies, but generally
with as much secrecy as possible.

102 THE DRINK QUESTION
owing to the extent of local veto, rural and urban, a vast
area is now under prohibition. Statistics given by the New
York Times (April 19, 1914) reveal the following striking
facts : —
Out of the 2,973,890 square miles of the United States
Territory 2,132,746 are under no-licence laws.
Out of the 91,972,966 inhabitants of the country, over
46,500,000 inhabit (legally) " dry" districts.
Prohibition, wholly operative in nine states and dominant
in seventeen, has more or less of a foothold in all the rest.
Moreover, a Bill to amend the constitution so as to
make prohibition statutory and national is already before
Congress. If it obtains the necessary two-thirds vote in
both houses it will be then voted on by the States. It will
be certainly supported by twenty-seven ; for ratification it
will need thirty-six, and strenuous efforts will be made to
secure the support of the requisite further nine.1
Thus Prohibition is apparently gaining ground in the
shape of Local Option. But its success is and must be
precarious except where backed by a growing force of
educated public opinion. In many localities only a bare
majority is required for no-licence. This, in the circum
stances, is mere tyranny resulting in worse conditions. If
the prevention of excess is to be procured by legislative
efforts and for natural motives, the law securing it must
voice the reasoned convictions of substantially the whole
community. Catholics, better than others, know that
numbers do not make right.
As statistics regarding the States, so those regarding Local
Option in New Zealand have been differently interpreted,
but it seems fair to conclude from a parliamentary return of
August, 1913, that whatever hardship in that country has
been undergone by temperate persons who could not get
strong drink, the gain to the community in the prevention of
extravagance and the diminution of disorder and disease
1 The Trade is naturally alarmed. The National Liquor Dealers'
Journal (Sept. 10, 1913) openly confesses that they have brought it
upon themselves by putting aside all considerations save those of
profit. That reproach is applicable nearer home. It is significant
that the employment of barmaids is prohibited all over the States,
and that no reputable women frequent bars.

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 103
has more than counterbalanced it. The household drink
bill (family of five, all ages) in 1912 was : Licence areas,
£21 5s. 3d.; No-licence areas, £4 12s. 5d., and the corresponding
household consumption was fifty-nine and nine gallons. The
results in Canada resemble those in the United States.
The policy of Local Option is sure to be tried in this coun
try sooner or later, unless indeed the drink trade presently
reforms itself. The 1913 Temperance Act for Scotland
embodies the policy, but its main provisions do not come
into force till June 1, 1920. In 1908, a Bill passed the House
of Commons which provided, amongst other reforms, for the
recognition of the principle, but it was thrown out by the
Lords. Its time will probably come again.
12. No System successful.
We have now reviewed the chief methods of legislating
with regard to the Liquor Traffic, but so far we have not
justified the heading of the chapter. The fact is, as has been
hinted more than once, there is no solution of the problem
to be found in mere legislation. Temperance reformers
maybe cheered by the fact that, owing to legislation, about
half of the American people cannot enter a saloon : it is not
so cheering to learn that many more than half of them do
not enter a church.1 Human nature cannot be reformed by
compulsion ; there are no more rigid teetotalers than the
prisoners in our gaols, but they are not reckoned models of
virtue. Moral motives alone can effectively remedy such a
widespread moral disease. Natural prudence, personal
distaste, mere pride even, and selfishness, may preserve an
individual here and there from sensual excess, but, to leaven
the mass of men, a moral appeal is necessary. And, for the
Catholic, morality leans necessarily on religion. In the
truths of his faith lie the most permanent and effectual
reasons for refraining from all excess, and even from all use,
in this particular matter, reasons which avail, whatever
may be his personal relations to it.
1 According to the Statesman's Year-Book for 1914, the Church-
going members (or " communicants,") of all denominations in the
U.S.A., number 36,668,185. Allowing for "non-communicating"
members the total will not reach half the population.

104 THE DRINK QUESTION
13. Educate as well as Legislate.
Consequently, concomitantly with the enlightened efforts;
of legislation must proceed the action of individuals banded
together in associations with the object of keeping before the
public mind both the character of the evil and the instant
need of correcting it. More urgent still is the need of pre
venting it. Legislation can prevent the public drinking of the
young : only the parent and the teacher can effectually inspire
them with motives which will make legislation unnecessary.
Temperance should be inculcated in schools, both as a most
acceptable form of service to Almighty God and as a most
practical way of serving one's country. In Ireland, children
at their Confirmation generally take the pledge till the age
of 21 — a salutary practice worthy of imitation everywhere.
The hopes of the future lie in the proper training of the young
generations to-day. And so to them should temperance
reformers turn. There the good seed, blessed both by religion.
and common sense, should be chiefly sown.
Meanwhile their general efforts to mould adult public
opinion should not be omitted or slackened. Much has
aheady been done. But for the labours of Temperance
Societies, many hoary prejudices in regard to the benefit of
strong drink would still be prevalent, and there would also be
a prevailing ignorance regarding its noxious social effects. It
is very easy for those who do not actually see those effects to
ignore or forget their existence. The literature and other
forms of propaganda employed by the advocates of tem
perance serve permanently to dispel that ignorance. And
unless we have a keen sense of our social duty, we shall not
realize, perhaps, how much our individual conduct can help
or hinder the advance of others. Ordinarily speaking, such
personal matters as the quality of our drink would have no
civic reference, but the state of affairs we have to combat
is not ordinary. We are trying to restore society to a normal
habit, not alone in this but in many other ways, and to
counteract long-standing evil tradition.
14. The Function of the Total Abstainer.
And, therefore, from those who really have this truth

THE SOLUTION OF THE QUESTION 105
brought home to them more than ordinary efforts are de
manded. ' ' All things may be lawful "to them in the matter,
so firmly grounded are they in habits of strict moderation
but certainly, in view of the present state of society, " not all
things are expedient." The drinking-habits which so easily
lead to excess are, hke other social customs, largely a matter of
example.1 No one naturally takes to strong drink : if others
did not teach them or give them opportunity, few would take
the trouble to learn. People drink, especially young people,
because everybody drinks, because the abstainer is singular,
so singular that his conduct calls for explanation. Temper
ance societies have at least the effect of weakening the force
of that argument. But for such reformers, Heaven knows to
what depth of degradation the drinking habits of our ances
tors would have brought us. The social worker who would
add to his or her efficiency as an instrument for raising the
moral tone of the community will find the principle of total
abstinence an invaluable aid. Until the habits and preju
dices of generations have been altered, until public opinion
in this regard has become not merely rational but Christian,
the solution of the Drink Question lies in the hands of reso
lute men and women, inspired by love of God and of their
neighbour, and united in associations pledged to take all law
ful means to overthrow the tyranny of drink by example, by
instruction, by legislation, and by prayer.
1 The fact that the habit of drinking to inebriation, once so com
mon amongst the upper and middle classes in this country, has
become practically obsolete is the best answer to those who think
that social or racial customs are necessarily ineradicable. Custom
is driven out by custom, there is room for the race to grow, and a
habit which science and religion alike condemn should be the more
easily overthrown.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Besides articles (" Temperance," " Alcohol," " Liquor Laws,"
etc.) in encyclopaedias, the following may be consulted. (A
classified list of works on the Drink Question enumerates 15,000
volumes.)Physical Effects of Strong Drink : —
Alcohol and the Human Body (1911) : Horsley and Sturge.
Alcoholism : a Chapter in Social Pathology (1906) : Sullivan.
The Hygiene of Mind (1906) : Clouston.
Alcoholism : a Study in Heredity (1901) : Archdall Reid.
The Alcohol Problem in its Biological Aspect (1906) : Kelynack.
Alcohol and Insanity (1906) : Mott.
Social and Economic Effects : —
The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (1901) : Rowntree
and Sherwell.
New Encyclopedia of Social Reform.
Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age (1892) : Booth.
Labour and Drink (1904) : Burns.
The Alcohol Factor in Social Conditions (1914) : Blaiklock.
History of Liquor-Licensing in England from iyoo to 1830
(1903): Webb.
Moral Effects : —
The Discipline of Drink (1879) : Bridgett.
Our National Vice (1886) : Manning.
The Pioneer Temperance Catechism (1911) : Cullen.
The Cure of Alcoholism (1913) : O'Malley.
General : —
The Alliance Year-Books and other publications.
Fifty Doctors against Alcohol (1911).
The Alcohol Case (1909) : Power.
The Licensed Trade : Pratt.
Public House Reform (1913).

P. S. King & Son, Orchard House, Westminster, London, S.W.

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