ALCOHOL IN SOCIETY, 
AN 
ARBAIGIHEHT OF THE DRIER SYSTEM 
AS AN 
ENEMY OF THE PUBLIC GOOD. 
BY 
HI CHARD EDDY, D. D. 
Ml 
AUTHOR OF “ALCOHOL IN HISTORY." 
New VnrRKT 
The National Temperance Society and Publication Hcnise, 
No. 58 READE STREET. 
1888. PREFACE. 
The history of this work is given by the Committee by 
whom it was approved when written. Little need be 
added to their statement. But the author desires to say 
that it has been his aim to deal only with facts, and to 
present a sound argument on the topics which the Com- 
mittee desired him to discuss. Some little time having 
elapsed since the manuscript passed out of his hands, he 
has, while the work was going through the press, attempted 
to introduce such new matter as would bring the facts and 
their illustration down to date. He hopes that he has not 
wholly failed in his purpose, and he invokes the blessing 
of God on this effort to advance the cause of true tem- 
perance. R. E. 
[iii] CONTENTS. 
PAGB 
Preface ; 3 
CHAPTER I. 
SOCIAL AND NATIONAL. 
The Drink System Subversive of Morality and Social Order. 7 
Effects on the Individual, Physically 9 
Intellectually 48 
Morally 57 
Effects on the Family 65 
Intemperance Among Women 72 
A Hindrance to Morals, Religion, Education, Industry, etc. 82 
Relations to National Prosperity 130 
To National Morals 149 
Its influence on Legislation 159 
Its Effects in the Army 167 
Its Power over Rulers, Legislators and Jurists 171 
CHAPTER II. 
RELIGIOUS. 
New Testament Cautions and Injunctions of Christ and His 
Apostles 178 
Regulations for Bishops 182 
Opinions of the Christian Fathers 190 
Effects of Intemperance on Ministers and People 197 
Effects on Sunday-school and Missionary Efforts. 204 
EDUCATIONAL. 
General Education not Enough 213 
Intemperance in Colleges and Schools ... 215 
Among Educated Men 221 
In the Most Enlightened Countries 231 
CHAPTER III. vi 
Contents. 
PAGB 
The Remedy to be Found in Specific Instruction in Regard 
to the Drink System 242 
On the Composition and Nature of Alcoholic Drinks 248 
The Physiological Effects of Alcoholic Drinks 251 
Alcoholic Drinks are neither Food nor Fuel to the Human 
Body 262 
The Liquor Traffic in its Relations to Political Economy... 271 
And to Moral Philosophy 274 
CHAPTER IY. 
THE WINE QUESTION. 
The Theory of Two Wines Mentioned in the Bible Ques- 
tioned and Ridiculed 276 
The Objections Considered 280 
Ancient Means of Preventing Fermentation 280 
Unfermented Grape Juice called Wine in Foreign and Eng- 
lish Lexicons 284 
Unfermented Wine a Fact well known in History 285 
Unfermented Wine Preferred by the Ancients and by some 
Moderns 294 
Both Fermented and Unfermented Wines Mentioned in the 
Bible 297 
Jesus not a Wine Bibber 310 
The Wine at the Wedding at Cana 312 
Passover Wine not Intoxicating 313 
Unfermented Wine the True Symbol of Blood 323 
The Danger of Using Fermented Wine at the Lord’s Supper. 328 
OLD AND NEW OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
Total Abstinence a Confession of Weakness and of the In- 
sufficiency of the Grace of God 337 
A Good Creature of God 342 
Alcoholic Drinks Needed in Hard Labor and in Heat and 
Cold . 343 
Moderation is True Temperance 348 
The Pledge Destroys a Man’s Liberty 351 
The Causes of Intemperance: Custom, Example, Desire for 
Excitement, the Authorized Liquor Traffic ... 352 
The Necessity for Total Abstinence and Prohibition 361 
Prohibition an Alleged Infringement of Eights, Loss of 
Revenue, and a Failure 371 
Concession that Prohibition does Prohibit 374 
CHAPTER V. I. 
SOCIAL AND NATIONAL. 
That the drink system is subversive of Morality and Social 
Order, shown by its effects on the Individual, physically, 
intellectually and morally—On the Family, in its purity, 
unity, piety and prosperity—On Communities, in hindrance 
to morals, religion, industry, etc.—On Crime, Prostitution, 
etc.—On Pauperism and Dependence—That it is subversive 
of National Prosperity, shown by examples of National De- 
moralization in ancient times—And from the evils in 
modern nations, as manifest in its effects on development 
and wealth, from the most recent data of loss—Its effects on 
Morals, Elections, Legislation, Health and Longevity, on 
distinguished men, and on the army and navy. 
GENERAL statements of tlie evils of intemperance, no 
matter how forcibly they may be framed, or how 
eloquently uttered, often fail to impress those who read 
or hear, with a conviction of the magnitude of the enor- 
mity. Not that there is danger of making over-statements 
in this regard, for exaggeration here would be well nigh 
impossible ; but because it is difficult, if not wholly beyond 
our power to realize the greatness and extent of the loss, 
shame and ruin which such statements attempt to describe. 
Hence the necessity for an analysis of the evil, a special 
observation of the particular facts grouped together in 
the general indictment which we bring against this giant 
curse. 
7, 8 
Alcohol in Society. 
It is the purpose of this essay to deal with such partic- 
ulars, and especially to supplement what has been said in 
the preceding essays of this series on the scientific and his- 
torical* aspects of this great evil, by an examination of 
the Drink System as it wars against the social, educational 
and religious interests of humanity. 
The consideration of this theme, brings us to a contem- 
plation of all the relations which man sustains and all the 
duties he owes to himself, to his God, and to fellow-men ; 
it involves his physical, mental and moral well-being ; his 
position as an isolated person—so far as it is possible to 
speak of one as living to himself, who is placed in any re- 
lation to others—his place in his home, in the neighbor- 
hood, the church, the state and the nation; and so calls 
attention to all that intemperance does for him individually, 
as husband, father, child, brother, neighbor and citizen; to 
all that it does for each member of his family; to his 
neighborhood, church and country. Thus comprehensive, 
it follows that no one-sided view of intemperance can be a 
just view, but must be partial and incomplete; and that 
any attempt to regard and treat it as a merely personal 
evil, or only as a social vice, or to be removed wholly by 
the use of moral measures, is to reason falsely, because in- 
completely, and to employ instrumentalities inadequate to 
the work required. 
Seeking now, to deepen and strengthen the conviction 
of the comprehensiveness of the evil of intemperance, let 
us critically examine its influence and results, in the hope 
that as we finish our investigations we may more clearly 
see the path of duty, and the weapons which we must use 
in order to wage a successful war against that which assails 
us at every point. 
I. And first we say tliat, The Drink System is subver- 
* I. “Alcohol and Science.” By William Hargreaves, M. D. 
II. “ Alcohol in History.” By Rev. Richard Eddy. Social and National. 
9 
sive of Morality and Social Order. We use this broad 
designation, The Drink System, in order to include in our 
investigations, not only the effects produced upon the 
drinker, but also to include the viciousness of the manu- 
facture and sale of intoxicants. The proof of this affirma- 
tion we find: 
(1) In the effects of the Drink System on the individ- 
ual, physically, intellectually and morally. The most ap- 
parent results of drinking, such as the degrading marks 
put upon the human face, and the manifest feebleness of 
the whole body, make a very small part of the physical 
evils inflicted by this fearful scourge. By far the great- 
est number of victims in this direction, are known only to 
the scientific observer; and an astonishing number of 
deaths due to the use of intoxicants, are, out of considera- 
tion to the feelings of survivors, attributed to some other 
cause. It is impossible to make anything like an accurate 
estimate of the extent to which disease and death can be 
attributed to the use of intoxicants ; but it is certain that it 
is appalling, and that every advance made in pathological 
knowledge, compels the recognition of the influence of this 
vice far beyond what has hitherto been regarded as its 
limits. 
The physical effects of the Drink System, already recog- 
nized, admit of at least a four-fold classification : As first, 
the morbific action of alcoholic beverages on those who 
consume them, either in large or in small quantities;— 
secondly, the diseases occasioned by privation and the im- 
perfect sanitary conditions imposed by the poverty caused 
by drinking;—thirdly, the suicides and casualties connected 
with drinking, which are at once fatal to life, or greatly 
abridge it; and fourthly, the hereditary diseases and ten- 
dencies to disease, transmitted by parents who drink to 
what is called “ excess,” or who are what some style 
“ moderate ” drinkers. 10 
Alcohol in Society. 
(a). As to the first,—the morbific action of alcoholic bev- 
erages on those who drink either large or small quan- 
tities of them, there is already such an array of evidence 
and authority as to leave all men without excuse for tam- 
pering with such a deadly foe to human life. Nearly a 
hundred years ago, Dr. Rush said, in his u Inquiry into 
the Effects of Ardent Spirits : ” 
“I have known several persons destroyed by ardent spirits, 
who were never completely intoxicated in the whole course of 
their lives.” 
And Dr. William B. Carpenter, in the preface to his 
11 Essay on the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors in 
Health and Disease,” says, speaking of the Essay : 
“ He cannot allow it to go forth, however, without express- 
ing his conviction, that whilst there are adequate medical rea- 
sons for abstinence from the habitual use of even a ‘ moderate ’ 
quantity of alcoholic liquors, there are also strong moral grounds 
for abstinence from that occasional use of them which is too fre- 
quently thought to be requisite for social enjoyment, and to 
form an essential part of the rites of hospitality.” 
In the body of the Essay, he has these observations : 
“‘The little I take does no harm,’ is the common defence of 
those who are indisposed to abandon an agreeable habit, and 
who cannot plead a positive benefit derived from it; but, before 
such a statement can be justified, the individual who makes it 
ought to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and to be able 
to have present to his mind, the whole future history of his bod- 
ily fabric, and to show that, by reducing the amount of excess 
to a measure which produces no immediately injurious results, 
he has not merely postponed its evil consequences to a remote 
period, but has kept himself free from them altogether. The 
onus probandi lies with those who assume the absence of a con- 
nection which is indicated by every fact with which we are 
acquainted.” 
And again: “ From tlie foregoing considerations, then, we 
seem entitled to draw the general conclusion, that in the ‘aver- 
age man,’ the habitual use of alcoholic liquors, in moderate or 
even in small quantities, is not merely unnecessary for the Social and National. 
11 
maintenance of bodily and mental vigor, but is even unfavor- 
able to the permanent enjoyment of health, even though it may 
for a time appear to contribute to it. For, as it is justly re- 
marked by Dr. Eobertson, ‘that man only is in good health who 
recovers rapidly from the simple accidents incidental to his oc- 
cupation, and from the simple disorders incidental to his hu- 
manity and to the climate he lives in, and who can bear the 
treatment, that those accidents or those disorders demand; ’ 
and, if such be not the case, we may feel confident, that, how- 
ever great the temporary power of exertion may be, such power 
is destined to give way at a period much earlier than that of its 
normal duration. And if it be true, as we have endeavored to 
show, that the effect of the habit is not merely to induce certain 
predispositions to disease by its own agency, but also to favor 
any of those which may already exist in a latent form, we have 
an additional right to affirm, that even the most moderate ha- 
bitual use of alcoholic liquors becomes to the 4 average man ’ 
positively injurious, if protracted for a sufficient length of time 
to allow of the development of its effects.” * 
Elsewhere, Dr. Carpenter is quoted as saying : 
“ The physiological objection lo the habitual use of even 
small quantities of alcohol, rests on the following grounds: 
They are universally admitted to possess a poisonous character; 
they tend to produce a morbid condition of the body at large ; 
the capacity for enduring the extremes of heat and cold, or 
mental and bodily labor, is diminished rather than increased by 
their habitual employment. Alcoholic liquors cannot supply 
anything that is essential to the due nutrition of the system. 
The action of alcohol upon the living body is essentially that 
of stimulus, increasing for a time the vital activity of the body, 
but being followed by a corresponding depression of power, 
which is the more prolonged and severe, as the previous excite- 
ment has been greater.” t 
Later investigations bring him to this conclusion : 
“ We maintain that the action of the excessive or of the 
moderate use of alcohol upon the healthy body is a question of 
* Boston Edition. Pp. xvii. 169, 186. 
t Quoted by Washington Gladden in his “Working People 
and their Employers,” p. 149. 12 
Alcohol in Society. 
degree alone, its immediate effect being essentially the same in 
the one ease as in the other. We affirm that as habitual ‘ ex- 
cess ’ is admitted to pervert the nutritive functions to a con- 
siderable degree, habitual ‘moderation’ perverts them in a 
slighter degree.” * 
So Professor Miller, of tlie University of Edinburgh, says 
of alcohol: 
“In a large dose it may prove instantly fatal, as if by a 
shock ; or the victim may linger awhile, dying by choking and 
stupor. With a less dose one may be in great danger, yet re- 
cover, carrying for many a day the traces of his injury. In a 
less dose still, alcohol produces what is commonly called ' in- 
toxication,’ and if this be frequently repeated, both mind and 
body suffer sad change, the poison acting chiefly on the brain 
and nervous system, and on the liver and kidneys. From this 
cause life may at any time be imperilled by the invasion of 
active disease—organic or functional: inflammation of the brain 
or its membranes, apoplexy, congestion, delirium tremens, insan- 
ity, epilepsy, and diseases of the liver and kidneys, in all their 
vast variety. Or, by still smaller doses, a cumulative action 
may be produced, ultimately developing itself in entire pros- 
tration of the nervous system—alcoholismus chronieus—a condi- 
tion very analogous to founder in the horse, though proceeding 
from a different cause. Or, once more, by somewhat diminish- 
ing the frequent dose, these seemingly greater evils may be 
avoided, while yet the whole frame is being gradually sapped 
and undermined ; not an organ or a tissue left undisturbed in 
its structure or function. 
“ In other words, alcohol, according to its dose, and the 
susceptibility of its victim, is either acute or chronic in its 
working; a sudden poison or a sure one. ‘ A madman castetli 
firebrands, arrows, and death, and saith, Am I not in sport ? ’ 
And there is many a man, virtually mad, on at least one point, 
a monomaniac—who daily saturates himself with this poison, 
and seeks moreover to scatter and inject it into others—jesting- 
ly announcing, in the midst of an uncomfortable conviction 
that what he says is true, that if it be a poison, as the doctors al- 
lege, it is at least a slow one. Yes. Slow it may be, yet sure.” t 
* “ The Physiological Errors of Moderation,” p. 16. 
t “ Alcohol: Its Place and Power.” Pp. 107—109. Social and National. 
13 
“ I have long had the conviction,” says Sir Henry Thompson, 
one of the most eminent medical practitioners of England, 
il that there is no greater cause of evil, moral and physical, in 
this country, than the use of alcoholic beverages. I do not 
mean by this that extreme indulgence which produces drunk- 
enness. The habitual use of fermented liquors, to an extent far 
short of what is necessary to produce that condition, and such 
as is quite common in all ranks of society, injures the body, 
and diminishes the medical power to an extent which I think 
few people are aware of I have no hesitation in 
attributing a very large proportion of some of the most pain- 
ful and dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as 
well as those which every medical man has to treat, to the or- 
dinary and daily use of fermented drink, taken in the quantity 
which is conventionally deemed moderate I feel 
that I have a right to speak with authority ; and I do so, solely 
because it appears to me a duty not to be silent on a matter of 
such extreme importance. . . . My main object is to ex- 
press my opinion, as a professional man, in relation to the em- 
ployment of fermented liquors as a beverage.” * 
For several years “ Tlie British Medical Journal” has 
invited contributions on the physiological effects of alco- 
holic liquors from those best qualified to speak upon the 
subject, and the result of the discussion is thus summed up 
by the distinguished editor, Dr. Markham : 
“ We have no wish hastily to speak on this important mat- 
ter ; but we are bound in conscience boldly to declare the log- 
ical and inevitable conclusions, as they seem to us, to which a 
scientific view of the subject forces us. 
1. “ That alcohol is not food, and that, being simply a stimu- 
lant of the nervous system, its use is hurtful to the body of a 
healthy man. 
2. “ That if its inhibition he of service, it is only so to man 
in an abnormal condition, and that our duty as men of medi- 
cine, is to endeavor to define what those particular abnormal 
states are, in which alcohol is serviceable. 
* For a more full quotation, as also for many other citations 
on this subject; and the many reasons exposing the folly of an 
attempted distinction between temperance and moderation, see 
the first chapter of “ Alcohol in History.” 14 
Alcohol in Society. 
3. “That ordinary social indulgence in alcoholic drinks for 
society’s sake is, medically speaking, a very unphysiological 
and prejudicial proceeding.” 
The testimony of the late Dr. Willard Parker, of New 
York, is equally positive: 
“ Alcohol.” he says, “ has no place in the healthy system, 
but is an ‘ irritant poison,’producing a diseased condition of 
body and mind. Statistics show that ten per cent, of the an- 
nual number of deaths in this country are due to alcohol.” * 
The wonderful experiments made by Dr. Beaumont on 
the stomach of Alexis St. Martin,! showing that the use 
Of ardent spirits always produces diseases of the stomach, 
are a demonstration that cannot possibly be set aside, that 
drinking is fatal to health. So forcibly has this been felt, 
that James Parton, who evidently would be glad to find 
some ground on which to defend the use of wine, makes 
this sweeping confession : 
“ If there is no comfort for drinkers in Dr. Beaumont’s prec- 
ious little volume, it must be also confessed, that neither the 
dissecting-knife nor the microscope afford us the least counte- 
nance. All that has yet been ascertained of the effects of alco- 
hol by the dissection of the body favors the extreme position 
of the extreme teetotallers. A brain alcoholized, the microscope 
proves to be a brain diseased. Blood which has absorbed alco- 
hol is unhealthy blood,—the microscope shows it. The liver, 
the heart, and other organs, which have been accustomed to 
absorb alcohol, all give testimony under the microscope which 
produces discomfort in the mind of one who likes a glass of 
wine, and hopes to be able to continue the enjoyment of it. 
The dissecting-knife and the microscope, so far, have nothing to 
say for us,—nothing at all: they are dead against us.” J 
For the reason already given, all statistical records of 
the real death-rate from alcoholic liquors, are very incom- 
* Preface to the New York edition of Dr. Richardson’s Cantor 
Lectures, p 10. 
t Fully described in “Alcohol and Science.” 
t “ Smoking and Drinking,” p. 75. Social and National. 
15 
plete. Men of wealth and reputation are very seldom re- 
ported as dying from diseases originating in the use of in- 
toxicants, and the frank avowals of death from “ Alcohol- 
ism,” are chiefly made concerning the poor and lowly, and 
the unfortunates generally, who have no friends and ad- 
mirers to be mortified by a true statement of the real causes 
of their taking off. The Annual Reports of the Registrar 
of Vital Statistics state that the number of deaths in New 
York, from “ Alcoholism,” in 1877, were 100 ; in 1878, 
127 ; in 1879, 198 ; in 1880, 229. This is a frightful state- 
ment, and an alarming increase ; but how far short it comes 
of telling the whole story, is evident when we read that in 
1880 there were 1,192 deaths from “ heart disease ; ” 2,732 
from “ diseases of the brain and nervous system ; ” 1,473 
from “ Bright’s disease;” 687 from “ Apoplexy;” and 
11,367 classified under the very general and indefinite 
head, “local diseases.” 
It is a very significant fact,—quite extensively illus- 
trated in the first chapter of “ Alcohol in History,” that 
Life Insurance Companies, which transact their business 
on the basis of well-established facts, will not grant risks 
on the lives of people of intemperate habits. Mr. Neison 
the eminent actuary of the English Insurance Companies, 
has carefully compiled statistics on this subject, which 
Dr. Carpenter thus analyzes : 
“ An intemperate person of twenty years of age, has a prob- 
ability of life extending to 15.6 years; one of thirty years of 
age, to 13.8 years ; and one of forty years, to 11.6 years; while 
a person of the general population of the country would have a 
like probability of living 44.2, 36.5, and 28.8 years respectively. 
Some curious results were shown in the influence of the differ- 
ent kinds of drinks on the duration of life; beer-drinkers aver- 
aging 21.7 years ; spirit drinkers, 16.7 years; and those who 
drink both beer and spirits indiscriminately, 16.1 years. These 
results, however, were not more curious than those connected 
with the different classes of persons. The average duration of 
life, after the commencement of intemperate habits, among 16 
Alcohol in Society. 
mechanics and laboring men, was 18 years; among traders, 
dealers, and merchants, 17 years; among professional men and 
gentlemen, 15 years; and among females, 14 years only.” * 
The late Dr. Willard Parker said at a temperance gather- 
ing in the city of New York, as reported in “The National 
Temperance Advocate : n 
“ Within the last forty or fifty years there have sprung up a 
large number of public places which are aimply for drinking, 
and the drinks mainly furnished are distilled and not fermented, 
although you will often find both; the great destroyer, how- 
ever, is the alcohol provided there. Whiskey, gin, brandy, 
and rum are all of recent date ; one or two hundred years go 
back to about where they began. They are of modern birth 
and modern existence; but they have now increased in number, 
until in our city it is estimated that there are over ten thous- 
and drinking places, and over $40,000,000 spent annually for 
this fire-water to go down the throats of thoso poor creatures ; 
it injures them, and leaves their families to be supported by 
the outside world, you and the rest all to be taxed for it. Not 
only that, but it destroys the children. 
“Look at our own city and see what has transpired. We 
had a year ago, as reported at one of our meetings, between 
10,000 and 11,000 of these drinking places—not eating places, 
though they try now to call themselves ‘hotels.’ A little sign 
is stuck out in front, with the word ‘ hotel ’ on it. It is only 
to dodge legislation. A very large proportion of our taxes now 
come upon us to take care of our crime, our pauperism, our 
idiocy, and all these outgrowths from alcohol. The average 
life in this city from 1810 to 1820 was 26.15; from 1820 to 1830 
the average dropped to twenty-two or twenty-three. In 1843 it 
dropped down to nineteen and a fraction, and from 1843 down 
to 1860 it dropped down to fifteen. The average life here in 
our city—no place on the earth could be better situated than 
we are by nature, surrounded by the waters, swept by western, 
eastern, and southern breezes, everything to put us in a good 
condition, and yet with an average life of less than fifteen 
years. 
“ If we continue in the same ratio down to the present time, 
* “Physiology of Temperance,” p. 76. Social and National. 
17 
from 1860 to 1879, we are not far from twelve—from twelve as 
our average of life.” 
More attention is paid to the collection and classification 
of mortuary statistics, in England, than in any other coun- 
try. Mr. Powell, in his 11 Bacchus Dethroned,77 (pp. 31, 
32), gives the following extracts from the table of mor- 
tality of male persons engaged in different occupations, as 
published in the supplement to the twenty-fifth Annual 
Report of the Registrar-General. 
Ages. 
Ages. 
Ages. 
Ages. 
25 to 35 
35 to 45 
45 to 55 
55 to 65 
“Farmers and Graziers.. 
877. 
...1.244.. 
...2.307. 
...5.730 
Grocers 
923. 
...1.280.. 
...2.053. 
...4.334 
Carpenters 
980. 
...1.542.. 
...2.803. 
...6.951 
Shoemakers 
1.113.. 
..1.577.. 
..3.024.. 
..6.911 
Laborers 
997.. 
...1.398.. 
..2.617.. 
,. .5.949 
Inn and Hotel Keepers, 
Publi- 
cans, Beer-Sellers, Wine and 
Spirit Merchants.... 
1.912.. 
...2.793.. 
..4.105.. 
.. 7.446 
All England 
1.228. 
...1.767.. 
...3.110 . 
...6.225 
“ Thus the mortality of persons in the liquor traffic, from 
twenty-five years of age to forty-five, is twice as great as it is 
with farmers or graziers, and much more at all ages than it is 
with farmers, carpenters, shoemakers, laborers, and the males 
of all England. The high rate of mortality of brewers’ dray- 
men, pot-boys, and publicans, is proverbial. The death-rate 
per 1000 of persons between the age of thirty and forty, en- 
gaged in different occupations, is as follows: tradesmen, 16per 
1000; footmen, 18; laborers, 18 ; licensed victuallers, 20; pot- 
boys, 29 ; brewers’ draymen, 39.” 
Another startling1 indication of the disease-producing 
power of alcoholic drinks, is the well-ascertained fact that 
disease and mortality in any country, are in proportion to 
the facilities afforded for obtaining these beverages. Many 
proofs of this character are given in the preceding Essays 
already referred to, and but one illustration will be pre- 
sented here. Dr. Nott, in his Lectures, (p. 25,) says: 18 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ In Scotland, in 1823, the whole consumption of intoxicating 
liquors amounted to 2,300,000 gallons ; in 1837, to 6,776,715 gal- 
lons. In the mean time crime increased 400 per cent., fever, 
1,600 per cent., death, 300 per cent., and the chances of human 
life diminished 44 per cent. 
This relation of the use of intoxicants to disease, is no 
new discovery, however, nor is it confined in its manifesta- 
tions, as many seem to imagine, to the drinking of dis- 
tilled liquors. Long before the distillation of alcohol was 
known, Plutarch, speaking of the use of the fermented 
drinks of his day, said : 
“ Of all the Apollyons or destroyers of nerves, health, and life, 
this is the greatest; and I have no sort of doubt that it has 
broken down more constitutions, brought on more distempers, 
and sent more people to an early grave, than all the vices of 
this bedlam world put together.” 
More will be said of this, however, when we come to 
speak, under the head of education, of the identity of alco- 
hol in fermented and distilled liquors. 
Why and how it is that alcoholic drinks exert this mor- 
bific, disease-producing action, on those who indulge in 
their use, is no longer a mystery. Science gives the gen- 
eral explanation in its uniform demonstrations that alco- 
hol is an irritant poison; and descends to the most min- 
ute particulars in showing how it makes the circuit of the 
body, and what havoc it works in all its course before it is 
finally expelled. The reader will find this fully and accu- 
rately described in the Essay on “ Alcohol and Science.” 
Only a hint need, therefore, be given here. Incapable of 
digestion, alcohol, as it enters the human stomach, first 
wars upon, decomposes and neutralizes the gastric juice, on 
which all digestion depends. Next, permeating whatever 
articles of food the stomach may contain, it arrests the di- 
gestive process which may be going on in them ; and, un- 
til expelled from the stomach, wholly unchanged, it irri- Social and National. 
19 
tates and inflames that organ; lessens the power of the fol- 
licles to secrete the required digestive juices, injures the 
muscular activity of the stomacli, and deranges all its func- 
tions. Says Dr. Richardson: 
“ The stomach, unable to produce in proper quantity the nat- 
ural digestive fluid, and also unable to absorb the food which 
it may imperfectly digest, is in constant anxiety and irritation. 
It is oppressed with the sense of nausea, it is oppressed with the 
sense of emptiness and prostration, it is oppressed with a sense 
of distention, it is oppressed with a loathing for food, and it is 
teased with a craving for more drink. Thus there is engendered a 
permanent disorder, which, for politeness sake, is called dyspep- 
sia, and for which different remedies are often sought but never 
found. Antibilious pills—whatever they may mean—Seidlitz 
powders, effervescing waters, and all that pharmacopoeia of 
aids to further indigestion, in which the afflicted who nurse 
their own diseases so liberally and innocently indulge, are tried 
in vain. I do not strain a syllable when I state that the worst 
forms of confirmed indigestion originate in the practice that is 
here explained. By this practice all the functions are vitiated, 
the skin at one moment is flushed and perspiring, at the next is 
cold and clammy, and every other secreting structure is equally 
disarranged.”* 
Passing from the stomach into the blood, the alcohol 
now circulates in all parts of the body, deranging the ac- 
tion of the heart and capillaries, unduly exciting and then 
speedily paralyzing the brain, and impairing all vital force, 
as it interferes with healthy nervous action. 
While the heart of a healthy adult man makes 73.57 
strokes per minute, or about 106,000 during twenty-four 
hours, making allowance for an estimated deduction of 
6,000 strokes while the body is in a recumbent position, as 
in sleep, 100,000 strokes, and at each stroke lifts up six 
ounces of blood into its respective ventricles, or 600,000 in 
the twenty-four hours, which is equivalent to 116 foot tons, 
the disturbance caused by the presence of alcohol in the 
* “ Cantor Lectures,” pp. 154, 155. 20 
Alcohol in Society. 
system is almost incredible, but is demonstrated by actual 
experiment, Dr. Richardson relates an account of an ex- 
periment of this kind conducted by Dr. Parker and Count 
Wollowicz on a u young and healthy adult man.” During 
the first eight days, under a normal condition, the pulse 
was, as stated above, 73.57, which, making no deduction 
for change in hours of sleep, they reckoned as 100,000 in 
twenty-four hours. On the following six days, in each of 
which alcohol was administered in increasing quantities, 
the results, as recorded by themselves, were : 
u On the ninth day, with one fluid ounce of alcohol, the heart 
beat 4,300 times more. On the tenth day, with two fluid ounces, 
8,172 times more. On the eleventh day, with four fluid ounces, 
12,960 times more. On the twelfth day, with six fluid ounces, 
30,672 times more. On the thirteenth day, with eight fluid 
ounces, 23,904 times more. On the fourteenth day, with eight 
fluid ounces, 25,488 times more. But as there was sphemeral 
fever on the twelfth day, it is right to make a deduction, and to 
estimate the number of beats in that day as midway between 
the eleventh and thirteenth days, or 18,432. Adoptiug this, the 
mean daily excess of beats during the alcoholic days was 14,492, 
or an increase of rather more than 13 per cent. 
“ The first day of alcohol gave an excess of 4 per cent., and 
the last of 23 per cent., and the mean of these two gives almost 
the same per centage of excess as the mean of the six days. 
“ Admitting that each beat of the heart was as strong during 
the alcoholic period as in the water period (and it was really 
more powerful), the heart on the last two days of alcohol was 
doing one-fifth more work. 
“ Adopting the lowest estimate which has been given of the 
daily work of the heart, viz., as equal to 122 tons lifted one foot 
(or 116 tons, on the estimate of 100,000 heart-beats to the day), 
the heart during the alcoholic period did daily work in excess 
equal to lifting 15.8*fons one foot; and in the last two days did 
extra work to the amount of twenty-four tons lifted as far. 
“ The period of rest for the heart was shortened, though, per- 
haps, not to such an extent as would he inferred from the num- 
ber of heats, for each contraction was sooner over. The heart, 
on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol was left off, and appar- 
ently at the time when the last traces of alcohol were elimi- Social and National. 
21 
nated, showed in the sphygmographic tracings, signs of unusual 
feebleness; and, perhaps, in consequence of this, when the 
brandy quickened the heart again, the tracings showed a more 
rapid contraction of the ventricles, but less power than in the 
alcoholic period. The brandy acted, in fact, on a heart whose 
nutrition had not been perfectly restored.”* 
I add one more citation from Dr. Richardson, the signifi- 
cance of which ought to arrest the attention of every 
thoughtful person, and lead to total abstinence from the 
use of all alcoholic drinks. It is this : 
“ By common observation, the flush seen on the cheek during 
the first stage of alcoholic excitation, is presumed to extend 
merely to the parts actually exposed to view. It cannot, how- 
ever, be too forcibly impressed that the condition is universal 
in the body. If the lungs could be seen, they, too, would be 
found with their vessels injected ; if the brain and spinal cord 
could be laid open to view, they would be discovered in the 
same condition; if the stomach, the spleen, the liver, the kid- 
neys, or any other vascular organs or parts, could be exposed, 
the vascular engorgement would be equally manifest. In the 
lower animals, I have been able to witness this extreme vas- 
cular condition in the lungs, and there are here presented to 
you two drawings from nature, showing, one the lungs in a nat- 
ural state of an animal killed by a sudden blow, the other, the 
lungs of an animal killed equally suddenly, but at a time when 
it was under the influence of alcohol. You will see, as if you 
were looking at the structures themselves, how different they 
are in respect to the blood which they contained, how intensely 
charged with blood is the lung in which the vessels had been 
paralyzed by the alcoholic spirit. 
“ I once had the unusual, though unhappy, opportunity of 
observing the same phenomenon in the brain structure of a 
man who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic excitement, decapitated 
himself under the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain 
was instantaneously evolved from the skull by the crash. The 
brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes after 
the death. It exhaled the odor of spirit most distinctly, and its 
membranes and minute structures were vascular in the extreme. 
It looked as if it had been recently injected with vermilion. 
* Ibid, pp. 86, 87. 22 
Alcohol in Society. 
The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red points, 
could scarcely be distinguished, when it was incised, by its nat- 
ural whiteness; and the pia-mater, or internal vascular mem- 
brane, covering the brain, resembled a delicate web of coagu- 
lated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged.”* 
When we consider, too, that a very large portion, if not 
the entire amount of the alcohol drank undergoes no 
change whatever in the blood, but floats in it as a foreign 
substance, and, like a mote or grain of sand in the eye, 
irritates and inflames all that it touches ; and that all this 
excitement of the heart and other organs arises from the 
effort to throw out the intruder,—an excitement and effort 
that must, of necessity, waste the energy and life of the 
body,—we have absolute demonstration that alcohol must 
create disease. And we can easily accept, as containing 
little or nothing of exaggeration, the testimony of an emi- 
nent physician of Dublin : 
“ If an end were put to the drinking of port, punch, and porter, 
there would soon be an end of my worldly prosperity. Physi- 
cians, surgeons and apothecaries would be ruined, our medical 
halls would be stripped of their splendor, and disease would be 
comparatively rare, simple and manageable. Twenty years’ 
experience has convinced me that, were ten young men, when 
of age, to commence drinking one glass of ardent spirits, or a 
pint of port or sherry, and continue to drink that quantity 
daily, the lives of eight of them would be abridged twelve or 
fifteen years.” * 
(bJ. In regard to the diseases occasioned by privation 
and the imperfect sanitary conditions imposed by the pov- 
erty caused by drinking, there is a vast amount of informa- 
tion accessible to all, and doubtless an appalling sum 
known only to omniscience. When Mr. Buxton, the 
London Brewer, makes the declaration : “ It would not be 
too much to say, that there are at this moment half a 
* Ibid, pp, 89-90. 
* “Teniplar’s Magazine,” vol. xiii. p. 2. Social and National. 
23 
million homes in the United Kingdom, where home happi- 
ness is never felt, owing to this cause alone; where the 
wives are broken-hearted, and the children are brought up 
in misery ; ”* he brings to our view not simply unhappy 
homes, but also, since, alas for us ! the character of the 
drunkard’s abode is but too well known, destitute and un- 
healthy homes !—places of abode, rather, that can hardly, 
in any sense, be called homes. At what a disadvantage, 
in all respects, the inmates of such places are put. Here 
are a few illustrative cases, before we present an exhibit of 
more general statistics. 
“ Mr. Partridge, the Police Magistrate of Southwark, had be- 
fore him, on February 15, 1873, what he described as ‘ the sad- 
dest case’ he had ever had to deal with, when a man and his 
wife were charged with cruel neglect of their children, five in 
number. When the medical and relieving officers effected an 
entrance into the residence of this couple, they found one room 
entirely devoid of furniture, and the other in a miserable con- 
dition There was a small fire in the grate, round which five 
children in a wretched state were huddled. On two chairs they 
saw a child covered with rags, and apparently in a dying state 
from scalds. The child died a short time after her removal to the 
hospital. The average earnings of the prisoner were £ 1.10s 8d. 
He could earn £2 a week, easily, if he worked, but he kept 
away frequently two days. In his defence he said his wife 
spent all his money in drink, and pawned the children’s 
clothes.” 
A man named Cross had heen taken to St. George’s Hospital, 
and then, as being drunk and disorderly, to the Police Station, 
in one cell of which he was put, and found dead there next 
morning. He had a wife and child. Information was given to 
the Westminster Stipendiary Magistrate, Mr. Woolrych, by the 
Kev. E Marston, the vicar of the district of Brompton, in which 
the family lived, that the * wife was a confirmed drunkard, and 
had been for three weeks in a chronic state of drunkenness. 
The house and child had been fearfully neglected; the room 
was a perfect den, it teemed with filth, and in all his experience 
of wretched and neglected places, he had never known any- 
* “ How to Stop Drunkenness,” p. 8. 24 
Alcohol in Society. 
thing to equal it. Such a state of things at this time of the 
year (July) would breed pestilence and fever, and he had been 
to the sanitary inspector and relieving officer; the former, how- 
ever, seemed to have no power to enter and cleanse the place, 
and the latter could not interfere with the child, which was in 
a very critical condition, and lying neglected on a wretched 
pallet, and starving. Every article in the room was broken.’ ”* 
As in the old world, so in the new, and wherever alco- 
holic beverages are used. N. P. Willis, writing for his 
paper, “The Home Journal,” in describing scenes in New 
York City during the riot in 1863, thus speaks of what met 
his eyes at one of the fires : 
“The high brick blocks and closely packed houses in this 
neighborhood seemed to be literally hives of sickness and vice. 
Curiosity to look on at the fire raging so near them, brought 
every inhabitant to the porch or window, or assembled them in 
ragged and dirty groups on the sidewalks in front. Probably 
not a creature who could move was left in-doors at that hour. 
And it is wonderful to see, and difficult to believe that so much 
misery and disease and wretchedness could be huddled together 
and hidden by high walls, unvisited and unthought of, so near 
our own abodes. The lewd, but pale and sickly young women, 
scarce decent in their ragged attire, were impudent and scat- 
tered everywhere in the crowd. But what numbers of these 
poor classes are deformed; what numbers are made hideous by 
self-neglect and infirmity, and what numbers are paralytics, 
drunkards, imbecile or idiotic, forlorn in their poverty-stricken 
abandonment by the world. Alas! human faces look so hide- 
ous with hope and vanity all gone! And female features are 
made so frightful by sin, squalor and debasement! ” 
Gotham Court, in that city, consisting of two large bar- 
rack-buildings, furnished, in 1865, tenements to 146 fami- 
lies, or 584 persons. Drunkenness, vice and terror reigned 
there undisturbed. The buildings, constantly out of re- 
pair, were extremely filthy; the cellars dark, and horribly 
foul, were filled with mud, rubbish and human excrements. 
* “ Christendom and the Drink Curse.” By Rev. Dawson 
Borns. M. A., p. 72. Social and National. 
25 
The privies were horrible breeding tanks of disease, the 
poisonous odors from them spreading between the two five 
story buildings, only nine feet apart, and this space deep 
with rubbish and offal thrown there from the houses. That 
year the Health Officers found the mortality of the children 
bom in that building 30 per cent., and of the entire popula- 
tion, 7 per cent.; and 140 of the inmates more or less sick, 
some with small-pox, others with typhus, scarlatina, dysen- 
tery, chronic diarrhoea, etc. In 1867 the mortality of 
children of one year of age amounted, from week to week, 
to from one-quarter to one-half of the entire death rate in 
New York ; but in these crowded and filthy tenement 
houses it amounted to 80 per cent. The Health Report for 
1874, showed that in the second sanitary inspection district 
315 persons were living in damp, unventilated cellars, and 
all suffering from alcoholism and rheumatism in all its 
stages. In the Fourth Ward 176 cellars were found in a 
deplorably filthy state, and radical measures were taken for 
closing them, and for rescuing their occupants from drunk- 
enness and prostitution, and from premature graves. 
“ When cholera is scourging the land,” says Prof. Miller, 
“ you may predicate as well as trace its progress, by reference 
to the sober or drunken habits of the people. In that hamlet, 
or household, who is the first victim ? The drunkard. In that 
district, which is the spot most plague-stricken ? That in which 
whiskey is known to be most largely consumed. Of 70 male 
adults affected with cholera in an Edinburgh hospital, in 1848, 
only 17, even according to their own account, had led tolerably 
temperate lives. And of 140 females attacked by the disease, 
only 43 were reputed sober. Moreover, besides rendering the 
patient more liable to the attack, it reduces his power of endur- 
ing it when it comes. As to fever, for example, Dr. Davidson has 
recorded a very significant fact—viz., that out of 370 cases, the 
deaths among the intemperate amounted to one-third of the 
whole. Among the temperate, only to one-seventh. And Dr. 
Craigie states that outofthirty-one deaths from fever in his hos- 
pital-wards, only two occurred in temperate persons.” * 
* “Alcohol: Its Place and Power/' pp, 172, 173. 26 
Alcohol in Society. 
u All spirit drinkers will be the first victims of the chol- 
era,” were the words placed on placards, and carried 
through the streets of London, during the cholera season of 
1832; and the same year thousands of posters were put up 
in the cities of New York and Albany, conveying this 
warning: “ Quit dram drinking, if you would not have the 
cholera.” How significant the caution was, is seen by the 
fact that of the 366 victims in Albany, above the age of 
sixteen years, all except four belonged to the drinking 
classes. 
Of the great fever which raged in London in 1739, Dr. 
Short testifies that the intemperate were the first and the 
greatest victims, and that, u the like was the fate of all 
tipplers, dram-drinkers, and punch merchants. Scarcely 
any other one died of this same fever.” 
Concerning the yellow fever in New Orleans, in 1853, 
Dr. Camwriglit said, in the “ Boston Medical Journal ” : 
u The yellow fever came down like a storm upon this devot- 
ed city, with its dram-shops. About 5,000 of the intem- 
perate died before the epidemic touched a single sober man, 
so far as I can get at the facts.”* 
Mr. Parton, in liis little work before cited, quotes from 
Knight’s “ History of England,” in regard to the manner 
in which u careless and avaricious employers,” the master- 
tailors being the most notorious, would crowd their poor 
workmen together, and what effect a resort to alcoholic 
liquors produced. Some of them, according to this author- 
ity, (p. 80) would “ huddle sixty or eighty workmen close 
together, nearly knee to knee, in a room fifty feet long by 
twenty feet broad, lighted from above, where the tempera- 
ture in summer was thirty degrees higher than the tempera- 
ture outside. Young men from the country fainted when 
they were first confined in such a life-destroying prison; 
* See a mass of evidence on this point in “ Alcohol and Sci- 
ence,” p. 213-219. Social and National. 
27 
the maturer ones sustained themselves by gin, till they 
perished of consumption, or typhus, or delirium tremens.” 
One more illustration, on this head, will suffice. The 
following is condensed from u Chambers Miscellany,” No. 
23 : The coal-whippers and draymen of London are classes 
of men notorious for the great quantity of beer and porter 
they consume ; and the rate of mortality among them, to use 
the expression of a medical witness before the Parliament- 
ary Committee, is u frightful.” One of the coal-whippers, 
speaking of the disease from drinking in his own class, 
expressed it most aptly by saying, u the men die off like 
rotten sheep.” 
11 From our proximity to the river,” said Dr. Gordon, of 
the London Hospital, to the Committee, 11 we receive, 
necessarily, a great number of these individuals, and the 
mortality among them is frightful. The moment they are 
attacked with an acute disease, they are unable to bear 
depletion, and they die directly.” 
Sir Astley Cooper, eminent in medical science, testifies : 
“ No man can have a greater hostility to dram-drinking than 
myself, insomuch that I never suffer any ardent spi rits in my 
house, thinking them evil spirits. And if the poor could wit- 
ness the white livers, the dropsies, the shattered, nervous sys- 
tems which I have seen, as the consequences of drinking, they 
would be aware that spirits and poisons are synonymous 
terms.” 
(c). The suicides and casualties connected with drink- 
ing1, which are at once fatal to life, or greatly abridge it, 
are so numerous as to defy any attempts to enumerate 
them. Many cases, too, are covered up, and other causes 
assigned, as we have seen is true in regard to that slower, 
but not less sure self-destruction induced by diseases orig- 
inating in the use of alcoholic beverages. 
n Thus, in an able series of observations on thirty-eight cases 
of suicide, which were reported in the course of ten years in 
Aberdeen, while the three principal causes are declared to have 28 
Alcohol in Society. 
been insanity, unhappy love, and family quarrels, it is added 
that of the thirty-eight individuals, twenty were intoxicated 
before attempting suicide, seventeen had the character of being 
habitual drunkards, and an equal number were reported as 
temperate.” * 
The frequency of suicide, and its annual increase, are 
facts with which few, probably, are familiar. The follow- 
ing statistics were collected by the late Mr. Samuel 
Royce: 
“ There were committed in 
Paris, 1794—1804 107 annual suicides. 
“ 1804—1823 334 “ “ 
“ 1830—1835 382 “ “ 
Berlin 1758—1775 45 “ “ 
“ 1784—1797 62 “ “ 
“ 1797—1808 126 “ “ 
“ 1813—1822 546 “ “ 
“ The average annual suicides in France were 
1826—1830 1,739 
1831—1835 2,263 
1836-1840 2,574 
1841—1845 2,951 
1846—1850 3,466 
1851—1855 3,639 
“While during 1826—1856 the population has risen from 31,- 
858,937, to 36,039,364, or in the ratio of 100 to 113, suicides 
have risen in the ratio of 100 to 209, so that while the popula- 
tion has but little increased, suicides have more than doubled. 
“In Denmark the annual number of suicides was: 
1835—1839 261 
1840-1844 300 
1845—1849 330 
1850-1854 389 
1855—1856 414 
“ The proportion of suicides has thus risen from 219 to 392 in 
every million of population. 
* Dr. Brown on Intemperance and Sanity. Part II. p. 6. Social and National. 
29 
“ In Prussia suicides have increased in 1823—1858 from 510 to 
2,180. 
“In general, suicides have increased, taking most European 
countries, 3 to 5 per cent., while the average increase of popu- 
lation has heen 1.64 per cent. 
“ The proportion of suicides in 
Denmark is 388 in 1,000,000 pop. 
Saxony “ 215 “ “ “ 
Scandinavia “ 126 “ “ “ 
Germany “ 112 “ “ “ 
France “ 105 “ “ “ 
Spain and other 
Romanic nations “ 80 “ “ “ 
Slavonic races “ 47“ “ “ 
“ The annual ratio of suicides to every million population is 
for 
Berlin 212 
Rural Districts 123 
Geneva 250 
Copenhagen 477 
Rural Districts 488 
Paris 640 
Rural Districts 110 * 
In the armies of the different nations the suicides are, as 
compared with the number of suicides among civilians in 
“Saxony as 177 to 100 
France “ 253 “ “ 
Prussia “ 293 “ “ 
Sweden “ 423 “ “ t 
Austria “ 643 “ “ ” 
The “Philadelphia Ledger,” January 28th, 1882, says, that 
for the year just ended: 
“The official record of suicides in France returns 6,500 cases, 
an increase of four cases over 1880. Since 1851, the increase has 
heen at a much larger ratio than this. In that year it was one 
case in every 9,833 inhabitants; last year it was one in every 
5,161. No Province in Europe has so great a ratio as the Ger- 
• “ Deterioration and Eace Education,” pp. 231-233. 
t Ibid, p. 226. 30 
Alcohol in Society. 
man one of Thuringia, but after Thuringia, Paris has the mis- 
fortune to stand nearest the top of the list.” 
As regards the army statistics, the well-known fact that 
the rank and file of all standing armies are proverbially 
dissipated men, sufficiently explains them; while the 
drunkenness of the people of the nations where such an 
increase of suicide is noted, is too well attested to be con- 
troverted.* 
The “Quarterly Journal of Inebriety,” for January, 
1878, makes the very significant and important statement 
that there is an intimate connection between beer-drinking 
and suicide; that “ statistics indicate that most of the 
suicides following inebriety occur among beer-drinkers.” 
Dr. Arnott is quoted as asserting that “ beer has a peculiar 
psychological action on the organism, developing a low 
grade of depression in all cases.” 
M. Lunier is authority for a collection of statistics show- 
ing that in France, the consumption of alcohol has in- 
creased within forty years by fifty per cent., while the 
population has somewhat diminished. From these it also 
appears that “ accidental deaths, habitual drunkenness 
and delirium tremens, bear a direct relation in each De- 
partment of France to the consumption of alcohol ” in 
ardent spirits. There are exceptions in two Departments, 
and in these, “ the excessive drinking of white wines is 
supposed to be the occasion of similar unhappy results.” 
In gin and beer-drinking England, the results are the 
same. 
“In London alone, 500 cases of suicide occur annually. In 
1868, there perished by self-murder in the United Kingdom, 
1,546 persons, t 
“ In whiskey-cursed Ireland the showing is the same. Mr. 
* See “ Alcohol in History,” for particulars with regard to the 
consumption of alcoholic beverages in the several nations, 
t “ Bacchus Dethroned,” p. 41. Social and National. 
31 
White, one of the coroners for Dublin, stated before the Habitual 
Drunkards’ Select Committee, that out of forty inquests of sui- 
cides, ‘ only one being directly set down as the result of intem- 
perance ; ’ ‘ yet nearly all were committed during insanity 
caused by drink.’ ‘There are a far greater number who die 
from the effects of drink on whom I do not hold inquests, than 
those on whom inquests are held.’ ” * 
Statistics in the United States are defective both in re- 
gard to the numbers and the causes of suicides; but read- 
ers of the newspapers cannot fail to recall the fact that in 
a great many, and perhaps the majority of instances, even 
where the proximate causes are so numerous and varied, 
intemperance is accountable for the self-destruction so 
common and so much on the increase in this country. 
A very large number—estimated by some to be four-fifths 
of the whole—of the accidents which happen by land and 
sea, are due to the use of intoxicants. The cars run off the 
track, or are demolished by collision, because some one 
connected with the train has been drinking; parties of 
pleasure are speedily converted into parties of suffering and 
death, because the captain, pilot, or some one employed on 
the steamer, was drunk; bridges fall, or buildings collapse 
because drunken brains failed to build securely, or drunken 
inspectors were unable to discharge their duty; while 
whole fleets of fishing vessels, hundreds of merchant ships, 
and scores of ocean steamers go to the bottom of the great 
waters on account of the inefficiency or helplessness 
through drink of officers or crew ; and explosions in mines, 
loss of life and limb by the reckless work attempted amid 
powerful machinery, destructive fires, and casualties of 
innumerable variety, are due to the use of alcoholic bever- 
ages. 
Rev. G. M. Murphy testified before a Committee of 
Parliament : “ Before I came to London, I was associated 
♦“Christendom and the Drink Curse,” p. 82. 32 
Alcohol in Society. 
with the large firm of Fox and Henderson, at Birmingham. 
Sir Charles Fox has stated (and it quite hears out my 
views) that the large majority of accidents in connection 
with their extensive works occur on Monday, and are the 
results of unsteadiness, occasioned by the Sunday’s drink- 
ing.” 
“ Mr. John Simpson, an insurance broker and merchant, of 
London, says: ‘ I have been in the house that I am head of now, 
for thirty-five years, and in the habit of covering a million and 
a half sterling per annum, of property floating upon the water > 
and generally in the whole of that time it has been most lament- 
able to see the great destruction of property, in a vast number 
of instances, notoriously owing to drunkenness.’ ” 
“ Captain Edward Pelham, Brenton, E. N., when examined 
before the Parliamentary Committee, stated that for forty-six 
years he had been acquainted with seamen, and had observed 
their prevailing habit to be that of intemperance. 
“ During the late war, almost every accident he ever witness- 
ed on board ship was owing to drunkenness. This was the cause 
of the ‘ George ’ of 98 guns, in 1759, with 550 of her crew; and 
of the ‘Ajax’ of 74 guns, in 1806, with 350 of her crew. He 
named also the burning of the ‘ Kent,’ East Indiaman, and of 
the ‘ Edgar ’ of 70 guns, owing to spirits being on board.”* 
“ Drink,” said a cab proprietor, “ has been a source of great 
uneasiness to me, for my man has frequently got into trouble ; 
and as far as I can recollect, all the accidents which have hap- 
pened have occurred through drink, and I have had to pay the 
fines which have been imposed, in order that I might redeem 
my property.”t 
11 One of the most extensive mail contractors in the 
United States, says: 
“We seldom have an accident worthy ef notice that we can- 
not trace to a glass of spirits, taken perhaps to oblige a friend, or 
a passenger, who has urged the driver to take a little; thus put- 
ting his own life and the lives of his companions in danger, to 
say nothing of the loss of character and property to us.” 
“We were going,” once said a gentleman, “from Baltimore 
* “ Bacchus Dethroned,” pp. 61, 62. 
t“ Tetotaller’s Companion,” p. 160. Social and National. 
33 
to Philadelphia in the stage. The day was cold, and the travel- 
ling exceedingly rough, but we had a careful driver, and fine 
horses, and wre got on very well, till the driver stopped at a 
tavern and took something to drink. Almost immediately 
after we had started, the horses became fractious—what was 
the matter ? The driver did not now hold the reins as he held 
them before. The liquor, which for a pittance the tavern- 
keeper gave him, and he drank, began to affect his brain, his 
arms, and his hands; its influence ran along the reins to the 
horses, and the generous animals, which had labored so hard and 
so well for the public good, reined and goaded by a half-drunken 
driver,became vexed even to madness. In descending a hill, the 
stage was overturned, and the passengers, with broken bones, 
and in imminent danger of death, experienced what hundreds of 
others have, namely, that the vexation and mischief of having 
drinking drivers, and poison-selling innkeepers, are not con- 
fined to the horses. Hundreds of lives are sacrificed to these 
abominable practices.” * 
Only a few years ago another fearful accident resulting 
in loss of life and destruction of property, has passed 
under the notice and judgment of the coroner’s inquest. 
On the 13th of January, 1882, a train running from 
Albany to New York, on the Hudson River and New York 
Central Railroad, was suddenly, and without orders from 
the conductor; brought to a stop. It was a long train, re- 
quiring two locomotives to draw it, and the quickness of 
the stop broke the draw bar between the first and second 
engines. While the conductor was examining into the 
cause of the stop, another train, following on the same 
track, crashed into the delayed cars; and in the fearful 
wreck that ensued some were killed outright, while others 
perished in the flames of the burning cars from which they 
could not be extricated. The testimony of the conductor 
was to the effect that the bell rope running through the cars 
for the purpose of notifying the engineer to stop, was not 
pulled by himself nor by his order; that he had a noisy, 
* Sixth Report of the American Temperance Union. 34 
Alcohol in Society. 
carousing crowd on board, sixty-seven or seventy-seven of 
whom had free passes j and that being, to a large extent, 
members of the New York Legislature, he was not able to 
control them. In the smoking car, especially, there was 
great disturbance; bottles were constantly passing, drink- 
ing was frequent, hats were smashed over the faces of their 
wearers, and indecent songs were shouted or sung. In the 
thickest of the brawl, some one, either for the purpose of 
perpetrating a joke, or, in their drunken craze, not knowing 
what they were about, pulled the bell-rope, and the train 
was at once brought to a full stop, with the results already 
noted. 
The Coroner’s jury, in their verdict, arraign the conduc- 
tor, "brakeman, and the Railroad Company at large ; but 
couple with their verdict the significant recommendation 
that free passes to members of the New York Legislature 
be discontinued. It is not pretended that either the conduc- 
tor or brakeman are responsible for the stopping of the 
train, but for not more speedily warning the approaching 
train of its danger. 
The u Philadelphia Record,” of January 23rd, has the 
following: 
“ Several members of the New York Legislature who have heen 
heard from, indignantly deny that they, or any of their fellow- 
legislators, had any part in the carousing on the wrecked Albany 
train, as charged by Conductor Hanford. One of them says 
there was in fact a notable scarcity of liquor on the trip, as was 
developed when something of the kind was needed after the 
accident took place. Suspicious people, however, may suggest 
that what there was had been drunk up previously. Another 
says that the Tammany men forgot to bring along the supply 
of alcoholic beverages which had been laid in by them for the 
occasion. A hotel attache who was on board says he never saw 
a more quiet party. According to him, there was neither drink- 
ing, smoking, nor boisterous conduct. This person intimates 
that there may have been something in the combination of un- 
lucky coincidences, arising from the fact that the catastrophe 
occurred on a Friday, that it was the thirteenth day of the Social and National. 
35 
month, and that the nnfortunate train consisted of thirteen 
cars.” 
A hotel attache’s idea of a 11 quiet party,” if as intelli- 
gent as is his notion of “ something ” that may have been 
in the u combination of unlucky coincidences,” as it proba- 
bly is, will hardly be able to impeach the testimony of the 
conductor; and no more will the statement of the sagacious 
member of the Legislature as to what could not be found 
when needed, disprove what competent witnesses affirm 
was found and used when it was not needed, and the riot 
that accompanied its use. 
Some Railroad Corporations had previously taken the 
alarm on this subject, and are endeavoring to protect them- 
selves from risk of accident, and of suits for damages, by 
rules looking to the exclusion of intoxicated passengers 
from the trains, or by insisting on total abstinence on the 
part of their employees. The Pennsylvania R. R. 
Company has issued orders to all ticket agents to 11 refuse 
to sell tickets to persons who are intoxicated,” and has in- 
structed its gatemen u to pass no one who is under the 
influence of liquor.” The Indianapolis and St. Louis R. 
R., promulgated the following order, in 1879 : 11 The use 
of intoxicating liquors by employees of this company is 
expressly prohibited. Hereafter any person in the employ 
of this company who shall become intoxicated, or who shall 
be known to enter drinking-saloons for the purpose of 
obtaining liquor, will be promptly dismissed from the 
service. Any person now in the service of the company 
who cannot consistently comply with this order, is respect- 
fully requested to resign.” 
The Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada, cre- 
ated some ten years ago an u Employee’s Temperance Or- 
ganization,” with the following : 36 
Alcohol in Society. 
“PLEDGE. 
“ ‘ Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging; and whosoever 
is deceived thereby is not wise.’—Prov. xx. 1. 
“No one can read the above without conscientiously affirming 
that it is God’s truth. Daily observation and well-authenti- 
cated daily reports through the press, give proof upon proof 
that drinking habits are the undoubted cause of very serious 
trouble in numberless ways, and result in frightful waste of val- 
uable time and hard-earned money. Knowing this to be true, 
I desire to do everything in my power to avoid and prevent 
such evil results, and with this object in view I intend myself, 
and will earnestly advise my fellow-employees, and others who 
have families and friends looking to them for support and as- 
sistance, to entirely abstain from the use of all intoxicating 
drinks; and as an employee of the Grand Trunk Railway Com- 
pany, 
“I DO HEREBY AFFIRM AND DECLARE 
that I will not drink as a beverage alcoholic liquor of any kind 
whatever, for the period of one year from the date hereof. 
NAME 
OCCUPATION 
RESIDENCE 
WITNESS 
STATION 
“ Note.—This pledge form is to be signed in duplicate. One 
copy is to be sent to the Superintendent’s office, and the other 
to be retained by the party signing the declaration.” 
From an annual circular issued by its superintendent we 
give the following: 
“As we are near the close of another year, I have the pleas- 
urable duty to perform of again inviting, and very earnestly 
recommending, a renewal of your declaration and pledge in fa- 
vor of total abstinence. 
“In my last circular I quoted a few extracts from many reli- 
able statements made by prominent and well-known advocates 
of the temperance cause, showing the undoubted advantages de- 
rivable from abstinence, and, on the other hand, the wasted re- 
sources, the numberless ills, troubles, and disadvantages, re- 
sulting solely from drinking habits. 
“ Every one of us can call to mind a number of very painful 
cases during the past year. Social and National. 
37 
“ We know that habitual use of stimulants too often leads to 
excess; inexcusable neglect and careless performance of duty 
follow, and then, sooner or later, loss of position and employ- 
ment is, and must be, the inevitable result. The unpleasant 
position is then fully realized, and most pressing appeals are 
made for re-employment—one more chance for the sake of an 
anxious wife and the children, who are always the greatest suf- 
ferers in such cases. 
“These are well-known and painful facts, and the officers are 
considered hard and unfeeling if they do not give way to such 
appeals. 
“As we all desire, I presume, to prevent such distress and un- 
pleasantness, we cannot too strongly advise every man who has 
a family and others dependent upon him for support, to entire- 
ly give up the use of all intoxicating liquors. 
“ Indulgence in such stimulants does no good at any time; it 
is an expensive habit, a positive waste of money. 
“ Intoxicating drinks are neither necessary nor useful, even 
in cases of severe fatigue, extreme cold or heat; they are a snare 
and a delusion, for it is an admitted fact that a man can endure 
greater fatigue and perform more and better work without 
such stimulants. 
u There are many other good reasons, specially applicable to 
railway employees, for abstaining from the use of all intoxicat- 
ing drink. 
“ You have the lives of the public and the safety of both per- 
son and property entrusted to your care, requiring at all times 
the utmost possible caution and vigilance in the performance 
of your duty. Again, railway employees, from their liability to 
night work, irregular hours, exposure in all kinds of weather, 
and from the very foolish and expensive custom of ‘ treating/ 
are exposed to much danger and many temptations. 
“ It is for these and many other important reasons that I de- 
sire and do not hesitate to ask your earnest and cordial co-ope- 
ration in advocating and largely extending our temperance 
movement. 
“Believe me, it is the right thing to do, a very safe step to 
take. We can guarantee that the results will be in every way 
beneficial, both financially and physically, and I do trust that 
we shall have a considerable accession to our number of total- 
abstainers for the year 1881. 
“ W. J. Spicer, Superintendent 38 
Alcohol in Society. 
(d). The hereditary diseases and tendencies to disease, 
transmitted by parents who drink to what is called “ ex- 
cess,” or, who are what some style “ moderate ” drinkers, 
are now receiving much consideration from the most emi- 
nent men in the medical profession. Already they are 
able to demonstrate that this transmission is a fact manifest 
in various forms of deterioration and disease j and it cannot 
be doubted that future investigation will more fully dis- 
close the influence of alcoholic beverages in this direction. 
“ The principle of heredity or the transmission of structural 
peculiarities from parent to offspring has already been recog- 
nized by Hippocrates, and has been fully established by Darwin 
and other naturalists. The principle of heredity has been fully 
discussed in regard to genius, by Galton ; in regard to psycho- 
logical morbidity by Lucas, Despine and Mireau; in regard to 
crime by Bruce Thompson; in regard to insanity by Morel, 
Maudsley and others, and in a more general way by Herbert 
Spencer, Ribot and others.” * 
Of the special phase of the subject we are now consider- 
ing, Ribot says, (“ Heredity,” p. 85): 
“ The passion known as dipsomania or alcoholism is so fre- 
quently transmitted that all are agreed in considering its hered- 
ity as the rule. Not that the passion for drink is always trans- 
mitted in that identical form, for it often degenerates into mania, 
idiocy and hallucination. Conversely, insanity in parents may 
become alcoholism iu the descendants. The continued meta- 
morphosis plainly shows how near passion comes to insanity ; 
how closely the successive generations are connected, and con- 
sequently what a weight of responsibility rests upon each indi- 
vidual.” 
He then cites several cases, to show what some of the 
disorders are which drunkenness entails upon offspring. 
These, among others: 
“ An educated man, charged with important functions, given 
to intoxication, had five children, only one of whom lived to 
maturity. Instincts of cruelty were manifested in this child, 
* “Race Deterioration,” p. 70. Social and National. 
39 
and from an early age his sole delight was to torture animals in 
every conceivable way. He was sent to school but could only 
reach a certain stage of intellectual acquirement 
“ Dr. Morel gives the history of a family in which the great- 
grandfather was a drunkard, and died from intoxication, and 
tlie grandfather, subject to the same passion, died a maniac. He 
had a son, far more sober than himself, who was subject to hyp- 
ochondria and homicidal tendencies; the son of the latter was 
idiotic. Here we see in the first generation, alcoholic excess; 
in the second, hereditary dipsomania; in the third, hypochon- 
dria ; in the fourth, idiocy, and probable extinction of the 
race 
“ A man of excellent family was early addicted to drink and 
died of chronic alcoholism, leaving seven children. Two of 
them died of convulsion at an early age. The third became in- 
sane at twenty-two and died an idiot. The fourth, after various 
attempts at suicide, fell into the lowest grade of idiocy. The 
fifth, of passionate and misanthropic temper, broke off all rela- 
tions with his family. The sixth, a daughter, suffers from ner- 
vous disorders, which chiefly take the form of hysteria with 
intermittent attacks of insanity. The seventh, a very intelli- 
gent man, freely gives expression to the gloomiest forebodings 
as to his intellectual future. 
“ Quite recently Dr. Morel inquired into the condition of one 
hundred and fifty children of drunken parents, ranging from 
ten to seventeen years of age. This examination has confirmed 
my previous convictions as to the baneful effects of alcohol; not 
only in those who use this detestable drink to excess, but in 
their descendants. On their depraved physiognomies are im- 
pressed the threefold stamp of physical, intellectual and moral 
degeneracy.” 
The testimony of Dr. William B. Carpenter, and the 
proofs with which he accompanies it, verifies the facts 
deduced by others. 
“ Looking,” he says, “to the decided tendency to hereditary 
disposition in toe ordinary forms of insanity; looking also to 
the fact, that any perverted or imperfect conditions of the nu- 
tritive functions established in the parent are also liable to 
manifest themselves in the offspring, as shown in the trans- 
mission of the gouty and tubercular diatheses; we should ex- 
pect to find that the offspring of habitual drunkards would 40 
Alcohol in Society. 
share with those of lunatics in the predisposition to insanity, 
and that they would, moreover, be especially prone to intem- 
perate habits. That such is the case is within the knowledge 
of all who have enjoyed extensive opportunities of observation; 
and the fact has come down to us sanctioned by the experience 
of antiquity. Thus Plutarch says: ‘ One drunkard begets an- 
other ; ’ and Aristotle remarks, that ‘ drunken women bring 
forth children like unto themselves.’ 
“ Dr. W. A. F. Browne, the resident physician of the Crichton 
Lunatic Asylum at Dumfries, makes the following statements : 
‘ The drunkard not only injures and enfeebles his own nervous 
system, but entails mental disease on his own family. His 
daughters are nervous and hysterical; his sons are weak, way- 
ward, eccentric, and sink insane under the pressure of excite- 
ment, of some unforeseen exigency, or of the ordinary calls of 
duty. At present, I have two patients who appear to inherit a 
tendency to unhealthy action of the brain, from mothers ad- 
dicted to drinking; and another, an idiot, whose father was a 
drunkard.’ 
“ The author has learned from Dr. Hutcheson, that the re- 
sults of his observations are precisely in accordance with the 
foregoing. On this point, however, the most striking fact that 
the writer has met with, is contained in the Eeport on Idiocy 
lately made by Dr. Howe, to the Legislature of Massachusetts: 
‘ The habits of the parents of three hundred of the idiots were 
learned; and a hundred and forty-five, or nearly one-half, 
are reported as 1 known to be habitual drunkards.’ Such pa- 
rents, it is affirmed, give a weak and lax constitution to their 
children ; who are, consequently, ‘deficient in bodily and vital 
energy/ and predisposed by their very organization to have 
cravings for alcoholic stimulants: many of these children are 
feeble and live irregularly. Having a lower vitality, they feel 
the want of some stimulation. If they pursue the course of 
their fathers, which they have more temptation to follow, and 
less power to avoid, than the children of the temperate, they 
add to their hereditary weakness, and increase the tendency to 
idiocy in their constitution ; and this they leave to their child- 
ren after them. The parents of case No. 62 were drunkards, 
and had seven idiotic children.’ 
“There is a prevalent impression that idiocy is particularly 
liable to occur in the offspring of a procreation that has taken 
place when one or both of the parents were in a state of intoxi- 
cation. A striking example of this kind is related in the Phreno- Social and National. 
41 
logical Journal (vol. vii. p. 471): Both the parents were healthy 
and intelligent, and one at least habitually sober; but both 
were partially intoxicated at the time of the intercourse, and 
the offspring was completely idiotic. There is every reason to 
believe, that the monomania of inebriety not only acts upon, 
and renders more deleterious, whatever latent taint may exist, 
but vitiates or impairs the sources of health for several genera- 
tions. That the effects of drunkenness are highly inimical to a 
permanent healthy state of the brain is often proved at a great 
distance of time from the course of intemperance, and long 
after the adoption of regular habits.” * 
The late Professor Miller, in speaking of the power of 
alcohol to produce disease in him who uses it as a bev- 
erage, says : 
“And the worst of it is, that the disease so induced, does not 
terminate with the life of him or her who produced it. If, un- 
happily, children he horn, they will inherit the evil of their 
progenitors: stunted in body, and often in mind; fatuous, or 
foolish; drink-loving or drunken in their turn; scrofulous, 
rheumatic, consumptive, weak, useless. This is one of the pun- 
ishments of sin, in the present life, which may, in sad bitter- 
ness, be traced downward from parent to child—‘ iniquity of the 
fathers visited upon the children and upon the children’s child- 
ren,’ even 1 unto the third and fourth generation.’” f 
The National Medical Association of the United States, 
at their meeting in Detroit, in 1874, made this declaration: 
“We are of the opinion that the use of alcoholic liquors as a 
beverage is productive of a large amount of physical and men- 
tal disease; that it entails diseased appetites and enfeebled 
constitutions upon offspring, and that it is the cause of a large 
percentage of the crimes and pauperism in our large cities and 
country.” 
The late Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, whose au- 
thority in medical matters was second to that of no man, 
says: 
* “ The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors,” pp. 39—41. For 
his later utterance, see “Alcohol and the State,” p. 58. 
t “ Alcohol: its Place and Power,” p. 179. 42 
Alcohol in Society. 
“In referring to the influence of alcohol, we must not omit 
to speak of the condition of the offspring of the inebriate. The 
inheritance is a sad one; a tendency to the disease of the pa- 
rent is induced, as strong if not stronger than that of consump- 
tion, cancer or gout. And with this tendency he must wage 
perpetual war or he becomes a drunkard. The tendency refer- 
red to, has its origin in the nervous system. The unfortunate 
children of the inebriate come into the world with a defective 
organization of the nerves, which ranges from the inherited 
tendency, through all grades, to idiocy.” * 
Subsequently, at a meeting in Hew York, as reported in 
u The National Temperance Advocate,” Dr. Parker said : 
“No drunkard can have healthy children. They are either 
insane or idiots, or become the subjects of State prison. In 
one word, they are all defective. It is impossible that ‘ sweet 
waters should come forth from a hitter fountain.’ 
Out of the children that are horn in these New York slums, over 
ninety per cent, die during the first year—ninety per cent. ; 
that leaves ten per cent. Now take the ninety per cent., and 
place them against those who attain the good substantial mid- 
dle age or old age, and when you strike the balance it makes a 
very had balance for us. Drunkards beget drunkards, and they 
beget a race that is soon to be destroyed.” 
In an Address to the Directors of the United States 
Inebriate Asylum, on the 11 History and Pathology of Ine- 
briety,” Dr. J. Edward Turner said: 
“ I shall now speak of the hereditary character of this disease 
as it developes itself in children under ten years of age, as its 
hereditary tendency is more observed at this period of life than 
in mature or declining age. The marked character of the dis- 
ease, as found in children, inherited from their parents, is pre- 
cisely the same in morbid anatomy as found in adults who have 
labored under an attack of chronic inebriety. Dissections and 
microscopic investigations reveal the same species of granular 
tubercle in the liver and lungs, and the morbid appearances 
revealed in the different organs, coincide with those described 
in my dissections of adults. 
* “ Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the American Asso- 
ciation for the Cure of Inebriates,” p. 80. Social and National. 
43 
“By investigation we find that almost one-quarter of the 
children under ten years of age, die in our city, of hereditary 
inebriety. The deaths of children under ten in the city of 
New York, for 1854, were as follows: 
1 year old and under 9,166 
1 “ “ “ “ 2 3,697 
2 “ “ “ “ 5 2,810 
5 “ “ “ “ 10 1,079 
Total 16,752 
“The whole number of deaths of all ages for the same year 
was 28,568, making the ratio of deaths among children under 
ten to the whole number as 6 to 10, while in Paris the ratio is 
only 4 to 10; London, 6 7-10 to 10; Edinburgh, 7 to 10; Lyons, 
3 9-10 to 10 ; Copenhagen 5 1-2 to 10; Geneva, 3 1-2 to 10. 
“ These tables show that in the countries where inebriety is 
most common, the number of deaths is greatest among children, 
and that no other cause save inebriety produces it. The above 
tables, collected in my tour of Europe, are about correct. In 
conversing with the celebrated Dr. Riggs of London, on the 
subject of the mortality of children, he says, ‘that one-half of 
the deaths among the children of our city is produced by hered- 
itary inebriety.’ 
“ Every physician knows full well that a predisposition to be- 
come affected by certain diseases, on the application of the 
exciting causes, does certainly exist in the human family, and 
particularly in the diseases of inebriety, scrofula, gout and 
mania. In some instances the predisposition is more strongly 
marked than in others. But where it is inert and insufficient 
of itself to produce disease, it requires the application of an ex- 
citing cause. This is the proper light in which we should view 
hereditary predispositions to inebriety as we find it in adults. 
Every family in our land is more or less predisposed to this dis- 
ease. It may pass over one generation and appear in the 
next. So the grandfather, and grandson (the first and third 
generation) may be inebriates, while the intervening link es- 
capes. This phenomena is noticed by every common observer. 
‘‘Dr. Darwin says: ‘It is remarkable that all the diseases 
from drinking spirituous or fermented liquors, are liable to be- 
come hereditary even to the third generation, gradually in- 44 
Alcohol in Society. 
creasing, if the cause be continued, until the family becomes ex- 
tinct.’—Botan. Gard., Part ii.—Note on Yitis. 
“ Statistics show that the past ten years have consigned to 
the grave 478,239 inebriates. As correctly as I can estimate by 
reviewing the number of deaths for 1850, in the United States, 
I find that the children who have died from hereditary inebriety 
have not been included in the above number, and that the 
number of deaths in this class is yearly 20,274, making, for the 
ten years, 202,740, which added to 478,239, makes a total of 
680,979. Thus we show that the disease of inebriety alone 
causes greater destruction of life in the United States, than 
cholera, yellow fever and small-pox combined, and yet nothing 
is done by the general government, state or city, to stay its pro- 
gress, except administering to its fevered system the damp 
walls of a prison and the poorly ventilated cell—chains and 
shackles to the body to subdue the wild ravings of a delirious 
mind.” 
11 The Voice,” (New York) for March 29,1888, in answer 
to many inquiries as to how many people die annually, as 
the result of liquor drinking, says : 
“In 1879 Dr. Norman Kerr, a distinguished English physician, 
in a published work, ‘ Mortality of Intemperance/ says, that 
after ‘ instituting an inquiry into the several causes contributing 
to mortality, in the practice of several medical friends, with 
the avowed object of demonstrating and exposing the utter fal- 
sity of the perpetual tetotal assertion that 60,000 drunkards died 
every year in the United Kingdom. ... I had not long 
pursued this inquiry before it was made clear to me that there 
was little if any exaggeration in these temperance statistics ; 
and when asked to present the final results of my investigation 
to the last Social Science Congress, I was compelled to admit 
that at least 120,000 of our population annually lost their lives 
through alcoholic excess—40,500 dying from their own intemper- 
ance, and 79,500 from accident, violence, poverty, or disease 
arising from the intemperance of others.” 
“ In the ‘ Foundation of Death,’ Mr. Axel Gustafson says that 
the Harverian Society of Great Britain concludes 14 per cent, 
of mortality among the adults in the United Kingdom is due to 
alcohol, thus exceeding Dr. Kerr’s computation hy 11,500. 
“ Taking, however, Dr. Kerr’s computation of 120,000 deaths 
annually in Great Britain, due directly and indirectly to liquor Social and National. 
45 
drinking; putting the population of the United Kingdom in 
round numbers at 35,000,000, and the annual per capita consump- 
tion of intoxicating liquors as given by Hoyle for 1885 at 34.17 
gallons, and comparing these with the population and annual 
per capita consumption of intoxicating liquors in France, Ger- 
many and the United States, other things being equal, we have 
in round numbers, the following result: 
Popula- 
tion. 
Annual 
per cap ta 
consumption 
intoxicants. 
Annual 
death rate 
from 
alcohol. 
Great Britain 
.. 35,000,000 
34.17 
120,000 
France 
... 37,000,000 
38.20 
142,000 
Germany 
... 45,000,000 
24.92 
112,000 
United States 
... 60,000,000 
12.80 
77,000 
Total for four nations.. 
. 451,000 
The twenty-fifth annual Report of the u Nursery and 
Child’s Hospital,” in New York, which in its city and 
country branches had cared for an aggregate of 2,007 
mothers and children, thus invites attention to the heredi- 
tary aspect of intemperance : 
“Our records show that three-fourths of our children are pau- 
pers because of their parents’ vice and its consequent curse. 
Our poor children inherit the love of liquor, their parents en- 
courage it, sometimes with the selfish motive of stilling the cries 
which annoy them, and often thinking they are giving pleasure 
to the child.” 
The “ Medical Temperance Journal,” for April, 1878, 
published in London, contains an article by Dr. Charles 
Aldridge, in review of 11 Jacquet on Heredity in Alcohol- 
ism,” in which the following facts are noted: 
“ Observation 1.—The head of a family was a drunkard and 
debauchee. His wife was remarkably sober, though the daugh- 
ter of a drunken father, and sister to two youths who both had 
inherited their father’s vice. Of this marriage were horn three 
hoys and two girls. The eldest is as immoral as his father, and 
presents an organic lesion of the heart. He married a wife who 
seems to offer nothing abnormal. They had three children—two 
girls and a boy. The eldest manifested violent sexualism at an 46 
Alcohol in Society. 
early age, and gave birth to a hydrocephalic child, to an un- 
known father. The second girl is almost as dissolute as her sis- 
ter, and the boy is quite imbecile, epileptic, and a drunkard. 
“ 2. The second son has been treated twice in an asylum, for 
mauia with homicidal impulses. 
“ 3. The third son, after an existence of debauchery and 
pleasure, died at the age of twenty-one years, of consumption, 
hitherto unknown in the family. 
“ 4. The eldest of the girls has been married for twelve years 
to a sober, intelligent man, but of six of their children the 
heredity has fallen upon one, who is drunken, licentious, and a 
thief. 
“ 5. The youngest daughter has lost all moral sense and de- 
cency, leading a most irregular life, although well married. 
“ This asseveration presents two interesting considerations, 
viz.: 
“ 1st. Sexual desires show themselves early in the children of 
drunkards, and are associated with an absence of moral sense. 
“ 2nd. Phthisis, when not hereditary, is capable of being pro- 
duced by spirituous excess. Magnus Huss and Lanny have 
supported this thesis by numerous examples.” 
Eev. Joseph Cook, in his Lecture on the action of “Al- 
cohol on the Human Brain/’ in which he employed stere- 
opticon views to illustrate his theme, said as follows : 
“ Whoever would fasten his attention upon the illustrations 
given would find that alcohol made scars. All the distortions 
produced by the stereopticon showed the avidity of alcohol for 
the water in the blood. He indignantly repudiated the idea 
that he had no right to touch upon such topics. The scars of 
childhood were retained through life, notwithstanding all 
changes in the body, and so with the scars made by alcohol. 
The scars on the blood and the brain would not wash out or 
grow out. 
“ Where the scars or grooves in which a habit ran were deep, 
the action became automatic, perhaps involuntary. There was 
a transmission from father to son of the scars of alcohol. When 
a bad habit became a disease the treatment belonged to physi- 
cians, while it was a vice its treatment belonged to the church. 
Nine cases out of ten of drunkenness were a vice, not a disease. 
Moderate drinking quickened the pulse and added ruddiness to 
the countenance. These were not the signs of health, but of Social and National. 
47 
disease. There were five or six chemical agents that produced 
this effect by the paralysis of the small nerves in the circulatory 
system. 
“ When the face blushed in the drunkard the injury was car- 
ried throughout the whole system. Alcohol injured the blood 
by changing the shape, color and chemical condition of its com- 
posites. It absolutely produced new growths in this vital 
stream. The day was coming when by microscopic examina- 
tion of the blood we could detect the presence of acquired or 
hereditary diseases affecting the blood. These changes in the 
blood discs were peculiarly injurious to the brain, because so 
much went to the brain. It was there the circulation was 
most vigorous. The slightest tremor was felt there. 
“ He claimed that even moderate indulgence resulted in men- 
tal and moral disentonement, and science justified total absti- 
nence. The house founded by Daniel Webster had become 
extinct. He himself was a moderate drinker. His son was a 
drunkard, and with his grandson the love of drink was an in- 
sanity, and he fell before he had passed his thirtieth year. He 
knew a superb preacher who always kept wine on his table 
and justified its use. His son went to an insane asylum. The 
diseased blood corpuscles were transmitted from father to 
son. ” 
Well may we accept, then, and heed, the lesson given by 
Dr. Howe, in the report cited by Dr. Carpenter, as he says : 
“The facts and considerations just named make clear the sad 
truth, that the children of parents whose systems were tainted 
by alcoholic poison, do start in life under great disadvantage. 
While they inherit strong animal propensities and morbid ap- 
petites and tendencies, constantly craving indulgence, they 
have weak restraining faculties. Their temptation is greater, 
and their power of resistance is less than in children of purer 
stock. They are, therefore, more likely to fall into the pauper 
class or criminal class.” 
If the reader would pursue this branch of the subject 
still farther,—and certainly no theme demands more earnest 
thought,—the opinions of Dr. Richardson, and many others 
eminent in science, will be found on pp. 279—294 of 
u Alcohol and Science.” 48 
Alcohol in Society. 
The writer concludes what he here has to say on this 
point, by calling attention to the earnest and significant 
words of Dr. Maudsley : 
“ When we observe what thought and care men give to the 
select breeding of horses, cows, and dogs, it is astonishing how 
little thought they take about the breeding of their own 
species: perceiving clearly that good or bad qualities in ani- 
mals pass by hereditary transmission, they act habitually, as if 
the same laws were not applicable to themselves; as if men 
could be bred well by accident : as if the destiny of each crim- 
inal and lunatic were determined, not by the operation of 
natural laws, but by a special dispensation too high for the 
reach of human inquiries. When will man learn that he is at 
the head of nature only by virtue of the operation of natural 
laws ? When will he learn that by the study of these laws and 
by deliberate conformity to them he may become the conscious 
framer of his own destiny ? ” * 
II. But if the physical evils of intemperance are so 
great and so numerous, reach so far, and are so often be- 
yond relief; how much more appalling is the injury done 
to man’s intelligence, the mental paralysis and decay so 
frequent in all grades and circles of human life ! 
“ The vacant eye, 
By mind deserted,” 
bears witness to an evil inconceivably worse than any that 
is manifest in the rags and privations of poverty, or in the 
many evidences of physical disease. And chiefly, as we 
have already noticed, the deepest degradation of the trans- 
mitted vice is in its mental and moral curse. 
Dr. Channing has made the most forcible indictment 
against Intemperance, when he says : 
“ It is the voluntary extinction of reason. The great evil is 
inward or spiritual. The intemperate man divests himself, for 
a time, of his rational and moral nature, casts from himself self- 
consciousness and self-command, brings on phrensy, and, by 
* ‘‘Responsibility in Mental Disease,” pp. 23, 24. Social and National. 
49 
repetition of his insanity, prostrates more and more his rational 
and moral powers. He sins immediately and directly against 
the rational nature, that divine principle which distinguishes 
between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong action, 
which distinguishes man from the brute. This is the essence of 
the vice, what constitutes its peculiar guilt and woe, and what 
should particularly impress those who are laboring for its sup- 
pression. All the other evils of intemperance are light com- 
pared with this, and almost all flow from this, and it is right, it 
is to be desired, that all other evils should be joined with and 
follow this. 
“It is to he desired, when a man lifts a suicidal arm against 
his highest life, when he quenches reason and conscience, that 
he and all others should receive solemn, startling warning of 
the greatness of his guilt; that terrible outward calamities 
should bear witness to the inward ruin which he is working; 
that the handwriting of judgment and woe on his countenance, 
form, and whole condition, should declare what a fearful thing 
it is for a man, God’s rational offspring, to renounce his reason 
and become a brute. It is common for those who argue against 
intemperance, to describe the bloated countenance of the drunk- 
ard, now flushed and now deadly pale. They describe his 
trembling, palsied limbs. They describe his desolate, cheerless 
home, his scanty board, his heart-broken wife, the squalidness 
of his children; and we groan in spirit over the sad recital. 
“But it is right that all this should be. It is right that he, 
who, forewarned, puts out the lights of understanding and con- 
science within him, who abandons his rank among God’s ra- 
tional creatures, and takes his place among brutes, should stand 
a monument of wrath among his fellows, should he a teacher 
wherever he is seen, a teacher, in every look and motion, of the 
awful guilt in destroying reason. Were we so constituted that 
reason could he extinguished, and the countenance retain its 
freshness, the form its grace, the body its vigor, the outward 
condition its prosperity, and no striking change he seen in one’s 
home, so far from being gainers, we should lose some testimonies 
of God’s parental care. His care and goodness, as well as his 
justice, are manifest in the fearful mark he has set on the drunk- 
ard, in the blight which falls on the drunkard’s joys. 
These outward evils, dreadful as they seem, are hut faint 
types of the ruin within. We should see in them God’s respect 
to his own image in the soul, his parental warnings against the 
crime of quenching the intellectual and moral life. We are too 50 
Alcohol in Society. 
apt to fix our thoughts on the consequences or punishments of 
crime, and to overlook the crime itself. This is not turning 
punishment to its highest use. Punishment is an outward sign 
of inward evil. It is meant to reveal something more terrible 
than itself. The greatness of punishment is a mode of embody- 
ing, making visible, the magnitude of the crime to which it is 
attached. The miseries of intemperance, its loathsomeness, 
ghastliness, and pains, are not seen aright, if they do not repre- 
sent to us the more fearful desolation wrought by this sin in the 
soul.” * 
Dr. Stebbins, of Chester, Pennsylvania, in an address 
before the State Temperance Society, at Harrisburgh, 
quotes Professor Youmans, as justly observing : 
“ Were some inferior organ of the body, whose functions are 
purely of a physical or chemical nature, the object of alcoholic 
invasion, the attitude of the question would be greatly chang- 
ed. But alcohol is specifically a cerebral poison. It seizes with 
a disorganizing energy upon the brain, that mysterious part 
whose steady and undisturbed action holds man in true and 
responsible relations with his family, with society, and with 
God ; and it is this fearful fact that gives to government and 
society their tremendous interest in this question.” 
After showing that there are "but two conditions of body 
and mind resulting from the use of alcoholic beverages— 
the one that moderate degree of intoxication which is not 
always perceptible; and the other the stage of drunkenness 
which is manifest to all—Dr. Stebbins proceeds to speak 
of the first, or so-called moderate stage, thus: 
“There is, of course, some excitement of the mental func- 
tions, hut as this does not arise from a natural or healthful 
stimulus, it is a perversion rather than a true exaltation of 
the intellect. Yoluntary control over the current of thought, 
■which is a distinguishing trait of a sound mind, is much weak- 
ened. Whilst ideas and images flit through the brain with 
greater rapidity, no mental process can he carried on with the 
same continuity as in a state of perfect sobriety. One of the 
* “ Channing’s Works,” vol. ii. pp. 303-305. Social and National. 
51 
worst consequences in this degree of intoxication is, that it 
deprives a man of that calm reflection and sagacious foresight, 
so essential to the correct performance of his duties in every 
relation of life. 
“ If the privation of reason is only partial, then the victim is 
not the same person he would be if in a natural condition, and 
a very large proportion of our public men are stunted and dis- 
torted in this way. The passions and emotions are more easily 
aroused, and are less under the control of the will. 
“From this it will be perceived that no man is quite the same 
after having drank one small glass. He is a changed man, and 
will say and do things that he would not say or do if he was 
unaffected by liquor. He has parted with a portion of his dis- 
cretion, which is among the higher attributes of his manhood. 
He has lost some of his reason; and, as a general rule, those 
who lose their reason in this way, have not a particle to spare. 
While his passions are more readily provoked, he has become 
weakened in the power of self-control. He is not only more in- 
clined to do wrong, but is less able to restrain himself from 
wrong-doing. He has, therefore, undergone a very serious 
transformation; and if not ready for an evil deed, he is certain- 
ly more liable to be led into vice and crime.” 
“There can he no reasonable question,” says Dr. Richardson, 
in an article in the ‘ Contemporary Review,’ “ that the contin- 
ual action of what have been termed ‘nervine stimulants,' mod- 
ifies the nutrition of the nervous system ; for in no other way 
can we account for the fact—unfortunately but too familiar— 
that it not only comes to tolerate what would have been, in the 
first instance, absolutely poisonous, but that it comes to be de- 
pendent upon a repetition of the dose for the power of sustain- 
ing its ordinary activity, and that the want of such repetition 
produces an almost unbearable craving, which is as purely 
physical as that of hunger or thirst. Now, all these ‘nervine 
stimulants' further agree in this, that while they excite or mis- 
direct the automatic activity of the mind, they weaken the con- 
trolling power of the will; and this is exactly the condition 
which, intensified and fixed into permanency, constitutes in- 
sanity.” 
In his Essay on the “ Use and Abuse of Alcohol,” he 
says on this same subject: 
“Suck being tke case, we have no difficulty in understanding 
how tke kakitual use of alcokolic liquors in excess becomes one 52 
Alcohol in Society. 
of the most frequent causes of insanity, properly so called, i. e., 
of settled mental derangement. Upon that point, all writers 
on the subject are agreed, however much they may differ in 
their appreciation of the relative frequency of this, and of other 
causes. The proportion, in fact, will vary according to the 
character of the population on which the estimate has been 
formed, and also according to the mode in which it has been 
made. Thus, in Pauper Lunatic Asylums, the proportion of 
those who have become insane from intemperance is usually 
much larger than it is in asylums for the reception of lunatics 
from the higher classes, among whom intemperance is less fre- 
quent, while causes of a purely moral and intellectual nature 
operate upon them with greater intensity. 
“And again, if, in all cases in which habitual intemperance 
has been practiced, it be set down as the cause of the mental 
disorder, the proportion becomes much larger than it will be if 
(as happens in many cases) some other cause have been in oper- 
ation concurrently, and the disorder be set down as its result, 
no notice whatever being taken of the habit of intemperance. 
This omission must be particularly allowed for when the rela- 
tive proportion of intemperance to other causes is being esti- 
mated, in regard to the middle and higher classes; on account 
of the strong desire which usually exists among the friends of 
the patient, to conceal the nature of his previous habits, and to 
lay his disorder entirely to the account of the cause from which 
it has seemed immediately to proceed. 
“There can he no doubt that those who have weakened and 
disordered the nutrition of the brain by habitual intemperance, 
are far more liable than others to be strongly affected by those 
causes, moral or physical, to which the derangement is more 
immediately attributable; so that the habit of intemperance 
has contributed, as a predisposing cause, at least as much to- 
wards its production as what is commonly termed the exciting 
cause has done. In fact, of predisposing causes generally, it 
may be remarked that their action upon the system is that of 
slowly and imperceptibly modifying its nutritive operations, so 
as gradually to alter the chemical, physical, and thereby the 
vital properties of the fabric ; and thus to prepare it for being 
acted on by causes which, in the healthy condition, produce no 
influence. And although that one of the conditions in previous 
operation is often singled out as the cause, from which the re- 
sult may seem most directly to proceed, yet it frequently hap- 
pens that it has really had a far smaller share in the production Social and National. 
53 
of the disorder than those remoter causes, whose operation has 
been more enduring, and really more effectual. 
“In the Statistical Tables published by the Metropolitan 
Commissioners of Lunacy, in 1844, comprehending returns from 
ninety-eight asylums in England and Wales, we find that, out 
of 12,007 cases whose supposed causes were returned, 1,799, or 
nearly 15 per cent., are set down to the cause of intemperance; 
but, besides these, 551, or 4.6 per cent., are attributed to vice 
and sensuality, in which excessive use of alcoholic liquors must 
have shared. Moreover, in every case in which hereditary pre- 
disposition was traceable, this was set down as the cause, not- 
withstanding the notorious fact that such predisposition fre- 
quently remains dormant till it is called forth by habitual in- 
temperance. It is not more correct, therefore, to regard this as 
the cause of the disorder, in all the cases in which it is trace- 
able, than it would be to regard intemperance in that light, in 
every case in which the patient had previously indulged in 
alcoholic excesses. 
“ Of the 2,526 cases, then, in which the disorder is attributed 
to hereditary predisposition, a considerable proportion might 
with equal justice be set down to the account of intemperance. 
And there can be no doubt that the same practice had a great 
share in the production of the disease in the 3,187 cases set down 
to bodily disorder, and in the 2,969 for which moral causes are 
assigned.” (Pp. 28-30.) 
“In nine provincial private asylums, the proportion which 
the cases assigned to intemperance alone bear to those assigned 
to other causes is no less than 32.62 per cent., which are set 
down to the account of ‘ vice and sensuality.’ There is an 
asylum in the east of London, where the proportion of cases at- 
tributed to intemperance alone amounted to 41.07 per cent., and 
those arising out of this in combination with other vices, to 22 
per cent, of the whole number whose causes were assigned. 
And it is stated by Dr. Macnish (op. cit. p. 193) that of 286 lu- 
natics at that time in the Richmond Hospital, Dublin, one-half 
owed their madness to drinking.” (P. 33.) 
More recent statistics confirm this sad story. 
“Dr. Town son, of Liverpool, says: ‘It is part of my duty to 
examine pauper lunatics in considerable numbers, and into the 
history of each I have to inquire, and my conviction is this, that 
five out of every six of the lunatics of the workhouse have been 
reduced to that condition by intemperance.’ 54 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ Dr. Yellowlees, medical superintendent of the Glamorgan 
County Asylum, in a paper read before the British Medical 
Association, traced six classes of insanity to intemperance. 
‘The evil,’ he said, ‘thus wrought by intemperance is simply 
incalculable; at once so secret that it cannot be known, and so 
great that it cannot be estimated. . . . It is surely within 
the truth to assert that half the existing causes of insanity are 
due directly or indirectly to this social curse.’ ” * 
Dr. Edgar Sheppard, Medical Superintendent of Colney 
Hatch Asylum, writing to the 11 London Times,” Oct. 14, 
1873, says: 
“ For twelve years I have here watched and chronicled the 
development of the greatest curse which afflicts this country. 
From 35 to 40 per cent, is a fairly approximate estimate of the 
ratio of insanity directly or indirectly due to alcoholic drinks.” 
Lord Shaftesbury says : 
“ I speak of my own knowledge and experience, having acted as 
Commissioner of Lunacy for the last twenty years, and as Chair- 
man of the Commission during sixteen years, and have had, 
therefore, the whole of the business under my own observation 
and care; having made inquiries into the matter, and having 
fortified them by inquiries in America, which have confirmed 
the inquiries made in this country, the result is, that fully six- 
tenths of all the cases of insanity in these realms, and in Amer- 
ica, arise from no other cause than from habits of intemperance 
in which the people have indulged.” t 
In the “ British Medical Journal,” July, 1873, is an 
address by Dr. George J. Hoarder, Medical Superintend- 
ent of the Lunatic Asylum at Carmathen, in which he lays 
it down as demonstrated in his institution, that u Intemper- 
ance is the most prolific cause of insanity, especially 
among the laboring classes,” and places the proportion of 
cases due to this cause at 34 per cent.; but he adds : 
* Collected from various sources, in “ The Temperance Refor- 
mation and its Claims upon the Christian Church,” p. 59. 
t “ Bacchus Dethroned,” p. 34. Social and National. 
55 
“ Yet even this is not the whole truth; we must add to this 
34 per cent., the cases of those who owe their insanity to the in- 
temperate habits of their parents.” 
He also makes this impressive declaration : “ It must not he 
considered necessary for the causation of insanity, in themselves 
or their offspring, that persons should be notorious drunkards ; 
it is sufficient that there should be habitual abuses of intoxicat- 
ing drinks; such an amount as marks the earlier stages of ex- 
cess.” 
Even where the climax of intellectual ruin is not reach- 
ed, all the tendencies of the use of alcohol, are to a weak- 
ening and degradation of the mind; and most strikingly 
are they manifest in the weakening of the will, the binding 
of the man a helpless victim to drink. 
Dr. Brinton, a famous English physician, lavishly 
appealed to and quoted from as an authority by the late 
Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, in the famous cham- 
pionship of the liquor interest, made by him before a Com- 
mittee of the Legislature of that State in 1807, and there- 
fore worthy of being believed by all drinkers and their 
apologists, says, in his work on Dietetics : 
“ Mental acuteness, accuracy of perception, and delicacy of 
the senses, are all so far opposed by alcohol that the maximum 
efforts of each are incompatible with the ingestion of any mod- 
erate quantity of fermented liquid. A single glass will often 
serve to take the edge off' both mind and body, and to reduce 
the capacity to something less than the perfection of work.” * 
A writer in the 11 Fortnightly Review,” thus explains 
what to all who have labored for the reformation of men, 
must have always presented the severest problems with 
which they have to deal in carrying forward the temper- 
ance cause ; not a failure to reach men, even the most 
besotted, and induce them to sign the pledge ;—but the 
difficulty of keeping them true to their promise ; the fre- 
quency with which they break away from their good inten- 
* Gladden, p. 161. 56 
Alcohol in Society. 
tions, and are at last abandoned by those who have been 
forced to believe that in many cases they were being hypo- 
critically imposed upon. Says the writer referred to : 
“ I need not dwell any longer upon the morality-sapping 
effects of particular diseases, but shall simply call to mind the 
profound deterioration of moral sense and will which is pro- 
duced by the long-continued and excessive use of alcohol and 
opium. There is nowhere a more miserable specimen of degra- 
dation of moral feeling, and of impotence of will, than the de- 
bauchee who has made himself the abject slave of either of these 
pernicious excesses. Insensible to the interests of his family, to 
his personal responsibilities, to the obligations of duty, he is 
utterly untruthful and untrustworthy, and in the worst end 
there is not a meanness of pretense or conduct that he will not 
descend to, not a lie he will not tell in order to gain the means 
to gratify his over-ruling craving. It is not merely that passion 
is strengthened and will weakened hy an indulgence as a moral 
effect, but the alcohol or opium which is absorbed into his blood 
is carried by it to the brain, and acts injuriously upon its tis- 
sues ; the chemist will, indeed, extract alcohol from the besot- 
ted brain of the worst drunkard, as he will detect morphia in 
the secretions of a person who is taking large doses of mor- 
phia. Seldom, therefore, is it of the least use to preach reform- 
ation to these people until they have been restrained forcibly 
from their besetting indulgence, for a long enough period to al- 
low the brain to get rid of the poison and its tissues to regain a 
healthier tone. Too often it is of little use then; the tissues 
have been damaged beyond the possibility of complete restora- 
tion.” 
How pitifully sucli a slave cries out in his bondage : 
“ I am a slave—slave to the foe I hate. 
I vow to break my chain, and tighten it; 
I curse the cup, and press it to my lips. 
I loathe the serpent’s cold and snaky coil, 
Yet clasp it round my flesh ; the pang invite 
Whose poison-fire burns in my maddened brain, 
To wake its hissing phantoms twisting round. 
Let vice once grow, he drops his roguish ways, 
To plant down on his slaves a tyrant foot, 
Leer out from blood-shot eyes, and cut the flesh, 
Till we must fly and leave his serpent stings.” Social and National. 
57 
For facts and striking arguments in support of this fact 
of the power of alcohol to break down the will, the reader 
is referred to a valuable pamphlet from the pen of the late 
Dr. Charles Jewett, entitled, u Bound, and How.” Our last 
word on the subject in this connection, is a quotation from 
Dr. Maudsley’s 11 Responsibility in Mental Disease.” 
“It is idle to say tliat there is any real necessity for persons 
who are in good health to indulge in any kind of alcoholic liquor. 
At the best, it is an indulgence which is unnecessary ; at the 
worst, it is a vice which occasions infinite misery, sin, crime, 
madness, and disease How much ill work would not 
be done, how much good work would be better done, but for its 
baleful inspiration! Each act of crime, each suicide, each out- 
break of madness, each disease occasioned by it, means an in- 
finite amount of suffering endured and inflicted, before matters 
have reached that climax What one sees 
happen often enough in life is this: there are persons of anxious 
and susceptible temperament, who, having to meet some strain 
in their work, or some trial in their lives, are prone to take a 
stimulant, in order to give themselves the necessary nerve; 
they fly to an artificial aid, which fails not in time to exact the 
penalty for the temporary help which it yields, instead of delib- 
erately exerting their will, and gaining thereby the advantage 
which such an exertion would give them on another occasion. 
“ Like the pawnbroker or the usurer, it is a present help, at 
the cost of a frightful interest; and if the habit of recurring to 
it be formed, the end must be a bankruptcy of health. It is not 
possible to escape the penalties of weakening the will; sooner 
or later, they are exacted in one way or another, to the utter- 
most farthing: it is not possible, on the other hand, to overrate 
the advantages of strengthening the will by a wise exercise ; the 
fruits of such culture, are an tinfailing help in time of need.”— 
Pp. 285, 286. 
III. The moral evils of intemperance were recognized 
and lamented, long before science demonstrated how alco- 
hol does its work in that portion of the human brain 
through which the moral sense of man pronounced its 
claims and asserted its authority and judgment. The 58 
Alcohol in Society. 
beastly crime of Lot, and the solemn warning of Solomon, 
concerning the way in which the eyes and desires of him 
who looks upon the wine when it is red, wander, show an 
apprehension of these vicious tendencies, thousands of 
years ago. 
The Christian Fathers and their immediate successors in 
the Church, bear witness to the demoralization caused by 
wine in their day, and how so many of their exhortations to 
purity were neutralized by the sparkling cup. Cyprian 
and Chrysostom take up the lamentations of the older 
prophets, and bitterly complain that the holy Festivals in 
honor of the Martyrs, were perverted into the lewd scenes 
characteristic of the Bacchanalian orgies. 
Aurelius Prudentius, of the fourth century, the greatest 
poet of the early Church, bewails the growing immorality 
of his times, and indignantly inquires of the believers who 
had been led astray : u Has vile, outlandish inebriety 
carried you, buried in these excesses, to the sweltering 
stew of indulgence ? Has a tipsy dancing-girl bent to her 
will the men whom neither wrath nor idolatry could over- 
come by force of arms ? ” 
And Augustine exclaims : u Drunkenness is a flattering 
devil, a sweet poison, a pleasant sin, which whosoever 
hath, hath not himself; which whosoever doth commit, 
committeth not a single sin, but becomes the centre and the 
slave of all manner of sin ! ” 
And Ambrose, in his first “ Address to Widows,” gives 
this solemn caution and command : u Be first pure, O 
widow, from wine, that thou mayest be pure from adultery.” 
And Gregory, in his 13th Book of Morals, says : u Under 
the rule of such a vice all the virtues are restrained at 
once.” 
Down the whole course of Christian civilization, these 
and kindred declarations have been borne. Men of all 
professions, and in all departments and walks of life, have Social and National. 
59 
not failed to notice the immoralities connected with drink- 
ing. “ Above all things known to mankind,” says Lord 
Bacon, in his “ Wisdom of the Ancients,” “ wine is the 
most powerful and efficient agent in stirring up and inflam- 
ing passions of every kind, and is of the nature of a com- 
mon fuel to sensuous desires.” And Shakespeare, describ- 
ing what wine does, gives it its most fitting name : 
‘‘To be now a sensible 
Man, by-and-by a fool, and presently 
A beast! every inordinate cup 
Is unblessed, and tb’ ingredient is a devil. 
Oh thou invisible spirit of wine, 
If thou hast no name to be known by, let 
Us call thee devil! ” 
11 Men may preserve their health and strength without 
wine,” says Archbishop Fenelon; “ with it they run the 
risk of ruining both their health and their morals.” 
Bishop Paley, after saying in his “ Moral and Political 
Philosophy,” that drunkenness betrays most constitutions 
either to extravagances of anger, or sins of lewdness,” 
adds, “ There is a difference, no doubt, between convivial 
intemperance, and that solitary sottishness which waits 
neither for company nor invitation. But the one, I am 
afraid, commonly ends in the other; and this last in the 
basest degradation to which the faculties and dignity of 
human nature can be reduced.” 
Addison, in the 11 Spectator,” No. 569, speaks to the 
same purpose: 
“The sober man, by the strength of reason, may keep under 
and subdue any vice or folly to which he is most inclined ; but 
wine makes every latent seed sprout up in the soul and show it- 
self; it gives fury to the passions, and force to those objects 
which are apt to produce them. Wine heightens indifference 
into love, love into jealousy, and jealousy into madness. It 
often turns the good-natured man into an idiot, and the choler- 
ic into an assassin. It gives bitterness to resentment, it makes 
vanity insupportable, and displays every little spot of the soul in 60 
Alcohol in Society. 
its utmost deformity. Nor does this vice only betray the hidden 
faults of a man, and show them iu the most odious colors, but 
often discovers faults to which he is not naturally subject. 
There is more of turn than of truth in the saying of Seneca, that 
drunkenness does not produce, but discovers faults. Common 
experience teaches us the contrary. Wine throws a man out of 
himself, and infuses qualities into the mind which she is a 
stranger to in her sober moments.” 
Dr. Anstie, in giving testimony before the Parliament 
Select Committee on Habitual Drunkards, said : “ There 
is no question that the great tendency of drinking, in pro- 
portion to the frequency with which it is indulged, is to 
obliterate moral conscience.” Why this is so, Prof. 
Youmans, in his “ Scientific Basis of Prohibition,” thus 
shows: 
“Physiologists are agreed that different parts of the brain 
are devoted to different uses. The first effect of alcohol is upon 
its higher and frontal portion, which is the seat of the intel- 
lectual and moral faculties. This part of the brain is excited by 
a small quantity of liquor, and when more is taken it becomes 
more deeply perverted, and the hinder and lower portions of 
the organ, which controls the nerves of motion, is attacked, and 
the individual loses the faculty of perfectly governing or regu- 
lating the bodily movements. 
“ When a still greater quantity is drunk, the action of that part 
which is devoted to the higher sentiments seems utterly sus- 
pended, the power of voluntary motion is lost, and the poison 
passes downward to the extreme lower portion of the organ, 
which is connected with the spinal cord, and has charge 
of the respiratory process. The breathing is thus interfered 
with, and becomes heavy and labored, as we see in dead-drunk- 
enness. 
“ The mind cannot serve two masters; just in proportion as it is 
surrendered to the influence of an external force, which invades 
it through the brain, it ceases to he in its own keeping. With 
the sparkles and effervescense of alcoholic excitement, there is a 
weakening of the regulating and restraining forces by which 
the mind manages its own movements—a partial loss of that 
voluntary control over the mental operations, which, as Dr. 
Carpenter remarks, ‘must be regarded as an incipient stage Social and National. 
61 
of insanity.’ At the same time, the lower passions and propen- 
sities are aroused to inordinate activity. In healthful mental 
conditions, these press powerfully upon the higher controlling 
sentiments, and from their reaction results moral equilibrium 
of character. 
“The influence of alcohol is thrown entirely in the scale of the 
animal impulses, against the reason, judgment, and conscience ; 
and it is evident that where these are just able to hold the baser 
passions in subjection, and maintain the mind’s equipoise, the 
effect of the disturbing agent must be to destroy the mental 
balance, and tell disastrously upon the conduct. That when 
liquors are taken in sufficient quantity to produce their charac- 
teristic and desired effect, the mind is in some way jostled and 
disturbed, no observing person can doubt; and that this dis- 
turbance, however trifling it may be, consists in replacing the 
reasoning and voluntary powers by blind passional forces in 
the mind’s government, is proved by the fact, that if more of 
the stimulant be taken, the revolution becomes complete ; rea- 
son is entirely prostrated, and brute impulse is in the ascendant. 
In intoxication, the action of the brain is so deeply perverted 
as to completely unhinge the mind; thought is confused and 
bewildered; self-directing power is lost; the passions are stim- 
ulated to unrestrained fury, and the whole mental fabric is 
swamped amid the surges of delirium.” 
The eminent scientist, Dr. Richardson, says of this stage 
of intoxication: 
“ The cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they are 
reduced in power, and the controlling influences of will and of 
judgment are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown 
into chaos, the rational part of the nature of the man gives way 
before the emotional, passional or organic part. The reason is 
now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the mere animal 
instincts are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows up more 
craven, the braggart more boastful, the cruel more merciless, 
the untruthful more false, the carnal more degraded. ‘ In vino 
veritas ’ expresses, even indeed to physiological accuracy, the 
true condition. The reason, the emotions, the instincts, are all 
in a state of carnival, and in chaotic weakness.” * 
Dr. Richardson’s last published address, on 11 Twenty- 
* “ Cantor Lectures,” p. 92. 62 
Alcohol in Society. 
one Historic Landmarks/7 u twenty-one salient points in 
which great advance has been made in relation to educa- 
tion among the masses, and indeed all classes, on this 
subject/7 contains the following: 
“ I am president of a society called ‘ The Medical Temperance 
Association.’ There are 300 of us handed together as Total 
Abstainers—physicians and surgeons in large practice—not to 
make a propaganda of Total Abstinence, but to meet among 
ourselves (strangers are welcomed), and discuss the points re- 
lating to Total Abstinence which are most interesting t*o us in 
the treatment of disease. A little while ago the question came 
up as to the treatment of dipsomania. That being a public 
question, we opened our doors generally. We had a very re- 
markable discussion on this subject, and what struck me, as I 
was presiding, was that everybody who spoke dealt with one 
moral aspect of the question. We speak when talking of a dis- 
ease of its ‘ diagnosis,’ in other words, an explanation of the 
disease from its symptoms. We were all of this mind, that one 
of the most diagnostic marks of drink-craving, that which dis- 
tinguishes it as a mental characteristic from all other things is, 
that the drink-cravei is always a falsehood teller; that there is 
no actual case where a person affected with the drink-craving 
has been known to speak the truth; that we never can believe a 
word they say, and many of us are of opinion that the tendency 
to untruthfulness descends to the children of those people. See 
how solemnly strange it is that a physical agent should be taken 
into the body which should after a time so destroy all moral 
sense of right and thought of responsibility, that the very 
foundation of morality is actually so changed that the person 
becomes as it were naturally and habitually the child and repre- 
sentative of falsehood. These are facts which were not known 
twenty years ago, and which must in the end tell largely, as 
they are made known, in the promotion of our cause.” (P. 20.) 
We give one more testimony from this scientific field. 
The late Prof. Miller, in his u Alcohol: its Place and 
Power/7 remarks : 
‘ ‘ The well-ascertained effect of alcohol, when taken in any 
considerable quantity, is to stimulate one element of the intel- 
lect—the imagination ; to impair the power of control; to per- 
vert and degrade the moral nature; to excite and intensify that jSocial and National. 
63 
which in the passions and desires, is sensual. In a larger dose, 
the intellect is thoroughly perverted; the will and the moral 
nature are extinct, or almost so; and that which is animal in 
emotion, towers in the ascendant. With a larger dose still, the 
distorted remnant of intellect may hardly be recognized, while 
the base and brutal reigns paramount. The evil desire of lust 
or revenge often remains, while the paralyzed body refuses to 
minister to its gratification. A pitiable spectacle indeed! Ver- 
ily it is no stretch of language to say that drunkenness places 
man on a level with the brute! The language falls short of 
truth. He digs beneath that deep a lower deep, and in this 
the brutified man lies down and wallows.* 
“Such are undeniably the effects of alcohol inconsiderable 
and large doses. Taken in smaller quantity, the effects are less 
marked, but have still the same tendency. There is moral, as 
well as mental loss ; injury as to what the man is, with serious 
peril as to what he ought to be. Moreover, let it be remembered 
that the effect intensifies by frequent repetition, and that no 
dose of alcohol, however small, can be taken without acting on 
the brain, and consequently, we believe, on the mind, more or 
less. 
“ The ultimate result of such actings, we have seen to be, in 
extreme cases, delirium, fatuity, insanity; mental disease. In 
the more protracted cases, intellectual perversion, animal as- 
cendency, moral abasement; mental degradation and decay.f 
“ A man begins fairly, and continues respectable for a time. 
At first his indulgences are only convivial, and within moderate 
bounds. These bounds, however, are by-and-by transgressed— 
* “ A dram drinker! Faugh, faugh ! ” says Christopher North. 
“ Look over, lean over that still, where a pig lies wallowing 
in the mire, and a voice, faint and feeble, and far off, as if it 
came from some dim and remote world within your lost soul, 
will cry, that of the two beasts, that bristly one, agrunt in sen- 
sual sleep, with its snout snoring across the husk-trough, is, as 
a physical, moral, and intellectual being, superior to you, dram- 
drinker, drunkard, dotard, and self-doomed.” 
f “ Tlie habit of using any intoxicating liquor,” says the Rev. 
Dr. Leonard Woods, the great American divine, “tends to in- 
flame all that is depraved and earthly, and to extinguish all 
that is spiritual and holy. It is a poison to the soul, as really as 
to the body.” It is a truth, though from the mouth of Moham- 
med, that alcohol is a “ mother of sins.” 64 
Alcohol in Society. 
once and again. And after no long time, it too frequently hap- 
pens, that the love of and dependence on the unnatural stimu- 
lus have become too strong to wait for the social opportunity 
and social restraint. The drink is taken for its own sake, and 
secretly. The power of the drag is gone ; and the downward 
movement is precipitate.” (Pp. 186-189.) 
With respect to this downward course, this demoraliza- 
tion, commonly supposed to denote the distinction between 
so-called moderate and excessive drinking, one startling 
fact stares us in the face; and that is, that no man, 
whether he treats the subject theoretically, or speaks from 
his experience, can point to the day or hour when this 
fancied Rubicon between a moderate effect and an immod- 
erate effect of alcohol, was passed. 
It is not in the range of human possibility so to anatyze 
the effects of drinking as to say that 11 this particular result 
is due wholly to the last glass taken, and that in no sense 
was the foundation for it laid, or the tendency started, in 
the first glass ; this thing was possible only to excessive 
use, and wholly impossible to moderate use.v The fact is 
that the whole history of the drink system is a history of an 
incessant assault on morality and virtue, and that the let- 
ting down of the tone and authority of the moral faculties 
is manifest in every stage of its progress. It is by no 
means a history of safety and virtue up to certain limits of 
indulgence, and then a sudden letting down into hitherto 
unsuspected viciousness; but a course so sure and steady 
that often our first suspicion that a friend or neighbor is 
indulging in the use of the intoxicant, is, not in the flushed 
face, the detected alcoholic fumes of the breath, or un- 
steadiness of gait or motion; but in the carelessness, 
irregularity and neglect of his business, his disregard of 
his word, the obscurity of his conversation, and the sensual 
leer of his countenance. 
Universally the saloon, the bar-room, the low groggery, 
all places, high-toned or low-toned, where intoxicants are Social and National. 
sold, are places where the nobler faculties of men are 
clouded, and the animalism of their nature is brought into 
prominence. The vile jest, or the indecent allusion, are 
the uniform accompaniments of the use to which these 
places are put. Lips, which mothers, wives, daughters, 
and sisters, believe to be clean and pure, are defiled with 
all uncleanliness when the intoxicating bowl touches them. 
The angel of purity is banished by the 11 spirit of wine ; ” 
and vile thoughts leading on to the vilest deeds, opportuni- 
ty for their commission is made easy, the saloon being 
often, in a literal sense, not only next door to the house 
that is u the way of hell, going down to the chambers of 
death,” but also beneath the same roof, provided by the 
same inordinate cupidity that proffers the cup of poison. 
II. The appalling evil of the Drink System, is still 
further manifest when we consider its effects upon the 
family. Of all the influences to which humanity is sub- 
ject, none are more powerful, either for good or for evil, 
than those which are exerted in our homes. A pure and 
happy home is the most fitting symbol of the virtue and 
joy which we associate with the idea of heaven ; and hell 
can have no more expressive type than is presented in a 
home of sin and misery. Happily for us, the great majori- 
ty of human homes are of such a character as to justify 
the sympathetic response of men of all climes and tongues, 
to the simple song of u Home, sweet home ! there is no 
place like home ! ” and to call forth the chorus of millions: 
“ The dearest spot of earth to me, 
Is home, sweet home.” 
But in too many instances, alas ! home is no place of rest 
and peace, and the remembrance of it causes shuddering 
and sorrow. And among the causes of such unhappiness, 
none are more active and certain than intemperance. In a 
drunkard’s home, says an unknown writer, you will find 66 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ crimination and re-crimination; scolding, swearing; woe 
and weeping; red eyes and black eyes ; broken heads and 
broken hearts; cold and no fire; hunger and no food ; 
children but no comforts; lying, straying, stealing; sick- 
ness and no sympathy ; debt and no credit; disease, death, 
the grave, and no hope beyond.” 
When we consider that in our own land, and in all other 
lands cursed by the Drink System, there are thousands of 
such homes, whole neighborhoods and streets made up of 
them, scenes of degradation and misery nowhere else sur- 
passed, we are confronted by that which ought to make us 
hurl all the powers, that we possess, of whatever sort, 
against an infamy so disastrous and damning. 
“ There are,” says Mr. Buxton, the English brewer, before 
quoted, “ at this moment half a million homes in the United 
Kingdom, where happiness is never felt, owing to this cause 
alone: where the wives are broken-hearted, and the children 
are brought up in misery. For the children what hope is there, 
amid ceaseless scenes of quarrelling, cursing, and blows, when, 
as Cassio says, ‘ It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give 
place to the devil wrath,’ and the two devils together have 
driven from the house all that peace and sweetness, which 
should be the moral atmosphere of the young.” 
If we look at this phase of the evil more in detail, the 
hideousness of its particular incidents may rouse us to an 
apprehension of the monstrosity of the evil as a whole. 
(a). One of the most appalling in the details of the 
domestic evils of drinking, is the sad wreck which it makes 
of the hopes of women. There are few who have passed 
on in life till their years are reckoned by the score, who 
cannot recall one or more among their female acquaintances, 
who, reared in the arms of parental tenderness, have gone 
forth cheered by the grandest hopes, and with prospects full 
of promise, to become a wife ; and has found every hope 
blasted, every promise annulled, by the intemperate habits 
of the man to whom the purest and the deepest love had Social and National. 
67 
been given. Said the late Dr. Holland, in one of his latest 
utterances in “ Scribner’s Monthly Magazine : ” 
“ The appetite for strong drink in man has spoiled the life of 
more women—ruined more hopes for them, scattered more 
fortunes for them, brought to them more sorrow, shame and 
hardship—than any other evil that lives. The country num- 
bers ten, nay hundreds of thousands of women who are widows 
to-day, and sit in the hopeless weeds, because their husbands 
have been slain by strong drink. There are hundreds of thous- 
ands of homes scattered over the land, in which women live 
lives of torture, going through all the changes of suffering that 
lie between the extremes of fear and despair, because those whom 
they love love wine better than they do the women they have 
sworn to love. There are women by thousands who dread to hear 
attlie door the step that once thrilled them with pleasure, because 
that step has learned to reel under the influence of the seduc- 
tive poison. There are women groaning with pain while we 
write these words, from bruises and brutalities inflicted by hus- 
bands made mad by drink. There can be no exaggeration in 
any statement in regard to this matter, because no human 
imagination can create anything worse than the truth, and no 
pen is capable of portraying the truth. The sorrows and hor- 
rors of a wife with a drunken husband, or a mother with a 
drunken son, are as near the realization of hell as can be 
reached in this world at least. The shame, the indignation, 
the sorrow, and the sense of disgrace for herself and her chil- 
dren, the poverty, and not unfrequently the beggary, the fear 
and the fact of violence, the lingering, life-long struggle and 
despair of countless women with drunken husbands, are enough 
to make all women curse wine and engage unitedly to oppose it 
everywhere as the worst enemy of their sex.” 
And what an affecting' instance is that recorded in the 
“ Memoir of Gov. George N. Briggs : ” 
‘‘Years ago, at a certain town meeting in Pennsylvania, tlie 
question came up whether any persons should he licensed to 
sell rum. The clergyman, the deacon, the physician, strange as 
it may appear, all favored it. One man only spoke against it, 
because of the mischief it did. The question was about to be 
put, when there arose from one corner of the room a miserable 
woman. She was thinly clad, and her appearance indicated the 68 
Alcohol in Society. 
utmost wretchedness, and His? her mortal career was almost 
closed. After a moment’s silence, and all eyes being fixed upon 
her, she stretched her attenuated body to its utmost height, and 
then her long arms to their greatest length, and raising her 
voice to a shrill pitch, she called to all to look upon her. 
“‘Yes!’she said, ‘lo<ik upon me, and then hear me. All 
that the last speaker has said relative to moderate drinking as 
being the father of drunkenness, is true. All practice, all ex- 
perience, declares its truth. All drinking of alcoholic poison, 
as a beverage, in health, is excess. Look upon me! You all 
know me, or once did. You all knew that I was once the mis- 
tress of the best farm in the town; you all know, too, I had 
one of the best—the most devoted of husbands. You all know 
I had fine, noble-hearted, industrious boys. Where are they 
now ? Doctor, where are they now ? You all know. You all 
know they lie in a row, side by side, in yonder churchyard ; all 
—every one of them filling a drunkard’s grave! They were all 
taught to believe that moderate drinking was safe—that excess 
alone ought to be avoided; and they never acknowledged excess. 
They quoted you, and you, and you (pointing with her shred 
of a finger to the minister, deacon, and doctor), as authority. 
They thought themselves safe under such teachers. But I saw 
the gradual change coming over my family and its prospects, 
with dismay and horror. I felt that we were all to be over- 
whelmed in one common ruin. I tried to ward olf the blow; 
I tried to break the spell, the delusive spell, in which the 
idea of the benefits of modern drinking had involved my 
husband and sons. I begged, I prayed; but the odds were 
against me. 
“ The minister said the poison that was destroying my hus- 
band and boys was a creature of God ; the deacon who sits 
under the pulpit there, and took our farm to pay his rum bills, 
sold them the poison; the doctor said a little was good, and 
that excess only ought to be avoided. My poor husband and 
my dear boys fell into the snare, and they could not escape : 
and, one after another, were conveyed to the sorrowful grave 
of the drunkard. Now look at me again. You probably see me 
for the last time. My sands have almost run. I have dragged 
my exhausted frame from my present home—your poor house 
to warn you all; to warn you, deacon! to warn you, false 
teacher of God’s word ! ’ And with her arms flung high, and 
her tall form stretched to its utmost, and her voice raised to an 
unearthly pitch, she exclaimed, ‘ I shall soon stand before the Social and National. 
69 
judgment seat of God. I shall meet you there, you false guides, 
and be a witness against you all! ’ 
“ The miserable woman vanished. A dead silence pervaded the 
assembly; the minister, the deacon, and the physician hung their 
heads : and when the president of the meeting put the question, 
‘ Shall any licenses be granted for the sale of spirituous liquors ? ’ 
the unanimous response was, ‘Nc l’” 
John B. Gough relates the following : 
“ I was once asked to go and see a drunkard—the worst, they 
said, in the whole town. I said, ‘You have no right to ask me 
to go and see him unless he wishes to see me ; if he comes to me 
I will see him ; or if he wishes me to go to his house, I will go. 
If I went unbidden, he might say, ‘ Who told you I was a drunk- 
ard ? Mind your own business and I will mind mine ; wait un- 
til I send for you.’ I have no more right to go into that poor 
man’s house, than into that splendid mansion. The servants 
would turn me out there ; and the working man has as much 
pride as any other man.’ ‘ But,’ it was replied, ‘ the man beat 
a little girl fourteen years of age (and she will carry the marks 
to her grave) because she went to bed before he went home.’ 
‘ I do not want,’ I said, * to go to such a man.’ ‘ But, his wife is 
very ill with a bilious fever, and the doctor thinks she cannot 
get over it; the man has not been drinking for some days, and 
if you could see him now, I believe you might do him some 
good.’ 
“Under these circumstances, I said I would go, and I went 
accordingly, and tried to make some excuse for calling. When 
he came to the door he knew me. ‘ Mr. Gough ? ’ he said. 
‘Yes,’ said I; ‘will you give me a tumbler of water, if you 
please ? ’ ‘ O yes, won’t you walk in ? ’ I then walked in, and 
I sat on one side of the table, and he the other. Two little 
children were playing in the room; and a door was half opened, 
which led into another room where the wife was lying ill. 
“ I began to talk to the man about everything I could think 
of but temperance; about trade, the crops, railroads, till I got 
on to drink; then he headed me off. I began again, and talked 
about the badness of the roads, travelling, business, drink ; he 
headed me off again. I fancied I saw a malicious smile in his 
eyes, as much as to say, ‘ Young man, you are not up to your 
business yet; ’ and I thought I must give it up. Providential- 
ly, I thought of the children, and I said, ‘ Pretty looking children 
those, sir.’ * Yes, sir,’ said he, ‘they are pretty good children.’ 70 
Alcohol in Society. 
‘ And you love your children, don’t you ? ’ ‘ Bless the children,’ 
said he, * to be sure I do.’ ‘ And you would do anything in the 
world to benefit them, wouldn’t you ? ’ I asked. 
“ Then he looked as if he expected something else were coming; 
but he said, ‘ Yes, to be sure, I ought to be willing to benefit 
my children.’ ‘ Well,’ I said, ‘I am going to ask you a plain, 
simple question; don’t be angry with me: suppose you never 
drank any more liquor as long as you lived, don’t you think 
those children would be better off?’ ‘Well,’ he said, appar- 
ently puzzled, ‘ I own you have got me this time ; the children 
would be better off, if I were to quit drink.’ ‘And you have a 
good wife, haven’t you ? ’ I inquired. ‘ Yes, she is as good a 
wife as ever a man had.’ ‘And you love your wife? ’ ‘ To be 
sure I do.’ ‘ And would do anything to please her ? ’ ‘ Well, I 
ought to.’ ‘ Now,’ said I, ‘ suppose you should sign the pledge, 
would that please her ? ’ ‘ By thunder, I guess it would; I 
couldn’t do a thing that would please her like that. If I signed 
the pledge, I believe my old woman would be about her busi- 
ness in two weeks.’ ‘ Then you will do it, won’t you ? ’ ‘I guess 
I will,’ and he at once spread out the paper, squared his yards, 
and wrote his name. 
“ The children had been listening with eyes wide open, look- 
ing like little saucers, as we were talking about temper- 
ance. One said to the other, ‘ Father has signed the pledge. 
‘ Oh! ’ cried the other, astonished, ‘ I will go and tell mother/ 
and away she ran. The mother, when she heard it, called out, 
‘ Luke, Luke, come in here.’ The man went in and took me 
with him. The wife’s face was ghastly pale, the eyes large, and 
sunk in the sockets ; with her long thin fingers, she gripped my 
hand, and with the other took the hand of her husband ; and 
her face, sharp as it was, looked radiant in the light that seemed 
to bathe it, coming from the throne of everlasting love. She 
then told me what a good husband she had: ‘ Luke,’ she said, 
‘is a kind husband, and a good father; he takes care of the 
family, and is very kind to them ; but the drink, you know, 
sometimes makes a little difficulty.’ 
“Oh! that little difficulty! God only and the crushed drunk- 
ard’s wife know what it is. The man shook like a leaf; then 
tearing down his wife’s night-dress, he said, ‘Look at that!’ 
On her white shoulders was a bad looking mark. Again, he 
said, ‘ Look at that! ’ and I saw a bruise on her neck, which 
made my flesh creep. ‘ Three days before she was taken sick,’ 
he said, ‘ I struck her. God forgive me! She has been telling Social and National. 
71 
you that she has got a good husband. Am I ? Am I a good hus- 
band ? Look at that! God Almighty forgive me! ’ He bowed 
over that woman and I never saw a man cry so in my life; it* 
seemed as if he had gone into convulsions. ‘ Don’t cry, Luke,’ 
sobbed his wife, * don’t, please don’t; you would not have struck 
me if it hadn’t been for the drink; now you have signed the 
pledge, we shall all be happy again. Don’t cry.’” 
Such incidents might be repeated indefinitely; they lie 
so near to every one’s hand. Nor are they, as to the bru- 
tality which they reveal, confined to the homes of the poor. 
They are manifest, also, in the abodes of affluence. Hon. 
Edward Everett is quoted as having once said : 
“ A wealthy man may have self-control enough to keep out of 
jail. He may fill what is called a genteel position in society, 
and yet he may be the very tyrant of his household; never 
pleased, never soothed, never gratified, when the utmost has 
been done by everybody to gratify him; often turbulent and 
outrageous, sometimes cruel ; the terror of those he is bound to 
protect, the shamo of those who would love him if they could. 
A creature of this sort does not take refuge in a poorhouse, or 
drive his family to it; but the coarsest and hardest crust broken 
within its walls is a dainty, compared with the luxuries of his 
cheeless table.” * 
Mr. A. M. Powell, in his recently published pamphlet on 
“ The Beer Question,” quotes from the Boston “ Congre- 
gationalist: ” 
“We know a man who for twelve years has never used any 
liquor save beer. He comes home from his elegant store, behind 
his handsome pair of horses, and makes his home a terror. 
He runs after his wife with an axe, and makes a beast of him- 
self in a thousand ways.” It adds also : “ We know of another 
man who uses only beer, who has beaten his wife so as to make 
her helpless for days, was dead-drunk on beer when the neigh- 
bors helped bury his infant son, and has repeatedly knocked 
and beaten his girl of eight and boy of five.’” 
Men high in position as well as rich in this world’s 
* “Fifty Years History of the Temperance Causey” p. 171. 72 
Alcohol in Society. 
goods, who are affable, and sometimes deemed grand in 
society, are also, by reason of drink, brutes in their homes. 
Some of our newspapers gave all the loathsome details of 
the evidence produced in a recent trial for divorce, in 
which the defendant was once a judge in the courts of a 
western State, subsequently a United States Senator, and 
more recently a representative of the United States in a 
foreign government. The testimony shows that the chief 
cause of the domestic misery and shame in this unhappy 
home, was the use of intoxicants on the part of the distin- 
guished citizen. The wife alleges that his inebriated condi- 
tion led him to great cruelties, and her mother testifies that 
when on a visit to her daughter’s home, she was knocked 
down by the infuriated husband, and left prostrate on the 
floor; that the husband and his sons were often drunk, and 
that u fighting between them was an every-day occur- 
rence.” 
(b). One of the most distressing features in the drink 
curse, is the growing prevalence of intemperance among 
women. 
Mrs. Susannah Evans Peck, in a paper on u Drinking 
Among Women and in Families,” read to the International 
Temperance Conference, in Philadelphia, in 1876, said on 
this subject: 
“ The assertion that drunkenness prevails to an alarming 
extent among women, is usually repelled with horror, and the 
cry of falsity and exaggeration for a time throws the temper- 
ance work and workers into disrepute. But observation and 
practical experience in the temperance field will carry convic- 
tion of the fact; and it is certainly the duty of every one to 
examine candidly the evidence presented, and accept such as 
can be substantiated, however humiliating or distasteful. 
“ In the early days of the Crusade, after an urgent appeal to 
our brothers in a crowded assembly, in behalf of total absti- 
nence, we were met with the startling question: ‘ Why do you 
always address men ? There is a saloon, not two blocks from Social and National. 
73 
here, kept and patronized entirely by women.' Twice was the 
remark made in our hearing, by persons of a social position, 
which gave them opportunities for knowledge. ‘Half the 
ladies of wealth and fashion in New York City are unable to 
receive their friends after lunch.’ The repetition of the expres- 
sion led us to inquire into the matter, and though we are con- 
strained to believe this an over-statement, we are assured by 
physicians that it approximates the truth. 
“ That inebriety among women is very common in all classes 
of society, is beyond doubt, but yet it is not obvious, for several 
reasons. The quantity of liquor taken may not be great; for 
it takes far less usually to intoxicate a woman than a man. The 
woman, when she perceives the effect of the poison draught, 
may retire to her couch and sleep it off; and if disease is in- 
duced by its habitual use, there are numerous technical terms 
and names under which the true nature of her malady may be 
disguised. 
“Nor are the victims of this sin alone to be found, as many 
suppose, among the dwellers in the tenement houses and pur- 
lieus of the city We discover them among the educated and 
cultured, amid all the appliances of wealth. It is by no means 
an unusual occurrence to see ladies intoxicated in the streets 
and stores, sometimes with the pitiable addition to the scene, 
of a little child, trying, with manifest distress, to get the sick 
mamma to a place of safety. We have but to live a while in 
our fashionable boarding-houses and hotels, and we shall find 
facts enough to corroborate the statement we have advanced. 
The keepers of our popular restaurants declare that they cannot 
maintain their business if they do not provide liquors for their 
lady customers. Even school-girls must have a stimulant with 
their noon-day repast; and a private governess affirms that she 
can do nothing with the little pupils after lunch. Numerous 
and most thrilling incidents could be given and verified to con- 
firm these statements; but similar cases are manifest to every 
one who has an eye open to observe. 
“ That these habits prevail more in city than in country, is also 
apparent- Our large cities present more inducements and more 
opportunities for the indulgence of this vitiated appetite. Life 
in the city is a perpetual whirl. Its excitements exhaust, while 
the so-called claims of society press, and stimulants are resort- 
ed to as a necessity to keep up the nation’s strength, for the 
busy round of duty at home and abroad. On the other hand, the 
daughters, unoccupied except with selfish pleasure, complain 74 
Alcohol in Society. 
of ennui and depression, which useful work would wholly dis- 
pel, and eagerly accept the cordial or tonic. 
“ The agreeable remedy in both cases is repeated as the symp- 
toms return, until the appetite is confirmed, and Satan has 
wound around his victim the iron chain of habit. Then follows 
the rapid deterioration of body, mind, and soul, and ere long 
the sad finale. By solitary confinement in her own house, 
commitment to a lunatic or inebriate asylum, the victim is 
secured from public exposure, and at length the grave hides 
all. ‘ I have a relative,’ said a lady, not long since, ‘ who is 
never accessible to her friends. They believe ber to be a suffer- 
ing invalid, but no one suspects the truth, which I know to be 
confirmed drunkenness.” 
“ Said a physician’s wife : ‘ I have lately come by accident 
into possession of facts in regard to a patient of my husband. 
She is a lady of wealth, with a lovely family, and her husband 
and children are driven almost to distraction by her habitual 
inebriety. It will result in the breaking up of that home. 
* What shall I do with her, doctor ? ’ asks an agonized father, as 
he points to his beautiful and accomplished daughter, dead 
drunk upon her couch. ‘ Send her to some institution where 
she will be watched and restrained,’ is the reply; and there, as 
an invalid, few of their numerous friends suspecting the truth, 
she is placed. 
“ The development of such facts has led us to inquire into the 
causes of this alarming evil, and we conclude that the very 
general use of alcoholic restoratives, in cases of debility or 
acute pain, to which women are liable, or by mothers during 
the infancy of their children, and the employment of wines and 
brandies on the table and in the kitchen, are the most promi- 
nent. 
“ When wine is a portion of the daily dinner, mother and 
daughter are both expected to partake, and, though it may be 
for a time in moderation, circumstances will arise to make an 
increased draught seem needful, and the result is inevitable. 
‘ You are not as well as usual, wife, to-day; you must drink a 
glass of champagne.’ 
“ Tlie glass is quaffed, and a second, and before the repast is 
concluded the stimulant has taken effect, and the lady is excited 
and flighty. A walk on the veranda in the cooling air is not 
sufficient to dissipate the influence, and the mortified husband 
has to lead his disabled companion to the lounge in the shaded 
apartment, and leave her to sleep off the effects of the liquor. Social and National. 
75 
Drunken ladies! Alas! alas ! were the front walls of the brown 
stone houses in the city, or the elegant cottages in the country, 
and at the seaside, removed, what sights, revolting to the 
moral sense of every true-hearted woman, would bo re- 
vealed ! ” * 
In an issue of the “New York Express,” November, 
1879, appeared the following: 
“ There have been a lamentable number of cases of female 
drunkenness brought before the courts lately. The last is that 
of the mother of five children, who during the past two years 
has led such a life of intoxication that it is doubtful if she ever 
returns from the island, where she was sent, such a wreck had 
she become. There was no excuse for her. Her husband was 
kind, sober, and industrious. He provided for her a humble 
but comfortable home, and she had everything to make her 
happy. But the inordinate passion of drink took possession of 
her, and she sank to the lowest depths of social degradation. 
There is no doubt that the love of liquor was with her a dis- 
ease, as it is with many others. It would seem that physicians, 
knowing the existence of such a disease, would have succeeded 
in finding an antidote; but, thus far, all their efforts appear to 
he fruitless. Habitual intoxication is about the one disease 
that has eluded the physician’s skill, and yet it is a disease 
that has carried in its wake more misery, suffering and degra- 
dation than others more fatal.” 
A recent number of the “ Chicago News,” gives a pain- 
ful account of the alarming prevalence of drunkenness 
among women in that city. It says : 
“Among women in the highest walks of life in Chicago, 
liquor-drinking and drunkenness are fearfully common,” It 
adds medical testimony as follows : “ Dr. Duncan says that he 
could count twenty such cases, first and last, in his practice. 
He says that the women living in fashionable hotels and board- 
ing-houses are iu a shocking number inebriates. In many 
cases they have completely broken up their homes and gone 
headlong to ruin. . . . Dr. Lingley says that drunkenness 
in its very worst forms will be found in some of the very first 
families in the city.” 
* Centennial Temperance Volume, pp. 179-181. 76 
Alcohol in Society. 
During the winter of 1882, of two cases of divorce 
granted by the same county circuit court in Wisconsin, 
which created much local excitement, and not a little gen- 
eral interest, one was granted to an influential man, whose 
home was furnished with all that lavish expenditure of 
money could obtain, on the ground that his wife’s unfortu- 
nate and uncontrollable fondness for drink made his life 
unendurable, and set an example for his sons, now approach- 
ing manhood, which was pernicious in the extreme. 
Of the great number of women who applied for admission 
to the inebriate asylum at Binghampton, N. Y., it is said 
that nearly two thousand were the daughters of rich men. 
What is true here of the extent of drinking among 
women, is also true abroad. Dr. Forbes Winslow said 
to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Habitual 
Drunkards : u I know numbers of ladies moving in good 
society who are never sober, and are often brought home 
by the police/’ f 
“ Quite recently,” says Rev. James Smith, M. A., in his “ Tem- 
perance Reformation and its Claims upon the Christian Church,” 
“ a woman was brought up on a Thursday morning before the 
Police Court, Edinburgh, charged with being drunk, and inca- 
pable of taking care of her child. She had left her husband’s 
house on Monday morning, well clothed, with the child—eleven 
months old —well clothed too ; when found by the police, the 
child was absolutely naked, and the mother almost in the same 
condition. A boy in Manchester, having from his own earnings, 
deposited a few shillings in the Savings Bank, his drunken 
mother became aware of the fact, and demanded that the money 
should be given up to her. In vain the boy pleaded that it 
might be allowed to remain, and reproaching his mother with 
having forced his sister to be a harlot, and tried to ruin him- 
self, he turned away, muttering: ‘ It’s no use trying to be 
good.’” (P. 51.) 
The neglect and abuse of children by drunken fathers 
* “Fifty Years History,” p. 143. 
f “ Christendom and the Drink Curse,” p. 57. Social and National. 
77 
and mothers, is frequent and appalling. In an article on 
“ Our Canal Population,” published in the “Fortnightly 
Review,” February, 1875, many such instances are noted. 
“Parents,” the writer says, “will give their children as 
much liquor as they like to drink, and if they are unwill- 
ing to take it, are sometimes known to force it upon them, 
out of pure mischief and wickedness.” The writer describes 
a scene which he witnessed, where a child not four years 
of age was made drunk by its parents, who, while the 
helpless little one was tumbling about, enjoyed the dis- 
gusting scene with boisterous shouts and laughter. 
To such an extent does this evil prevail, that societies 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have been 
formed in all our large cities (thirty-one in all in the 
United States), and the uniform testimony of the managers 
is, that rum is at the bottom of much of the suffering of 
these defenceless ones. The Society in New York, in 
their Third Annual Report, 1878, received and attended to 
over a thousand complaints. “ Many of the cases,” they 
say, “ were extremely brutal, and in others children have 
been rescued from the most degraded and vicious surround- 
ings, and placed where, at least, there is hope that they 
will become useful members of society, and not be left to 
recruit the ranks of the criminal classes. Encouraging 
reports have been received in regard to many of these 
children.” 
It is added: “ The cause of more than two-thirds of the 
suffering found, has been directly traced to the excessive 
use of liquor, which is also the cause of much of the cruelty 
reported in these pages.” 
The Philadelphia Society, gives in its Fifth Annual 
Report a detailed statement of its doings for the year 1881, 
and a summary of its work during the five years of its ex- 
istence. On the whole it has interposed to rescue from 
abuse of parents, guardians, and others, upwards of seven 78 
Alcohol in Society. 
thousand children, and has removed two thousand two hun- 
dred and ninety-three from dissolute and cruel parents. 
“ Fully ninety per cent,3 it says, “ of all the complaints, are 
traceable directly to the use of spirituous liquors.3 
The Massachusetts Society reports the number of new 
cases in 1880, as being 354, involving 048 children; of 
which 209 had intemperate fathers, and 100 had intemperate 
mothers. In 1881, the new cases were 712 ; number of 
children involved, 1,350 ; having intemperate fathers, 041; 
intemperate mothers, 594. The General Agent, in his 
report for 1881, says: 
“Those who are familiar with the dependent classes will 
not be surprised to learn that our records show that the larger 
part of the cases brought to our notice, have their origin in the 
use and abuse of intoxicating drinks. But it will be a cause 
of surprise to many to know how often the intemperance is on 
the part of the mothers. And yet, we believe, if all the facts 
were known in regard to both parents, the statistics would 
show a greater number than now appears. In many cases the 
drinking habit has not been carried so far as to become appar- 
ent outside their own home, and yet has so far affected them as 
to prevent the exhibition of true parental love, and induced 
them to fall into habits of neglect, if not into absolute abuse. 
But, notwithstanding tho brutality of these degraded parents, 
when we have taken their children from them under the law, 
they make touching appeals for their restoration, and shed as 
many tears as other parents. We are forced to believe that the 
affection still exists, but that when intoxicants obtain the mas- 
tery, the lower nature is temporarily in the ascendant, and the 
heart loses its power. * 
“The evil is not confined to the parents. Children are used 
as messengers to procure the intoxicants, and they often par- 
take before and after they reach their homes, and, by their fa- 
miliarity with it, acquire the habit of drinking. In one case, 
this season, we found three children, under seven years of 
age, intoxicated, while the mother was lying drunk in the 
room.” 
Rev. Dr. W akely, in his “American Temperance Cyclo- 
paedia,” copies from the Dover (N. H.) “ Morning Star,3 Social and National. 
79 
the following sad account of the untimely death of a lad, 
driven out of the world by the cruelty of a drunken father : 
“ Departed this life in Hamburgh, N. Y., John Orte, aged thir- 
teen years. The circumstances of his death were as follows: 
A little past mid-day the unfortunate boy obtained a rope, on 
the end of which was a ring, which he endeavored to conceal, 
and immediately hastened to a wood a short distance from his 
father’s house. But in spite of all his efforts, he was observed 
by some of his unsuspecting little brothers and sisters, who 
followed him to the fatal spot. He then climbed a small tree, 
and, after waiting some time, made a small noose by passing 
the end of the rope through the ring, which he put on his neck. 
He then fastened the rope to the tree, and jumped off, and in a 
moment was in eternity! His little sister, being under the 
tree, shrieked aloud, saying her brother John had fallen. This 
brought to the spot his mother and some of the other children, 
when a scene of sorrow and lamentation took place, which can 
he better imagined than described. 
“ This child was led to the perpetration of the rash and 
wicked deed by the cruel treatment received from a drunken 
father, who was at that time almost dead-drunk at a neighbor- 
ing grog-shop. Some hours afterwards, with much urging and 
assistance, he was got home; but being in liquor, his presence 
only augmented the grief of his afflicted family. When under 
the influence of ardent spirits, he was often known to vent his 
madness on poor John ; and on the morning of that day, before 
leaving home for the grog-shop, without any provocation, he 
threatened him with a severe whipping. John was a bright 
and active lad, had the name of being virtuous, and was the 
main support of the family. Frequently, after having labored 
hard to obtain the means of support for his poor mother and 
her children, his drunken father would expend his earnings for 
rum. The deceased was often heard to say it would be better 
for him to die than live, that he had rather die than stay here, 
etc., always assigning as a reason, the cruel treatment of his 
father.” 
In view of these sad facts, what can be expected in the 
drunkard’s family except that which all are compelled to 
note, the utter decay of purity, union of heart and purpose, 
morality and piety, and every variety of physical and 80 
Alcohol in Society. 
spiritual prosperity. Truly, the signs of destitution and 
want hung out by the unthriftiness of such abodes, are but 
faint indications of the greater demoralization existing in 
all the higher faculties of their inhabitants. 
(c). One other consideration showing the inevitable con- 
nection between drinking and domestic wretchedness, must 
be mentioned here; and ought to be most seriously pon- 
dered and heeded, since it is based on what, in spite of all 
efforts of philanthropliy, and all schemes for the adjust- 
ments of labor and capital, has but little prospect of 
material change. Governor Tilden, in his letter to the 
Democratic National Convention, accepting its nomination 
for the Presidency, thus called attention to the fact we 
desire to emphasize : “ Even in prosperous times, the daily 
wants of industrious communities press closely upon their 
daily earnings. The margin of possible national saving 
is, at best, a small per cent, of national earnings.” This is 
true the world over, and in some portions of it, it is an 
ever increasing wonder to us how the people possibly 
subsist on what they receive for their labor. 
Jules Simon says of Paris, that 
“ 1,700 francs ($328.10) is the lowest sum a working man can 
subsist upon a year with a family of two children. He further 
states that actually 500,000 working people of Paris, earn per 
annum: 
35,000 1,600 francs each. 
60,000 1,400 “ “ 
44,000 1,150 “ “ 
160,000 450 “ “ 
The remaining make even less.” 
In Prussia, 11 in 1874, tlie tax roll proved that 58.5 per 
cent, of the population earned individually less than $100 
per annum, and 34.1 per cent, less than $150. 
“ The tax roll of England betrays the same sad condition of the 
people there. In 1865, of a population of 24,127,013, only 332,431 Social and National. 
81 
were taxed on incomes, while the rest of the nation struggled 
with poverty, their incomes falling below three hundred dollars 
per annum.* 
In the United States there is a decided improvement on 
this; but even here the sum received for wages is small 
enough to fully justify Governor Tilden’s statement. Take 
the fact in Massachusetts as an example, which is doubtless 
a fair specimen of the facts in the country at large ; above, 
rather than below, the common average. In the Sixth 
Annual Report of the“ Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics 
of Labor,” for 1875, the following conclusions are estab- 
lished from carefully collected and tabulated returns : 
11 First. That in the majority of cases, workingmen in this 
Commonwealth do not support their families by their individu- 
al earnings alone. 
“ Third. That fathers rely, or are forced to depend, upon their 
children, for from one-quarter to one-third of the entire family 
earnings. 
“ Fourth. That children under fifteen years of age, supply, by 
their labor, from one-eighth to one-sixth of the total family 
earnings. 
“ Fifth. That more than one-half of the families save money; 
less than one-tenth are in debt, and the remainder make both 
ends meet. 
“Sixth. That without children’s assistance, other things re- 
maining equal, the majority of families would he in poverty or 
debt 
“ Finth. That the average saving is about three per cent, of 
the earnings.” 
In the Report for 1876, tabulated returns are given from 
about 50,000 workmen, obtained by aid of the decennial 
State census of the preceding year. These show “ that 
the average annual income derived from usual daily wages, 
other earnings, earnings of wife and children, and garden- 
crops, was $534 99. The average annual cost of living 
was $488 06. This leaves a possible saving of $46 03 
* Royce. “ Deterioration and Race Education,” pp. 54, 55. 82 
Alcohol in Society. 
yearly, or 8 per cent ” As accounting for the difference in 
per cent, of saving from that reported the previous year, 
the Report says : “ The returns from 1875 were entirely 
from married men, having families dependent upon them, 
while the returns of 1876 are, in a great many instances, 
from single men. This fact may account, in part, for the 
increase in percentage of possible surplus or saving.” 
If the surplus is put at the maximum, it must be evident 
that the margin is an exceedingly narrow one out of which 
to provide for sickness or other unavoidable expense ; and 
that without sadly interfering with domestic comfort and 
the necessary supply for daily demand, nothing can possi- 
bly be afforded for indulgence in intoxicants. Hence the 
inevitable result. Where rum comes in the necessaries of 
life go out, and destitution and wretchedness are unavoida- 
ble. For not only does the drunkard drink up his surplus 
earnings, but his self-imposed inability to labor, diminishes 
his wages, so that his personal loss is a double one, while 
that of his family is incalculable. 
III. That the Drink System is subversive of morality 
and social order, is further manifest in its effects upon com- 
munities, in hindrance to morals, religion, education, indus- 
try, agriculture, mechanics, peace, and prosperity. How 
can it be otherwise when we note its effects on the individ- 
ual and in the family ? These furnish the units from which 
we make up all communities; and of necessity the latter 
will partake of the characteristics of the former. Just in 
proportion as the man or the family is immoral, irreligious, 
ignorant, idle, riotous, and unsuccessful in seeming plenty 
or peace, will the community of which he and they form a 
part, be involved in a general demoralization. 
Not only does the drunkard lower the moral tone of a 
community because he is a part of that community, but also 
because intemperance is too often regarded as a venial 
slip or fault, to be pitied, perhaps, but seldom to be blamed. Social and National. 
83 
The conscience of the community becomes blinded to its 
great enormity; the habitual drinking is regarded as a 
subject for mirth, jesting, or indifference, rather than of 
sorrow and reproof; no guilt seems to attach to it; no 
help to be needed in order to overcome it; no responsibility 
for its continuance, other than that vague sense of a gene- 
ral responsibility somewhere, but which is too vague and too 
general, to rouse any one to duty. 
The same is true of its influence on religion. So many who 
consider themselves the custodians of the religious institu- 
tions and interests of a community, are either occasional 
drinkers, or in some way directly or indirectly interested by 
social, business, or political interests, with drinkers or ven- 
dors, or both, that while gross drunkenness may be con- 
sidered a nuisance, it is seldom regarded as a sin ; and 
fashionable sipping, or so-called moderate indulgences, are 
looked upon as but assertions of a manly independence 
against the weakness implied in total abstinence, to rebuke 
which as dangerous, savors of fanaticism and inexcusable 
meddling with what does not concern us. So powerfully 
has this evil affected and demoralized the church, that in 
many places temperance work is most severely antagonized 
by religious organizations, or, where opposition is absent a 
repellant indifference is too often manifest. Further'on in 
these pages we shall have occasion to notice the effects of 
intemperance on religion in other directions and phases; 
but the above is no exaggerated view of the effect as seen 
so often, and so sadly. 
Education, now the theme of so many discussions and 
experiments, is not only sadly crippled and restricted in its 
most profitable scope, as we shall have occasion to show 
under another heading, but is, even in its incomplete 
phases, prevented, by intemperance, from becoming uni- 
versal. The freest public schools are not accessible to the 
drunkard’s children, for they almost invariably have no 84 
Alcohol in Society. 
decent clothing, in which to attend them; or where, in spite 
of these hindrances, a partial or limited attendance occurs, 
they are too often taken away to be put to labor, at so 
early an age, that little or no instruction has been imparted 
to them. And even where such instruction as our public 
schools afford, is received by such children, its effects are 
too often wholly lost upon them, or become basely used, 
by their surroundings at home; the poverty, starvation, 
brutality, and ill-treatment which they there witness and 
endure, almost wholly neutralizing the humane influences 
of the school-room ; so that they grow up, if not as ignor- 
ant as they would have been without schools, yet quite as 
vicious and depraved. There are, it is conceded, some 
notably grand exceptions, but as a rule, as our police and 
prison records attest, a drunkard's child is merely educated 
to smartness, the home influences turning the sharpened 
wits to immoral and criminal uses. 
(a). The industrial interests of a community suffer, in 
all their branches, from the effects of intemperance. A 
first-class workman given to drink, cannot retain his place 
at a labor requiring care and regularity, and so is driven 
by his vice to poorer workshops, at greatly reduced wages, 
till at last he is incapable of laboring anywhere, or unwill- 
ing to work at all. And then, he not only becomes a direct 
tax on sober workmen, but in so far as he associates with 
them, a hindrance to their labor. 
As early as 1607, laws of great severity were passed, for 
restraining the sale of intoxicating drinks, in England. 
The preamble to one of the earliest (4th Jac. i. c. 5,) re- 
cites that drunkenness “ tends to the overthrow of many 
good arts and manual trades, the disabling of divers work- 
men, and the impoverishing of many good subjects.” At 
about the same time, Lord Bacon announced as the sol- 
emn conviction of a judgment matured by long experience 
and extensive observation, that u all the crimes on the Social and National. 
85 
earth do not destroy so many of the human race, nor alien- 
ate so much property as drunkenness.” This, be it remem- 
bered, was at least half a century before the use of distilled 
spirits became general, when all the drunkenness of Eng- 
land proceeded from the use of beer and wine. What a 
fearful increase ardent spirits have caused ! 
The more our industries are systematized—and the simul- 
taneous action of many hands is needed in producing a 
finished article,—as is the present tendency in all manu- 
factures and trades, the more embarrassing and disastrous to 
trade are all delays and inefficient work, occasioned by in- 
temperance. Oliver Ames & Sons, of North Easton, 
Mass., one of the largest shovel manufacturers in the world, 
give the following testimony on this point: 
“We find, on comparing our production in May and June of 
this year (1868), with that of the corresponding months of last 
year (1867), that in 1867, with 375 men, we produced eight per 
cent, more goods than we did in the same months in 1868 with 
400 men. We attribute this large falling off to the repeal of 
the prohibitory law, and the great increase in the use of intox- 
icating liquors among our men in consequence.” 
That the prosperity of a community is diminished, and 
its peace disturbed, by drunkenness, is obvious enough to 
all who know,—as who does not ?—that waste and rioting 
are certain accompaniments of drinking. Heavy taxes 
must be borne, and intolerable nuisances endured in every 
place where intemperance is known. Estates depreciated 
in value, and neighborhoods cursed by rum, are shunned ; 
parents avoid the possibility of the association of their 
children with the children of the drunken, and where it is 
possible, locate at a remote distance from them; while 
noise, rioting, fightings and destruction, are sure indications 
of a neighborhood of drunkards. 
fb). But it is not simply because there is drinking that 
a community is cursed with the evils just enumerated. 86 
Alcohol in Society. 
There is included in the Drink System from which these 
ills proceed, the manufacture and sale, as well as the use, 
of these poisonous compounds. The traffic is a villanous 
one, and only vile results flow from it. It demoralizes and 
imbrutes all who are engaged in it; and drunkenness being 
an acknowledged evil, requiring the intervention of the law 
for its regulation and restriction, the makers and vendors 
of the means to drunkenness, cannot escape the charge of 
immorality and irreligion; of promoting ignorance, idle- 
ness, destitution and shame; of perverting the fruits of the 
earth, destroying the sanctities of home, diminishing the 
value of property, and cursing the community with insecur- 
ity and shame. Look at some of the constantly recurring 
evidences of the truth of this indictment. 
A whiskey ring for several years so protected the distill- 
ers from government molestation, by accepting bribes not 
to enforce the collection of the tax on distilleries, that it 
became evident that this ring must be broken, or the rev- 
enue department could not be sustained. In 1807, the 
whiskey revenue ought to have yielded to the treasury over 
$200,000,000, of which, not quite $26,000,000 was paid. 
To prevent this drain and cheat, Congress passed such 
stringent rules, as to degrade every distiller in the land, 
and strike his business from the list of honest trades. All 
large distilleries are by this law placed in charge of a gov- 
ernment detective, called a u storekeeper,” who holds the 
keys of each receiving vat, and who is paid therefor, by 
the man whom he is set to watch. Who, with the least 
self-respect, would consent to continue in a trade thus sin- 
gled out from all others in the United States, and branded 
with infamy ! Yet there are hundreds of men growing rich 
in this country, out of a business thus suspected and 
watched. 
But in spite of all this care and vigilance, a vast amount 
of illicit distilling is carried on, involving in the attempts Social and National. 
87 
at its suppression, great expense, and frequent loss of 
life. 
The National House of Representatives having, by reso- 
lution, called for all evidence on file in the Internal Rev- 
enue office from official sources, “ going to show the true 
state of affairs, touching the enforcement of the Internal 
Revenue Laws in North-east Georgia, and tending to ex- 
plain the necessity for the employment of armed men at the 
instance of the Internal Revenue Bureau,” the Secretary 
of the Treasury, March 16th, 1880, laid before Congress 
suck reports, letters, and dispatches, on file, from officers 
engaged in the revenue seivice, and a letter from the 
Commissioner of Internal Revenue. 
By order of the House, these papers, making a volume 
of 211 pages, were published. They show that from June 
30th, 1876, to February 1st, 1880, there were 3,043 illicit 
whiskey stills seized; 6,153 persons arrested; 25 officers 
and employes killed, and 49 wounded. “It is observ- 
able,” says the Commissioner, “ in many quarters, that the 
better judgment of the people is asserting itself in favor of 
law and order, and good men are becoming alarmed at the 
evil effects produced upon society by the uncontrolled man- 
ufacture and sale of whiskey.” 
It appears, however, that the penalty of such assertion is 
often a severe one. “ Many worthy citizens,” the commis- 
sioner says, “ desirous of seeing the law enforced, and 
anxious to protect their sons from the illicit worm, have 
had their stock killed, their barns and houses burned, and 
have been bushwhacked by illicit distillers when suspected 
of giving information to the revenue officers.” 
In a statement to Congress, by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, concerning sundry recommendations by the com- 
missioner, in 1879, that officer presented the following: 
“ Since March 1, 1877, in several of the districts of the South- 
ern States, while operations for the suppression of illicit dis- 88 
Alcohol in Society. 
tillation were being vigorously prosecuted, many of the illicit 
distillers against whom warrants had been issued expressed an 
earnest desire to abandon their fraudulent practices, and by 
direction of the Attorney-General, with the approval of the 
Secretary of the Treasury, they were permitted to come into 
court, plead guilty, and have their sentences suspended during 
good behavior. Pleas of guilty, with suspension of sentence, 
have been taken as follows: In Georgia, 792; South Carolina, 
378; North Carolina, 370; Alabama, 114 ; Tennessee, 427; 
total, 2,080.” 
He added that he believes 11 the number of pleas of 
guilty will reach nearly, if not quite 1,000 in Tennessee.” 
Secretary Sherman, in Ids communication, made the fol- 
lowing startling declaration: 
“ The efforts to suppress the illicit manufacture of spirits and 
tobacco demonstrate that in many of the districts this evil has 
become chronic, and that the laws cannot be enforced against 
offenders without the presence of an armed force adequate to 
overcome and persistently intimidate persons disposed to 
violate the law.” 
What better evidence could be offered that a desperate 
and unscrupulous power presides over the manufacture of 
whiskey! From the document submitted to Congress in 
March, 1880, the following is extracted, as showing that 
the people of the region where this nefarious business is 
carried on are taking alarm at its fearful effects. 
The Grand Jury of Cherokee County, Ga., say: “There is a 
monster evil—the prime cause of all our troubles—against 
which we cannot, in form, present a general bill of iudictment, 
and yet it produces directly, and is the moving cause of, nine- 
tenths of the crime in our county, and almost in the same pro- 
portion of all the suffering, distress, and want of our people. 
This monster, unnamed, is yet known of all men . . . . 
The presence of illicit distilleries in the county is seen, known, 
and felt by the effects on society. Whiskey, illicitly made, 
will be sold in the same way and to anybody. . . .The 
youth of the county ruined and murdered, and crime of every 
kind traceable to these horrible distilleries.” The presentment Social and National. 
89 
closes with an appeal to “ protect society from the outrages of 
this terrible monster.” 
The Grand Jury of Forsyth County, Georgia, say, in a 
late presentment to the Court: 
“ We are satisfied that wickedness and lawlessness are on the 
increase in our couuty, such as dealing in spirituous liquors, 
riots, and in general disregard for law and morality 
We furthermore insist upon the magistrates and notaries public 
to issue warrants against all peddling wagons which pass 
through our county dealing out spirituous liquors, to the 
annoyance of the peaceful citizens, and to the injury of the youth 
of our county, and against all dealers of spirituous liquors, and 
violators of law and peace, and that due punishment be inflict- 
ed upon each according to the magnitude of the crime.” Their 
presentment concludes with the following appeal: “Fellow- 
citizens, let us unite to save our country from ruin. Justice 
demands it; our religion demands it; our country demands it; 
our wives and children demand it; and our manhood demands 
it.” 
The brewers are not one whit behind the distillers in 
dishonesty. Not to multiply proof, let the following suf- 
fice. At tlue fifth Congress of the United States Brewers 
Association, assembled in Baltimore, Internal Commis- 
sioner Wells, on being introduced, said: 
“ I have come to bear, and not to speak ; at tbe same time, I 
can assure tbe meeting that it is the desire of the government 
to be thoroughly informed of the requirements of the trade, and 
I will give information on all questions, in order to bring about 
a cordial understanding between the government and the trade 
in general.” 
He continued: “By statistical reports it has been proven 
that six millions of barrels of beer are brewed annually, whilst 
only two and a half millions bad paid tax,”—a deficiency of 
about sixty per cent.” 
At the 12th Congress, held in New York, Mr. Louis 
Schade said in a speech : 
“ Massachusetts brewed, during the year ending June 30tb, 
1871, 525,731 barrels beer, being one barrel to every 2.8 persons. 90 
Alcohol in Society. 
Massachusetts is the third State in the Union in the manufac- 
ture of fermented liquors, notwithstanding that her people, 
suffering under the cruel and iron yoke of puritanical hypoc- 
risy, are not permitted to carry on the manufacture of fer- 
mented liquors in a legitimate manner.” 
Could any Southern “ Moonshiner ” make a more auda- 
cious statement and boast of his contempt for law and 
honesty? How remarkably does the above confirm the 
declaration concerning the identity of the interests of 
whiskey and beer, as made by Mr. Itueter, President of 
the Beer Congress, in 1875 : 
“ In this connection it may he well to consider that there are 
many relations of mutual interest between the German-Ameri- 
can and other foreign elements. Our present agitation and 
efforts for the suppression of prohibitory propensities in our 
law-giving bodies, for instance, should form a strong bond of 
interest between Germans and Irishmen. Such a union would, 
in my opinion, help to strengthen and solidify our own associa- 
tion, as it would nearer connect the immediate interests of the 
ale and lager beer branches, while it would give us irresistible 
political power. If it is said in reply, that such a union would 
be equivalent to the identification of whiskey and beer inter- 
ests, I beg to submit that, in our present state of affairs, the in- 
terests are inseparable You see, gentlemen, the two 
interests do not after all clash, but may be harmonized. When 
you tell me in answer, that you do not desire to be classed with 
rum and whiskey dealers, my reply is that you must be in a 
purely business view classed with them, so far as both branches 
furnish the public with an alcoholic stimulant Gen- 
tlemen, guard against drawing the lines too close, and remem- 
ber, consistency is a jewel.” 
(c). Akin to the frauds practiced on the government 
by the manufacturers of intoxicants, are those by means of 
which they dupe and impose on their customers. The adul- 
teration of liquors is carried on to a fearful extent, and the 
poisonous effects must be most disastrous. In “ Alcohol 
in History,” a large space is given to the examination of 
this subject, and to this work the curious reader is referred Social and National. 
91 
for more full information than is offered here. Only a few 
proofs are now presented. The following is from 11 Dewey’s 
Native Wine Journal, New York : ” copied from a San 
Francisco journal: 
“In the suit brought by the Government in the U. S. District 
Court, * against 1,209 casks of sherry wine,’ belonging to the 
Spanish house of L. & E., this wine, it appears, had been seized 
on the ground of alleged fraudulent undervaluations by the ex- 
porters—the invoice being at $16 per qr. cask, or about 53 cents 
per gallon, whereas Government claimed about 80 cents gold, 
basing this valuation on information furnished by their own 
detective, sent to Cadiz to ascertain its market value. The 
total value of the sherry in dispute is claimed to he about $90,- 
000, while the worth of similar wines dependent upon this suit 
is estimated at $500,000. 
“ The first great fact which looms up in the testimony of the 
case, to the surprise of most wine drinkers here, is, that nearly 
all the so-called ‘ sherries ’ imported into the United States are 
not only not sherries, hut not even genuine wines—being a sin- 
gular, almost unfermented, liquid, concocted from poor grapes 
and be-doctored with unknown materials until it is considered 
ready for drinking, in ten months from the time the grapes are 
pressed. And so successful has been this adulteration and fab- 
rication, that even an English expert on the trial testified in effect 
that he could not distinguish this wine from a genuine sherry. 
When one considers what complicated disorders in the stomach 
and nerves these made-up beverages produce, and what a dan- 
gerous thing to the public health any wine is whose fermenta- 
tion is arrested, or which is partly composed of foreign sub- 
stances and artificial alcohol, we may judge of the importance 
of the disclosures made in this trial to the general public.” 
Mr. Benedict, counsel for the defence, said in the 
course of opening the case for his clients : 
“Genuine sherry is the product of Xeres, an old Moorish 
town. The exportations of sherry to this country and England 
are for the most part poor, because made up : the largest houses 
send no real sherry to America; for it costs from $3 to $4 (gold) 
per gallon where it is produced, and every one linows that, 
with the enormous duties on wine here, it could not he imported 
unless at such prices as would he deemed exorbitant. L. & E. 92 
Alcohol in Society. 
therefore determined to see what could be done with these poor 
qualities of grapes, which they get at Moqua, and all over the 
country wherever cheap grapes are produced. The grapes are 
sent to Cadiz in baskets, and there made into wine. Spirits are 
put into it to keep it from fermentation, and also to keep it 
sweet. They have been for thirty years bringing to perfection 
this wine, made from these grapes from Moqua and other 
places.” 
James Behsusan, native of Cadiz, of the house of L. & 
E., testified: 
“ This kind of sherry is the main traffic of my country. Our 
house sends about 3,000 butts yearly to the United States. 
There are other houses in Cadiz and Port St. Mary which make 
and ship wine of this kind.” 
Here he produced a list of such houses. 
Peter Escottrra, clerk in the same house, testifies 
u that they also make Madeira, but that there is no differ- 
ence in the composition, quality or value of Madeira and 
sherry.” (!) He also testifies that “ their wines are not 
drank in Cadiz.” 
Joseph Benstjsah, with regard to L. & E., further 
testifies: 
“ Their wines are not used in Spain. Spaniards prefer to drink 
wine in its natural state. They ship the bulk of their manufac- 
tures to the United States.” 
“ It appears then, from this and other testimony, which we 
need not quote, that Xeres, or tho sherry district, is a compara- 
tively small region, where a moderate quantity of a high priced 
wine is produced. This is the famous ancient sherry : but with 
our present duties this wine could not be sold here profitably 
for less than $10 a gallon. The foreign dealers, accordingly, 
have made up a beverage from what the witnesses style ‘ a 
nasty filthy liquid,’ and have added alcohol, sugar and other in- 
gredients, and have thus produced ‘ a fine old, good pale and 
brown ’ sherry, marked with a diamond or a crown to show its 
high position, and have imported it here in immense quantities 
and sold it at low rates. They have also manufactured for our 
innocent public in tho same manner, Manzanilla and Madeira.” Social and National. 
93 
The u Philadelphia Bulletin ** published the following, 
not long since, under the significant caption, u How bar- 
room liquors are made : ** 
“ There may be seen daily on Chestnut street, a man dressed 
in faultless apparel, with a great diamond on his breast, vainly 
endeavoring to out-glitter the magnificent solitaire on his finger. 
His occupation is that of mixing and adulteration of liquors. 
Give him a dozen casks of deodorized alcohol, and the next day 
each of them will represent the name of a genuine wine or pop- 
ular spirit. He enters a wholesale drug store, hearing a large 
basket upon his arm. Five pounds of Iceland moss are weighed 
out to him. To raw liquors, this imparts the smoothness and 
oleaginousness which gives to imitation brandy the glibness of 
that which is most matured. An astringent, called catechu, that 
would almost close the mouth of a glass inkstand, is next in 
order. A couple of ounces of strichnine, next called for, are 
quickly transferred to his vest pocket, and a pound of white 
vitriol is silently placed in the bottom of the basket. The oil 
of cognac, the sulphuric acid, and other articles that give fire 
and body to liquid poisons, are always kept in store. The mixer 
buys these from various quarters. They are staples of the art.” 
At the twenty-first Annual Convention of the United 
States Brewers* Association, held at Chicago, in May, 1881, 
Mr. Scharmann, the temporary chairman, in a speech, re- 
viewing the work of the previous conventions, remarked 
that 11 the seventeenth convention may he noted especially 
by the passage of the following resolution: 1 To request 
the President and Secretary of the United States Brewers* 
Association to issue a public declaration, setting forth that 
this Association counsels the use of legitimate materials 
only in the brewing of malt liquors, and denounces as in- 
admissible and reprehensible the substitution of any 
others,* ** &c. &c. To which Mr. Scharmann added : “ Of 
course all brewers are aware that no real necessity existed 
for this resolution, for it is not customary for brewers, who 
have a reputation to sustain, to use other than honest ma- 
terial. Nevertheless, that those ignorant of our profession 94 
Alcohol in Society. 
might be sufficiently convinced of our good faith, it was 
introduced and passed.77' 
On another page of “The Western Brewer,77 May 15, 
1881, containing the above, is an article on “Ancient, 
versus Modem Beer Quacks,77 which the editor intro- 
duces thus: 
“ There are still many otherwise well-informed persons who 
profess to believe that the beer-doctoring, which is practiced 
by some charlatans of modern date, is also a modern invention, 
while, in fact, it is the direct result of superstitions which were 
in vogue among brewers in the past centuries. We cannot 
more forcibly illustrate this position than by publishing some 
receipts which were unearthed in the Archives of the Courts of 
Czernin, in Bohemia, and which date back as far as the year 
1560-1590. While mosi of these receipts smack strongly of the 
doctrines of witchcraft, which were almost universally adopted 
at that remote period, they nevertheless have so much similar- 
ity with the prescriptions of some beer-doctors of modern date 
as to warrant the supposition that they have drawn on antiquity 
for the largest share of their knowledge, as the following exam- 
ples will show.” 
“ Receipt No. 3.—If the beer will not ferment, take the root 
of cynanchum vincetoxicum, foreign yeast, bugs, dogs-dung, 
ivy. Pulverize the whole and throw it in the fermenting tub 
and mix well.” 
We give but one of the eleven examples : 
The editor adds : “ Of course among all this rubbish there 
is hidden a little sense, and evidently this little sense is hidden 
purposely. So all the receipts against sluggish fermentation 
require foreign yeast, or, in other words, all these receipts 
amount to a change of pitching yeast. So the receipts to keep 
beer from turning sour and to jtreserve its taste, require, among 
the other ingredients, a large proportion of ashes from the kiln, 
i. e. wood ashes, which contain ‘chiefly carbonate of potash, 
which in its anti-acid action resembles very closely the bi-car- 
bonate of soda of our day.” 
Cider is also said to be adulterated. ‘The Western 
Brewer77 for July, 1881, has the following : Social and National. 
95 
“ The doctors say that habitual drinkers of cider are more 
liable than other persons to paralysis of the limbs ; proba- 
bly this may be due to the sugar of lead with which some cider 
makers ‘ perfect ’ their beverages.” 
In 11 The Catholic World/’ for June, 1888, appears a 
learned article on u Our Drinks and Our Drinkers,” from 
which we make the following extracts: 
“ Potato alcohol, beet-root alcohol, and the other vicious 
alcohols are to-day freely manufactured in answer to the demand 
of a large and growing market. We may safely say that the 
brandies, whiskeys, rums, or gins which three-fourths of the peo- 
ple drink are made from these poisonous alcohols. The word is 
well chosen—poisonous—so proven, positively, virulently poi- 
sonous. A year ago, in 1887, Dr. Laborde and Dr. Magnan pre- 
sented to the Paris Society of Medicine, the results of a thor- 
ough analysis of these alcohols. Among the chemical constitu- 
ents of the still uubaptized brandy, or whiskey, or gin, these pa- 
tient analysts found ‘pyromuric aldehyde,’ better known as 
* furfurol.’ This is a violent poison, a known provocative of 
epilepsy. Sudden deaths among drinking men are not uncom- 
mon. In this city, within the last five years, there have been 
several cases of the kind. You know the ‘ item.’ 
“ Last niglit a man was arrested in the street for drunkenness. 
He was taken to the station-house. The police-surgeon pro- 
nounced the man drunk. The sergeant ordered him to be put 
in a cell. In the morning, when the cell was opened, there lay 
the man, dead. His relatives suspected that the police clubbed 
him. The newspapers charge the surgeon and the police with 
criminal neglect. The coroner declares it another case of the 
ever convenient ‘heart disease,’ and there’s an end of it. These 
sudden and inexplicable deaths of drinking-men have been fre- 
quent in Europe as well as in this country. Dr. Laborde and 
Dr. Magnan are the first to offer a satisfactory solution of the 
mystery. The action of ‘ furfurol ’ is known. This terrible drug 
constricts the breathing apparatus, arrests respiration suddenly, 
chokes the victim. The unfortunate man who lies lifeless in 
the cell, was garroted—from within. If the drinker of the bad 
alcohols escapes the fatal ‘ furfurol,’ he is, if more slowly, no 
less surely poisoned. The post-mortem tells the story. The in- 
testines and the liver become more and more congested, inflam- 
ed, and the large vessels, especially the aorta, gradually degeu- 96 
Alcohol in Society. 
erate. There is a steady consumption of the elements of mus- 
cular force. These statements are not based on the passionate 
assumptions of the theoretic total-abstainer or political prohi- 
bitiouist. They are based on scientific observation—on a cold, 
dispassionate, unprejudiced study of a bald, plain record of 
facts. 
“In their original state, the vicious alcohols are so nauseous 
that the ordinary toper will not drink them. And yet they are 
less harmful than the stuffs he willingly swallows. The alco- 
hols of grain, of beet-root, of potatoes are colorless, and each of 
them has its own characteristic flavor and odor. The chemists 
saw the problem and were equal to it. To turn these poisons 
into any one of the popular liquors or ‘ cordials ’ is ‘ as easy as 
winking.’ Here is our poisonous alcohol; shall we give it a 
rum flavor and odor, or would you prefer brandy or whiskey ? 
The French chemist has provided us with various ‘ bouquets ’ 
—‘ bouquet de Cognac,’ de genievre, etc. These bouquets are 
poisonous. Add poison to poison—what chance has the drink- 
er ? Of what are these ‘ bouquets ’ made ? Butyric ether, acetic 
ether, sulphuric acid, cyanhydric acid, cyanure of phenol: and of 
various extracts—essence of violets, castor oil, pulverzied cashew 
or sassafras, Canada maiden hair, broom-flower, iris. Color 
with a preparation of oak-bark or vanilla. Or, if you prefer, 
you may flavor with the German ‘essential oil of wine-lees.’ 
Through the oxidation of castor-oil, butter, cocoa, etc., the 
chemist obtains certain acids : caprilic acid, caproic acid, etc. 
Under pressure these are etherized with ethylic, amylic, and 
propylic alcohols. With these various ethers, and a good sup- 
ply of villanous alcohol, you can crowd a bar or stock a cellar 
with brandies and whiskeys or whatever else you please. A 
few drops of ether will flavor a large volume of the alcohol. 
There are qualities in ‘bouquets.’ For common folks there are 
ordinary stuffs; but if you are particular, you can get a supe- 
rior article. The fine ‘ bouquets ’ are compounded out of nitro- 
benzine, prussic acid, essence of bitter almonds, benzonitril, lac- 
tate of methyl. 
“ Nor lias the modern trader or chemist neglected the favorite 
cordials or the popular ‘ bitters.’ A sugared mixture and a few 
drops of the proper cordial ‘essence,’ and you have vermouth, or 
absinthe, or noyau. Dr. Magnan and Dr. Laborde analyzed 
these 1 essences.’ Their flavoring qualities depend on the pres- 
ence of salicylate of methyl, salicylic aldehyde, benzoic alde- 
hyde, or benzonitril. These are all frightful poisons. Salicy- Social and National. 
97 
late of methyl causes epilepsy, convulsions, hysteria. Salicylic 
aldehyde, which is the ordinary flavoring used in vermouth and 
in ‘ bitters/ induces epilepsy ; while benzoic aldehyde, the bou- 
quet of the noyau of the day, provokes tetanic convulsions. 
“ We cling fondly to old traditions and to old ‘saws.’ Wit- 
ness the ‘light-wine’ tradition, and the old ‘saw/ ‘If you 
would correct the evil of intemperance, encourage the use of 
light wines.’ In the past there was wisdom in the saying ; to- 
day there is none. Where are you to get your wine, light or 
heavy ? Cheap, or dear, ‘ some things' called wines you may 
have—but let us try to learn more about the wine of the period. 
“ You know what a fatal enemy of the grape the phylloxera 
proved to be. The French vines suffered severely. Among 
great and small, in the C6te d’Or as well as in the Gironde, the 
phylloxera blighted the grape. The crops grew less and less, 
and the vinter poorer and poorer. Something had to he done. 
M. Petiet did it in 1881. After the grapes had been pressed, 
and all the old-fashioned wine had been extracted from them, 
he gathered together the skins and treated them to a bath of 
sugared water. Eureka! a second vintage. The new vintage 
was thin, of course, but the chemist found nothing hurtful in 
it. In color, as compared with the wine of ante-phylloxera 
times, it lost about a half; in alcohol it was but slightly defi- 
cient ; and as a food it was declared to be two-thirds as good as 
the real thing. This is light wine No 2. Well, if grape skins 
and a sugar-bath will give a pretty good light wine, why not 
keep bathing the skins ? How bright you are ! That is exactly 
the notion that presented itself to some of the vintners. Forth- 
with they proceeded to give the same mess of skins three, four, 
five baths. On the homoeopathic principle of ‘ high potencies/ 
it is just possible that, intrinsically, bath No. 5 was more potent 
than our No. 2. But, certainly, you would not suspect this 
when drinking it. However, here was the raw material of a 
considerable quantity of ‘ light wine.’ Constructively it was 
the juice of the grape. It was deficient in color, but this could 
be remedied—chemically. It was deficient in alcohol, but this 
could be easily remedied. There was the beet-root alcohol and 
the potato alcohol. Nothing could be simpler. Have a glass 
of ‘ light red wine ’ ? Oh! do. It will warm you up ! 
“ Then there was the ‘ good ’ wine. The supply was so 
scanty, it seemed a pity not to put it all to good use. Happy 
thought! Let us draw off some of the good wine from the cask 
and replace it by good water. You find it a little weak ? Had 98 
Alcohol in Society. 
we not better ‘ vinify ’ it ? How do you suppose wine is 
‘ vinified ’ ? Have you forgotten the bad alcohols ? Good wine, 
and good water, and a dose of potato alcohol—you see the vin- 
tage goes on bravely. Who will care for phylloxera now ? So 
much for the French wines, red or white. The ‘ light red wine ’ 
of our fathers has gone forever, it is to be feared. And we 
must reconsider our cherished theory of ‘ light wines ’ remedy- 
ing intemperance. Analyzing the Bordeaux wines some years 
ago, M. Henninger found four grains of amylic alcohol to the 
quart of wine. Sixteen grains, if you remember, kill a dog. 
In a white Alsatian wine the same chemist found eight grains 
of the same poisonous alcohol to the quart. 
“Oh! you meant ‘light German wines! ’ They used to be 
very good indeed, even in our time. The phylloxera has not 
done much harm to the Ehine vineyards, that is true. But the 
demand for the Ehine wines has largely increased. Our Ameri- 
can Germany would have ‘ the good Ehine wine.' The Conti- 
nental demand grew apace. The crops were not always large 
enough to supply everybody. There was nothing to do but to 
call on the chemist. Of course everything that honest men 
could do had already been done. The ‘ good Ehine wine ’ had 
been watered and vinilied; the California wines had been im- 
ported, mixed, and vinilied. But still it was impossible to make 
enough of ‘ light wine.’ A doctor with the pleasing name of 
Gall came to the rescue. Now, when the grape has been har 
vested, the must of the meanest, poorest grapes along the river 
is gathered into great vats. A soapy-looking substance, manu- 
factured from potatoes, is mixed with the must, and the pump is 
turned on. Water is not added absolutely ad lib., but it is 
added in amount sufficient to assure much more than the nor- 
mal quantity of wine. When this ‘broth’has sufficiently fer- 
mented it is strained off. The potato-sugar is again added, 
the pump works, and so on until the lees are exhausted. Nat- 
ural fermentation being no longer possible, chemical ferments 
and artificial heat are used successfully. Compared with the 
ordinary brandy or whiskey of commerce, the first ‘ brew ’ of 
Dr. Gall’s Ehine wine may be commended, on account of its 
‘ lightness.’ But when we get down to wash No. 4 or No. 5, 
would they not be a little too ‘ light,’ unless vinified and odor- 
ized ? And, whether or no, would you recommend their use as 
a cure for intemperance ? True, they could send us more pure 
wine from Germany. The grape is there. This new process of 
wine-making has diminished the demand for the grape. Oh! Social and National. 
99 
the perversity of man! Our fathers were right in their day. 
They knew good wine and recognized the comparative sobriety 
of wine-drinking as compared with whiskey-drinking peoples. 
But our fathers would not father the trash that is offered to us. 
Could they speak they would warn us against the wine that is 
notwine. Can we not recognize the change in the ‘thing’ 
and protect ourselves against the chemist ? ” 
(d). The antagonism of the liquor traffic to all that 
conduces to peace and prosperity, sacredness of life, and 
the highest well-being of all classes in community, is man- 
ifest whenever a saloon or bar-room is opened. No matter 
how keenly a liquor-seller may condemn wrongs committed 
by others, his conscience is dead to the wrongs and enormi- 
ties attached to his own business. No matter how tender- 
hearted he may be towards the suffering whose woes have 
not been caused by rum, he is brutal towards those, who 
with bleeding hearts plead with him not to deal out to hus- 
bands, brothers, and children, that which mingles the deep- 
est degradation and shame with the keenest suffering. And 
no law has yet been framed for the protection of the com- 
munity in general, or for particular classes in it, which, so 
long as it permits the traffic, is obeyed by the trafficker. 
The selling of liquor to anybody who will pay for it, is his 
business, and no regulations are permitted by him to stand 
in the way of evasions of them. Gain is his aim. Dis- 
play, attraction, music, food, are his baits thrown out to 
lure patronage, but only available to patrons. What 
Oliver Goldsmith said more than a century ago, concerning 
public houses, is still true of all places in which intoxicants 
are sold: “I never saw a city or a village yet, -whose mis- 
eries were not in proportion to the number of its public 
houses.” 
Lobd Chakcellob Caikns, referring to the temptation 
of gin shops in London, said : 
“ Few in the better position of society know the great temp- 
tation to which workingmen are exposed. Those men could 100 
Alcohol in Society. 
not go along the street without seeing open for them, places 
wherein they could have light and warmth, where they could 
be received with open arms, and could find the newspapers and 
other amusements. But this was provided on one condition 
only_that they should drink, and continue to drink, and pay 
for their drink.” 
To specify instances in which wives and children are 
brutally repulsed, and their pleadings that husbands and 
fathers may not be allowed to partake of the poison, 
would be superfluous, they are so notorious in every commu- 
nity. 
Iu “Alcohol in History,” several instances of saloons 
patronized almost exclusively by minors, are given;—nota- 
bly the traffic with this class in Chicago. A few more re- 
cent examples are noted here. The Chief of Police of 
Jersey City, in his report for the year 1881, makes the fol- 
lowing startling disclosure : 
“ I would call the attention of your honorable body to the 
alarming increase of drunkenness among the boys of this city. 
The difficulty has its origin in the too free license of irresponsi- 
ble parties who are allowed to keep saloons where the game of 
‘ pool for drinks ’ is permitted. The state has no law governing 
this game of sufficient force to hold the parties accused, and I 
recommend that some action be taken to provide a law. It is 
an every-day occurrence to see boys going through the public 
streets intoxicated from these saloons. A knowledge of the 
surety of punishment on conviction is the best preventive 
against the commission of a crime, and some adequate law is 
needed to put a check on this startling and alarming vice.” 
Under the caption of “ A Righteous Verdict” the secu- 
lar press in February 1882, contained the following: 
An eight years old boy died at Point St. Charles, (Montreal) 
from excessive use of liquor. The coroner’s jury has brought in 
a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons un- 
known. An effort is being made to find the persons who gave 
the liquor.” 
About tbe same time, according to tbe “ Cincinnati Ga- Social and National. 
101 
zette,” a boy only eight years old, a confirmed drunkard, 
died drunk in Cincinnati. 
During the winter of 1882, the “ Brooklyn Times ” 
related the following as having taken place in that city: 
‘‘An interesting case has just been brought under the Civil- 
Damage Law, by Mr. Philemon Wright, a Methodist local 
preacher, against a liquor-dealer, to recover $2,000 damages 
from a saloon keeper for making his son a confirmed drunkard. 
The boy is only seventeen, and had been regular and studious 
in his habits until he was enticed into this rum-shop and ruin- 
ed.” 
Equally atrocious are the violations by liquor-dealers of 
the laws for the protection of the Indians. Said Hon. 
William Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Pres- 
ident Polk, in his annual report: “ It would be a delight- 
ful task to lead this people, step by step, in the path of 
civilization and improvement, if that path was not block- 
aded at every step by a whiskey keg, and every effort to 
promote their welfare and happiness thwarted and counter- 
acted by a set of heartless whiskey dealers, for the purpose 
of plundering these Indians of their money and their goods: 
and to rob them of their food, their clothing, their virtue 
and their health.” He added: “None but the most 
stringent and well-enforced laws can curb the cupidity of 
that class of men who are engaged in this disgraceful traf- 
fic.” * 
The report of the Secretary of War, 1882, shows that the 
Indian wars during1 the previous ten years, cost $5,058,821. 
In view of the fact that unscrupulous government agents, 
largely interested in the liquor traffic, have encouraged the 
use of this curse among the Indians, we are not out of the 
way in attributing a large share of this cost, and of the suf- 
* For more with regard to the dealings of these traffickers 
with the Indians, as also of the several iniquities of the business, 
see, “ Alcohol in History.” 102 
Alcohol in Society. 
fering and mortality which it represents, to the Drink Sys- 
tem. 
Another evidence that the liquor traffic is opposed to the 
best interests of the community, is found in the fact that so 
many disturbances and crimes originate with saloon keep- 
ers and liquor sellers. Says Mr. E. F. Cragin, of Chi- 
cago : 
“The fact which came to my notice while a member of the 
Grand Jury, and which surprised me, although it may not he 
new to some, was this: A very large number of the complaints 
coming to us were from the saloon keepers themselves. They, 
more than any other interest, I think more than all others com- 
bined, invoked the aid of the law. Their employes were dis- 
honest, their tills were robbed, their clothing stolen, their fur- 
niture broken, their windows smashed, their lives threatened, 
themselves were beaten, in fact, they were the abused and suf- 
fering portion of the community. Since then I have been told 
that the proportion of their complaints is still greater in the 
police courts than before the grand jury, and I am also informed 
by a prominent ex-official that none in the community so often 
ask for help and for protection from the City Government as the 
saloon-keepers. None so often call for, and need the police as 
they. You will remember that the list of the murdered for last 
year included quite a number of saloon-keepers.”* 
(e). In still another direction the antagonism of the 
Drink System to industry, agriculture and general prosper- 
ity, is manifest in the fact that neither the dealer in nor 
the manufacturer of intoxicants, contribute anything to the 
wealth and ability of the people, but that they promote idle- 
ness, increase the cost of living, cause waste, and are a 
drain'upon all industries. Judge Balcom, in a charge to 
the Grand Jury of Oliemung County, N. Y., said truly: 
“The keepers of whiskey saloons and dram shops produce 
nothing—do not earn anything, hut support themselves and 
families, if they have any, on the earnings of others. It would 
he better for the community to support such venders of alcoholic 
* The ‘‘Star and Covenant,” Chicago, March 25, 1882. Social and National. 
103 
drinks and their families by direct taxation, if they will not 
work, than to permit them to support themselves and families 
by making a large portion of the people poor and miserable, if 
not criminals, by the sale of their liquors.” 
All trades suffer when men, by drinking, incapacitate 
themselves for paying their bills ; and every sober, indus- 
trious man, is compelled to pay not only for his own sup- 
port, but also for the support of those whose earnings go 
into the rum seller’s tills; tradesmen being sure to so cal- 
culate profits on what they sell, as to cover their losses 
from this cause. Every community, therefore, is crippled 
and impoverished by this villanous traffic, and this in the 
indirect way just indicated, making no mention, at this 
point, of the direct tax levied to support paupers, and detect 
and punish crime. 
Our prosperity is also diminished by the short supply of 
grain, caused by the destruction of such vast amounts in 
breweries and distilleries, thereby necessitating the demand 
for a higher price of that which is sold for food. Writing 
in regard to the enormous waste of grain in the liquor man- 
ufactures of Great Britain, a writer in the London “ Wit- 
ness ” says: 
“ In reference to the food supply, it includes the cultivation of 
every available acre of land; yet we have 80,000 acres of the 
best land employed in the cultivation of hops for the manufac- 
ture of beer. This may be looked upon as a small item, but when 
taken in connection with the land employed in the production 
of grain destroyed in the same way, it assumes serious propor- 
tions. An estimate has been made that if the Counties of Mid- 
dlesex, Kent, Sussex and Surrey were connected into one vast 
grain growing farm, they would not produce as much grain as is 
destroyed in the manufacture of strong drink. The estimated 
quantity thus destroyed is 80,000,000 bushels. Eighty million 
bushels of grain would produce 1,200 million 4 pound loaves 
of bread, and would give 188 loaves yearly to every family of five 
persons in the United Kingdom. 
“ If these loaves were to be used as paving stones, they would 
make a road ten yards wide and two hundred miles long. To 104 
Alcohol in Society. 
cast these loaves from any part of London into the Thames, 
allowing ten hours a day, and one thousand loaves an hour, it 
would require 380 years to do so. And yet this mighty destruc- 
tion of food actually goes on year after year, and men are cry- 
ing out at the extent of our pauperism and want; for we ought 
to bear in mind that the manufactured article which occasions 
all this destruction of human food gives no equivalent to the 
consumer or society. We don’t deny that some small amount of 
partial good may be the result of its use, both as an article of 
diet or administered as a medicine, but such good is entirely 
lost in the overwhelming evil their use entails.” 
The rapid growth of the liquor interest in the United 
States presents the same view of enormous waste here. An 
examination of this branch of the subject in detail would 
require a large volume. The work has been well and 
thoroughly done by Dr. William Hargreaves, in his work 
entitled “ Our Wasted Resources,” to which the reader is 
referred. 
Another terse and accurate writer, obtaining his facts 
from the government statistics published in the United 
States census, thus writes on this general subject of the 
relation of the liquor traffic to other trades, to business 
generally, and to wages: 
“ The following facts should he candidly looked in the face 
by every business man and laborer, viz.: when the shoemaker 
has earned his $400 he has produced something useful for every 
industry from which he draws. The same is true of the farmer, 
mechanic, miner, or any other useful industry ; but the multi- 
tudes employed in the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
drinks are supplying no need of humanity, and yet their produc- 
tions amount to eleven per cent, of the whole of our total pro- 
ducts ; and they draw their eleven per cent, from the total of 
our useful industry; so that while the honest, sober laborer in a 
factory, mines, or on the farm has produced $400, the liquor 
traffic has drawn out $44, and he has $356 left for his family. 
Then add to this at least one and one-half per cent, more for ex- 
tra taxation, which equals $6 more, and the laborer has only $350 
left for his year’s work. One-eighth of all he has earned! and 
one-eighth of all the business man has gained by his cares, risks, Social and National. 
105 
and labors. Dear reader, how long have you been earning $400 ? 
Do not lay down this paper, or read fast here, be candid and 
thoughtful and answer the question; then look your family square 
in the face, and ask that wife and yourself, How many ways do 
you need $50 in your home ? Then think of this terrible traffic 
in murder, crime and woe (politely called wines and liquors), and 
reflect. There is your $50. 
“Oh! ye business men, take an hour or two and think how 
long has it taken you to gain $400 with all your care, risk, and la- 
bor, and then ask how many ways do you need $50 in your bus- 
iness and your family, and reflect in the rumseller’s coffers lie 
your $50. 
‘‘Look at its relations to our markets. The immense drink 
bill of our country is paid for mostly by suffering. That is, the 
drunkard’s family suffer for the clothes, groceries, and other 
comforts of life they greatly need, and would have, were he a 
sober man. 
“ This suffering causes so much less trade for our merchants. 
The reason they cannot sell more, is not because the goods are 
not needed, but because these families have no money to buy 
with, having spent their income for drink. This immense loss 
to useful trade, makes so much less trade for the manufacturers. 
“ How would our country rejoice, could we find a foreign 
market for several hundred millions of dollars a year for our man- 
ufactured goods, but this would not be half so valuable to us 
as the same amount of goods sold to supply our destitute families. 
The objector may say here, Does not the labor and business in 
wines compensate for this loss in what we call legitimate trade ? 
A few considerations we trust, may answer the question. 
“ (a) It pays but a trifle more than one-balf as much for labor to 
$100 capital invested, as the average of other industries ($9.57 
to $17.97), and about one-seventh as much to $100 produced. 
To illustrate this, in producing $100 in boots and shoes, $22.85 
goes for labor; of clothing $17.25. For cotton goods $15.94 ; 
while $100 spent in liquors gives only $1.94 for labor. If the 
$700,000,000 were spent in average useful industries, it would 
employ six to ten times as many laborers, and from two to three 
times as much capital. From these facts, the wages paid in 
the liquor business must be of the lowest grade, to say nothing 
about loss of time in drunkenness, which is equal to over 500,000 
laborers every day. 
“ (b) As a rule, our legitimate wants are beyond our means to 106 
Alcohol in Society. 
purchase, so there would be no lack of work, for proper pay, if 
this accursed business were totally destroyed. 
“ (c) The incendiary who burns $10,000 worth of property has 
made just as much business as a saloon-keeper who sells $10,000 
worth of liquor, especially if he burns such property as must be 
rebuilt. 
“ Again I am often asked, Does not a dollar paid a man in a 
brewery or behind the bar, buy as many goods as a dollar paid 
a man in a cotton mill ? I answer, Yes. How then, said the 
objector, is this business a dead loss, as by fire ? We hope the 
following illustrations will satisfy the inquirers. 
“ (1) A merchant buys $1,000 worth of cloth; it has a real or in- 
trinsic value, something that supplies a real need. The same is 
true if the money be invested in grains or groceries. A dealer 
invests $1,000 in liquors ; he has nothing of intrinsic value, it 
supplies no need ; he may exchange it to his customers for mon- 
ey, but that only shifts the loss, as he gives them no good for 
their cash. 
“ (2) It is a principle, that a dollar should bring its equivalent 
at every exchange. A gold eagle from the mint pays the labor- 
er who coins our money, he pays it to a tailor for a coat, the tail- 
or pays it to the bootmaker for a pair of boots, each receives a 
par value for his money, but the bootmaker pays it for a liquor 
bill. What has he to show for his money ? no need supplied. 
The saloon-keeper has only given him $10 worth of poverty 
and sorrow, and added so much to public burdens and dan- 
gers. True, the liquor dealer may buy food and clothing with the 
money, and so could the robber who takes it from his victims 
by force, or the cheat who procured it for worthless trash, but 
their victims are alike the losers. 
“ The liquor traffic holds a fearful relation to the great and 
vexing difficulties of the labor question and its consequent 
strikes and riots, with their immense destruction of life and 
property. And so apparent is this relation that even the 
authorities of Pittsburgh, who were so blind as to license the 
saloons in time of apparent safety, closed them in the day of 
their calamity. But the immediate effects of drunkenness in 
exciting the mob, and stirring up the turmoil and riot, was hut 
the surface relation of the traffic to all this trouble. Under- 
neath this lies a constant relation and a terrible fact. We 
have shown the liquor traffic robs our industries of at least 
$700,000,000, and we now propose to show that this heavy bur- 
den naturally falls upon the laborer, the very class who are Social and National. 
107 
least able to bear it. Our industries comprise two great 
interests of our country; capital and labor. We first note its 
influence upon capital. As already shown it lessens the sales 
of articles produced by our manufacturers. This loss to the 
markets produce such competition as is ruinous to the profits. 
When goods sell so low as to destroy his profits, the manufac- 
turer is compelled to cut down wages or stop work. The laborer 
chooses to work at reduced wages rather than to suffer the con- 
sequences of idleness. These reduced wages lessen the amount 
of goods he is able to purchase from the trade. This loss to the 
trade only increases the existing difficulties of our over-bur- 
dened market. We next notice the effect of the traffic upon the 
money market. The intemperate man and the sober man with 
reduced wages, are not able to make the deposits in the savings 
banks, they otherwise would. This lessens the supply of money 
in the loan market. 
“Again, many of our business men so waste their profits 
through intemperance, that they are compelled to borrow 
money from the loan market, when but for this waste they 
would have no need of it. Also many a farmer is compelled to 
borrow money from the same cause. This increases the demand 
upon the loan market. In accordance with the law of supply 
and demand these causes increase the rate of interest. This 
high rate of interest comes from the manufacturer’s profits. 
“As before shown, the liquor traffic adds $1.50 tax to every 
thousand dollars invested. This extra tax is also drawn from 
the profits. With this extra tax, high rate of interest, and 
strong competition caused by intemperance, the manufacturer 
can look only two ways for relief. First, the price of his mate- 
rial and goods, second, the cost of labor. 
“ The law of supply and demand unalterably fixes the former; 
the cost of labor lies somewhat within his power. 
“ The laborer is compelled to work for whatever wages he 
can get, or suffer the wretched consequences of idleness. Upon 
the laborer then, falls these heavy burdens. If the manufac- 
turer owns his capital he will not lose it if he can help it. He 
would sooner put his money at interest than do business with- 
out profit. If the manufacturer hires his capital he cannot lose 
it, for the money lender will not let him if he can help it. 
“ Again, tlie laborer suffers from the liquor traffic from still 
another source. Poverty in the homes of these drinking men, 
not only diminishes the sales of the production of his labor, 
thereby lessening the demands for labor, but crowds the 108 
Alcohol in Society. 
labor market with work hands and thus increases the supply 
of labor. Thousands from these homes of drinking men, are in 
the factory who ought to be in the school-room. Husbands 
and wives both work in the mill, when the wife and mother 
ought to be at home attending to household duties, instead of 
leaving their children with their neighbors, or to run in the 
streets. So long as from these several causes, two laborers are 
wanting one job, wages will be low, and this makes it easier 
for capital to oppress labor. For instance, Fall River manu- 
facturers cut down wages when the fall in the price of goods 
destroyed their profits. WThen the rise of goods raised their 
profits, the laborer expected corresponding addition to his 
wages, but is only told by his employer: “'Why should we 
raise the price of wages when help is plenty at present prices.” 
The fact is, poverty caused by intemperance has crowded the 
labor markets, and as long as labor is plenty at $1.50 per day, it 
will be vain for labor to expect capital to give him $2.00 per 
day, simply because he can afford it, or because the laborer 
needs it. This system of robbery carried on by the liquor 
traffic tends to enrich the few and impoverish the many, and 
unless the cause is removed we may expect strikes, riots, and 
‘ perilous times.’ ” * 
(/). The power of the Drink System to subvert Mo- 
rality and Social Order is still further seen in its effects on 
pauperism and dependence. The late Horace Greeley, in 
an article on 11 The Problem of Pauperism,” published in 
the u New York Tribune,” said : 
“We urge upon all the duty of looking the problem of Pau- 
perism full in the face. Paupers increase faster than those who 
must work for their subsistence; hence the load grows annu- 
ally heavier. Will it ever be lightened ? and how ? 
“ We cannot safely answer these questions without clearly 
understanding the cause (or causes) of the evil. 
“ Intemperance is one immediate cause—perhaps the greatest. 
Most of our paupers have become such through the use of alco- 
holic liquors — often by themselves; sometimes by their 
parents or other guardians. We estimate that nine-tenths of 
the paupers in our country were made so directly by strong 
drink.” 
* Lecture by Rev. J. H. Sherman, on “ Saloon vs. Citizen.” Social and National. 
109 
Tbis proportion prevails in every country where drunk- 
enness abounds. In the report of the commissioners of 
Charities and Correction, for the City of New York, in 
1880, is the following : 
“ The cause of pauperism and consequent disease and crime 
have received careful and thorough investigation by those 
long enjoying favorable advantages of observation. Many 
reasons for this painful and rapidly increasing pauperism 
among the people have been assigned, but that which takes 
precedence above and beyond all others is the curse of intem- 
perance. It is this which robs the pockets of the poor man ; it 
is this which benumbs his brain and destroys his faculties, and 
this which predisposes himself and his children to fatal disease. 
It is this which breeds sensuality in all its protean and disgust- 
ing forms; this which induces shiftlessness and irresponsibility 
among the masses, and it is this which saps the life from those 
who would otherwise be healthy and vigorous. The statistics 
of alms-houses, work-houses, penitentiaries, asylums, and hos- 
pitals all attest this dark and gloomy fact. A sure remedy for 
this sweeping scourge, so devastating in its deadly influence, is 
beyond human ken. Yet if the malignant character of this 
enemy of the people’s health, and its far-reaching tendencies 
toward disease and death, were more thoroughly understood, a 
revolution in sentiment on the question might the more speedily 
be inaugurated. If the masses of intelligent citizens will ex- 
amine carefully the records of the case books at your hospitals, 
they will find in them most convincing evidence that a large 
proportion of pauperism and life-destroying disease is caused 
by the excessive use of intoxicating liquors,” 
In a document published by the Legislature of the State 
of New York for 1863,—the report of the Secretary of the 
State: 
“ The whole number of paupers relieved,” during the year, 
was said to he “261,252. During the preceding year 257,534. 
These numbers would he in the ratio of one pauper annually to 
every fifteen inhabitants throughout the State. In an examin- 
ation made into the history of those paupers by a competent 
committee, seven-eighths of them were reduced to this low and 
degraded condition, directly or indirectly, through intemper- 
ance.” 110 
Alcohol in Society. 
The official records and reports of Massachusetts, are to 
similar effect: 
“The pauper returns made annually for along time to the 
Secretary of State, show an average of about 80 per cent, as 
due to this cause in the County of Suffolk (mainly the city of 
Boston). Thus, in 1863, the whole number relieved is stated at 
12,248. Of these the number made dependent by their own in- 
temperance is given as 6,048 ; and the number so made by the 
intemperance of parents and guardians at 3,837; making an 
aggregate of 9,885. 
“ The Third Beport of the Board of State Charities, page 
202, declared intemperance to be ‘ the chief occasion of pauper- 
ism ; ’ and the Fifth Beport says : ‘ Overseers of the poor vari- 
ously estimate the proportion of crime and pauperism from one- 
third, in some localities, up to nine-tenths in others. This 
seems large, but is doubtless correct in regard to some locali- 
ties, and particularly among the class of persons receiving 
temporary relief, the greater proportion of whom are of foreign 
birth or descent.” 
“ In tlie Six tli Annual Report of the Board of Health, page 45, 
under the head, ‘ Intemperance as a Cause of Pauperism/ the 
chairman, Dr. Bowditch, gives the result of answers received 
from 282 of the towns and cities to the two following questions : 
“ ‘ 1. What proportion of the inmates of your alms-houses are 
there in consequence of the deleterious use of intoxicating 
liquors ?1 
“ 12. What proportion of the children in the house, are there 
in consequence of the drunkenness of parents ? ’ 
“While it appears that in the country towns, the proportion 
is quite variable and less than the general current of statistics 
would lead one to expect, which is fairly attributable in part, 
at least, to the extent to which both law and public opinion has 
restricted the use and traffic in liquors, yet we have from the 
city of Boston, the headquarters of the traffic, this emphatic 
testimony from the superintendent of the Deer Island Alms- 
house and Hospital: ‘ I would answer the above by saying, to 
the best of my knowledge and belief, 90 per cent., to both 
questions. Our register shows that full one-third of the inmates 
received for the last two years, are here through the direct 
cause of drunkenness. Very few inmates (there are exceptions) 
in this house but what rum brought them here. Setting aside 
the sentenced boys (sent here for truancy, petty theft, etc.), Social and National. 
nine-tenths of the remainder are here through the influence of 
the use of intoxicating liquors by the parents. The great and 
almost the only cause for so much poverty and distress in the 
city can be traced to the use of intoxicating drink, either by 
husband or wife, or both.’ 
“ A startling testimony as to the effect of this cause in pro- 
ducing the allied evil and even nuisance of vagrancy, is given 
in the answer from the city of Springfield : ‘ In addition to cir- 
cular, I would say that we have lodged and fed eight thousand 
and fifty-two persons that we call ‘ tramps ;’ and I can seldom 
find a man among them that was not reduced to that condition 
by intemperance. It is safe to say nine-tenths are drunkards, 
though we have not the exact records.” * 
The u Associated Charities of Boston,” an organization 
composed of fifty-one charitable societies, and twenty-nine 
similar church institutions of the city, say in their second 
annual report: u In the following reports from the Ward 
Conferences there is universal testimony that drunkenness 
is the cause of nine-tenths of the pauperism in Boston. 
How to counteract this evil, is the first subject presented 
to this body for consideration.” 
In Great Britain, gin, whiskey and beer-cursed, the re- 
sults are similar. The number of paupers in the United 
Kingdom during 1873, was as follows : 
England and Wales 3,116,302 
Ireland. 278,771 
Scotland 111,996 
Total 3,507,069 
“It is probable that a few of this number may be reckoned 
in two or more parishes as ‘ Casual/ but as the 'Vagrants ’ are 
not included in the figures for England and Ireland, the bal- 
ance will be fully restored. We have thus ten per cent, of the 
population, or nearly 15 per cent, of the manual labor class 
paupers! 
“ This is the amount of actual rate-supported pauperism, but 
besides this, there is a large amount of poverty and destitution 5 
* “ Alcohol and the State,” pp. 30-32. 112 
Alcohol in Society. 
many mothers struggle hard to maintain themselves and their 
children left destitute by drunken fathers ; many fathers battle 
against the tide in spite of worthless, dissipated mothers ; many 
are constantly on the verge of pauperism ; and there are many 
more who are supported in whole, or in part, by their friends, 
and by those charitable and benevolent institutions which 
Christian philanthrophy has established for the aid and relief of 
the destitute. Any estimate of these classes must, of course, be 
very conjectural, and may be wide of the mark; but it seems not 
unreasonable to reckon the very poor equal in number to the 
actual paupers. 
“It is now universally admitted that intemperance is the 
cause of almost all the pauperism that exists in this country, 
and it leads to it by various roads. It destroys that self-respect 
which makes many of the industrious poor shrink from the 
prospect of becoming public burdens; it induces habits of in- 
dolence, renders a man both unwilling and unable to labor, and 
deadens those natural affections which form a powerful stimulus 
to industry and toil. In addition to many other witnesses that 
might be adduced, we have an overwhelming amount of evi- 
dence on this subject in the Report of the Committee of the 
House of Commons, on the Poor Laws, and in the Reports of the 
two Convocations of Canterbury and York. 
“ In the Canterbury Eeport it is said: ‘It can he shown that 
an enormous proportion of the pauperism, which is felt to he 
such a burden and discouragement by the industrious and sober 
members of the community, and has such a degrading and de- 
moralizing effect upon most recipients of parochial relief, is the 
direct and common product of Intemperance. It appears, indeed, 
that at least 75 percent, of the occupants of our work-houses, and 
a large proportion of those receiving out-door pay, have become 
pensioners on the public directly or indirectly through drunken- 
ness, and the improvidence and absence of self-respect which 
this pestilent vice is known to engender and perpetuate.’ It 
is further declared in these Reports that in many districts there 
would be absolutely no pauperism but for drink, while govern- 
ors and chaplains of unions state that they have never known a 
tetotaller apply for relief. 
“ A careful inquiry was made in 1864 into tlie circumstances 
of 611 paupers in the Edinburgh City Poorhouse—the whole 
number which it contained, being full—and it was found that 
among them all there was not a single abstainer, andthat 407 of 
them had been ‘reduced to their impoverished condition Social and National. 
113 
through drink.’ Not a few from the middle, and some even 
from the upper classes, have sunk down into the degradation 
of pauperism from the same cause. 
“ The craving for driuk does not depart from the victims of 
intemperance after they have been reduced to pauperism, 
although there may be many restraints and checks upon the use 
thereof, and fewer facilities for obtaining a supply. If the 
inmates of a poor-house receive a holiday, or are otherwise 
allowed temporary liberty, they frequently return under the 
influence of drink. ‘Beer is even a standard of value among 
the lowest class of poor. Such expressions as ‘ the price of a 
pint/ 1 worth a pot/ ‘ stood a gallon/ are the usual modes of 
expressing value among the pauperized poor. Dangerous 
indeed must be that section of society (and it is a large one) 
whose standard of value is the ‘ pot of beer.’ ” * 
Rev. George Holt, Chaplain to the work-house at Bir- 
mingham, testifies : “ From my own actual experience, I 
am fully convinced of the accuracy of a statement made hy 
the late governor, that of every hundred persons admitted in- 
to the Birmingham work-house, ninety-nine were reduced to 
this state of humiliation and dependence, either directly or 
-indirectly through the prevalent and ruinous drinking usages 
of our country.” 
A witness before the Parliamentary Committee made the 
following statement: 
“ From the inquiries I have made, I should say that nineteen 
out of twenty of the inmates of work-houses, get there either 
from habits of drunkenness of their own, or of their connec- 
tions. It is wonderful, if you come to make a minute inquiry, 
to see what a frequent source of supplying inmates, is drunken- 
ness. The master of the work-house at Birmingham, said he 
had a list of twenty-six persons who were prohibited from 
going out to see their friends, and twenty-four of these in con- 
sequence of drunkenness. I have inquired respecting our own 
work-house at Islington, occasionally, and have been surprised to 
find how many come there through drunkenness. One man, an 
* “ The Temperance Reformation and its Claims upon the 
Christian Church,” pp. 53-56. 114 
Alcohol in Society. 
exceedingly sober man, a man of good character, who had lived 
in the parish a great many years, was in the work-house ; and I 
found that he had the misfortune of having a drunken wife, 
who had made way with all his property. Sometimes sober 
persons are there, but when you come to inquire, you find their 
wives, or husbands, or their connections, have been drunkards; 
so that the drunkenness of others is the cause of their being 
there.” * 
David Lewis, while Magistrate in Edinburgh, published 
a work entitled 11 Britain’s Social State,” in which, after 
speaking of the amounts expended in the support of poor- 
houses and wTork-houses, he added, (p. 78). 
“ The system of out-door relief, so largely administered in 
Scotland, was regarded in many cases as expending public 
funds for the direct support of the public-house. It is difficult 
to suppress a feeling of indignation in view of its operation. 
Among those hundreds who throng the pay-table when out- 
door relief is being dispensed, there may be seen a number of 
scheming, dissipated men, and strong, healthy women, who 
present their cards with as much confidence and effrontery as 
if it had been a bill for payment of wages after a week’s hard 
work. That tens of thousands of pounds administered to pau- 
pers in Scotland, are annually expended, not in supporting, 
but in still further degrading the drunken recipients, is too 
well-known to require proof. We bave personally witnessed 
numbers of the out-door paupers leaving the pay-table and 
going as directly to the pnblic-bouses in the neighborhood as if 
drawn there by an irresistible magnet. Curiosity prompted us 
to inquire into the details of one forenoon’s transactions, and 
we found that 896 paupers had been relieved, who had received 
the sum of £246 17s. 3d. While it is impossible to obtain an 
accurate knowledge of the proportion of this sum which would 
find its way to the till of the liquor shop, we are satisfied that 
it would be sufficiently large to warrant us in suggesting in 
the strongest possible terms that au amendment be made upon 
the existing Poor Laws, which would render no longer possible 
in any parish in Scotland such a flagrant misapplication of the 
public rates.” 
* “ Parliamentary Report,” p. 300. Social and National. 
115 
The Hon. John Massey, Superintendent of Associated 
Charities of Wilmington, Delaware, made the following 
statement in an address in the Spring of 1888 : 
“We are sometimes confronted with the assertion that desti- 
tution is a cause of intemperance rather than drink of poverty, 
since many families when they fail to find employment seek to 
drown their despair in intemperance. That this may he true 
in some instances we do not deny. But when we trace the 
reason to its ultimate source, and inquire why they are thus 
beaten down in their struggle for an honest livelihood, until in 
sheer desperation they seek to drown their despair in the fatal 
cup, the answer is found in the condition of the labor market, 
brought about by the enormous and destructive waste, or worse 
than waste, of the liquor traffic itself. . . . 
“ As no other one cause enters as a factor into so many cases 
of poverty and distress as the drink evil, so we believe, judg- 
ing from the facts before us, that no other one remedy would be 
so efficacious in the permanent reduction of pauperism as the 
entire suppression of the liquor traffic.” 
(g). It is still further evident from its effects on crime 
aud prostitution, that the Drink System is subversive of 
Morality and Social Order. This has been apparent sev- 
eral centuries, and each year has made the proof stronger, 
until now it salutes our eyes whenever we take up the se- 
cular papers. So thoroughly does the intoxicating cup 
demoralize the whole being of him who drinks it, that 
there is no crime known among men to which it does not 
furnish the incitement. A large proportion of our incen- 
diary fires are originated by it; men who, when sober, are 
free from all inclination to destroy property, are, when in- 
toxicated, so seized with an insane passion for burning, that 
the crime of arson is now generally called pyromania. 
Others are instigated to theft, and are known as klepto- 
maniacs. u I have known,” says Prof. Monroe, “ ladies of 
good position in society, who after a dinner or supper party, 
and after having taken sundry glasses of wine, could not 
resist the temptation of taking home any little article not 116 
Alcohol in Society. 
their own, and who, in their sober moments, have returned 
them, as if taken by mistake.” 
But by far the most common prompting of intoxicants, 
is to deeds of violence. Men who, when sober, have no 
disposition to harm any one, are roused to homicidal fury 
by strong drink. Such are most likely to wreak their fury 
on their friends or on the helpless inmates of their homes, 
but often it falls on the first person who crosses their path. 
The almost constant plea put forth by the criminal class in 
our courts, is, “ rum did it.” 
Often, it may be, long and deep-seated malice causes deeds 
of violence, but even then, intoxicants are resorted to to 
nerve the arm for the murderous 1)1 ow. Howard, the murder- 
er of Miss Harrison, in Rochester, N. Y., confessed that his 
courage failed him when he first planned the perpetration 
of the deed, but that he went into the cellar, and drank 
freely of cider till he was nerved to accomplish his murder- 
ous purpose. 
Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, when 
he visited the theatre to ascertain if his victim had arrived, 
was too much unnerved to fire the fatal shot; but rushing 
into the nearest restaurant, he cried out, 11 brandy ! brandy! 
brandy ! ” and swallowing the fiery poison, returned with 
fiendish brain, and cowardly took the life of the great and 
good President. It is too well known, alas ! that these 
are not isolated cases. 
In England, in 1606, it was found necessary to declare 
drunkenness a criminal offence against society. The 
grounds for the enactment were thus stated, that: 
“ The loathsome and odious sin of drunkenness had of late 
grown into common use within the realm; being the root and 
foundation of many other enormous sins, as bloodshed, stab- 
bing, murder, swearing, fornication, adultery, and such like ; 
to the great dishonor of God and of our nation; the overthrow 
of many good arts and manual trades; the disabling of divers Social and National. 
117 
workmen, and the general impoverishing of many good sub- 
jects : abusively wasting the good creatures of God.” * 
Nearly a century and a half later—1750—Benson, Bishop 
of Gloucester, wrote : “ Our people have "become what they 
never were before, cruel and inhuman. These accursed 
liquors, which, to the shame of our government, are so 
easily to be had, have changed their very nature.” t And 
about the same time the entire bench of bishops protested 
against the Gin Act, as founded on the indulgence of de- 
bauchery, the encouragement of crime, and the destruction 
of the human race. 
And now, two hundred and seventy-eight years later, 
what is the condition ? Canon Farrar thus reports it: 
“ There is scarcely a judge on the bench who has not spoken 
of it till it has become a common place of the courts of justice. 
‘It is not from men that are drunk/said one judge, ‘ but from 
men that have been drinking, that most of the crime proceeds/ 
‘ The worst is/ said another, ‘ that men enter the public house 
sober, and leave it felons/ ‘But for drink/ others have said 
again and again, ‘not one of these cases would have been 
brought before me/ ‘Do away with drink/ say others, ‘and 
we may shut up two-thirds of our prisons/ So they have said, 
well nigh every one of them—and still the maddening wave of 
alcohol flows on, and sweeps legislators into Parliament upon 
its crest. And are these judges fanatics? are they Pharisees? 
Or is it that they are forced to see what every one of us 
might see if we chose—a fearful and intolerable fact ? The new 
year dawned upon us five months ago with all its cheerful proph- 
ecies, and jubilant hopes, and when it began, I thought I would 
make a record of a few out of the thousands of awful crimes 
with which drink would blight and desecrate its history. Very 
soon I paused, sickened, horror-stricken. The crimes were too 
awful, too inhuman, sometimes too grotesque in their pitiable 
horror. Other crimes are human crimes, but the crimes done 
in drink are as the crimes of demoniacs, the crimes of men who 
for the time have ceased to be men, and have become fiends. 
* Vide Capil on “ The Laws of Drunkenness.” 
t “ Canon Farrar’s Talks on Temperance,” p. 12. 118 
Alcohol in Society. 
Oh! that these walls should hear them. Oh! that the angel of the 
nation might blot them out of his record with such tears as 
angels weep, to think that Christ, daily recrucified in the midst 
of us, should from His throne in heaven, ‘ see only this,’ after 
the passion of a thousand years. 
“ I have some of them written here, but they are too black to 
tell you. Now it was a boy stabbing his father in a cellar in 
Liverpool; now a wife killing her husband with one savage 
blow; now a woman’s suicide; now a little infant overlaid; 
now a drunken carman driving over a child, a woman, and a 
boy; now a man—I dare not go on. I dare not describe the 
least bad, much less tell the worst. These things, these daily 
incidents of this year of grace, Christian men, and Christian 
women, are they unfit for your fastidious ears ? Ah! but things 
are as they are, and it is not your fastidiousness that can undo 
them. And is it not hypocrisy to shrink with delicate sensi- 
bility from hearing of crimes which are going on about you from 
day to day, and from week to week, and from year to year, 
while you do not shrink from the fact that they should be done, 
from the fact that they should be borne, by Englishmen like 
yourselves ; done and borne by English women who might once 
have worn the rose of womanhood; done and borne by boys 
and girls who were once little bright-eyed children in our 
schools, and who, but for drink, might have grown up as hap- 
py and as sweet as yours. And if you are ashamed that these 
things should be, why do many of you not lift one finger to 
prevent this mingled stream of crime and pauperism from pour- 
ing its deluge through our streets ? For where are these things 
being done ? Among Pacific cannibals ? among ancient pagans, 
such as St. Paul describes ? No, I declare to you that I find no 
records of such chronic horrors among them as I find, normally, 
daily, as incidents of ordinary life, as items of common news, 
happening now: happening in the midst of the nineteenth 
century after Christ; happening in Christian England; hap- 
pening in Liverpool, in Dublin, in Glasgow, in Manchester; 
happening here under your minster towers.” * 
Farther on he says : 
“ And what does it cost in crime ? I will tell yon, not as a 
surmise of lay own, but on the recorded testimony, on the em- 
• Ibid. pp. 16-18. Social and National. 
119 
phatic evidence of almost every judge and magistrate, and 
recorder on the English bench. Remember that those arrested 
for drunkenness do not furnish one tithe of the drunkards, and 
then shudder to hear that, in a single year, 203,989 were arrested 
for crimes in which drunkenness was entered as a part of the 
charge ; and that last year 5,131 women—only think of that, 
and of all the hideous degradation, all the unspeakable horror 
which it implies!—were arrested for drunkenness in Middlesex 
alone. In every province, in every country, in every great 
city of the United Kingdom, it has been stated from the seat of 
justice, again and again, that, but for drunkenness, there 
would not be in England one-tenth of the existing crime. It 
is getting a hideous commonplace of judges. Only ten days 
ago Lord Coleridge said, at Durham, that, but for drink, we 
might shut up nine-tenths of our jails. Last week was brought 
up before Mr. Justice Manisty, at Manchester, a wretched crea- 
ture in man’s semblance, who, as though he were worse than a 
natural brute beast made to be taken and destroyed, had bru- 
tally kicked to death a wife far advanced in pregnancy ; and 
the judge in sentencing him to the gallows, said: ‘You have 
been found guilty of the crime of wilful murder, your victim 
being your own wife. You are a sad, sad instance of the con- 
sequences of indulging in drink, which has brought you to this 
fearful condition. It is only owing to God’s mercy that this 
has not brought many, many more into a similar case. I am 
afraid that if this vice continues to be indulged in as it now is, 
many more will stand in a like condition to you. Oh that we 
could, by administering the law, put an end to it! ’ Ah, he 
might well say that! But dare you blink at such testimony ? 
Do you think that they say such things rashly ? ”* 
There is no gainsaying the facts which reveal jpst such 
a state of things in the New World, also. In a report 
made to the Dominion House of Commons, Ottawa, Canada, 
a province where beer is largely used, we have this state- 
ment : 
“ Your Committee find, on examining the reports of the 
prison inspectors for the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, that 
out of 28,289 commitments to the jails for the three previous 
* Ibid, pp. 80-82. 120 
Alcohol in Society. 
years, 21236 were convicted either for drunkenness or for 
crimes perpetrated under the influence of drink.” 
Of the United States, Dr. Elisha Harris, for many years 
Inspector of Prisons, says : 
“More than half of all the convicts in the State prisons and 
penitentiaries voluntarily confess the fact that they were in- 
temperate and frequently drunk previous to the crimes for 
which they are imprisoned, and that such intemperance had an 
essential influence in preparing them for the acts of crime. 
About 82 per cent, of the convicts in the United States privately 
confess their frequent indulgence in intoxicating drinks. The 
Superintendent of the Detroit House of Correction found that 
only 18 per cent of the convicts in fifteen State prisons and a 
large number of county jails even claimed to be temperate. 
This may bo taken as a fair statement of percentage of the 
temperate and intemperate in the prisons and jails of the 
United States and Great Britain. 
“ After two years of careful inquiry into the history and con- 
dition of the criminal population of the State, we find that the 
conclusion is inevitable that, taken in all its relations, alcoholic 
drinks may justly be charged with far more than half of the 
crimes that are brought to conviction in the State of New York, 
and that fully 85 per cent, of all convicts give evidence of 
having in some larger degree been prepared or enticed to do 
criminal acts because of the physical and distracting effects 
produced upon the human organism by alcohol, and as they 
indulged in the use of alcoholic drinks.” * 
The u New York Herald/7 bears the following testi- 
mony : 
“ Out of 51,566 persons committed to the city prisons in a 
single year, 34,316 .were of foreign birth, and 17,250 natives; of 
19,324 females, 14,077 were foreign horn, and 5,265 natives. Of 
all the males 19,937 were intemperate and 12,187 temperate; of 
all the females, 12,770 were intemperate, and 6,572 temperate. 
In the same year 31,491 were sent to the First District Prison— 
the Tombs. These were from the lower part of the city, where 
the foreign element largely predominates. The arrests directly 
or indirectly caused by the use of liquor were : 
* “ The Relations of Drunkenness to Crime/’ p. 2. Social and National. 
121 
Males 
Females 
Total. 
Assaults 
.... 2,058 
295 
2,353 
Delirium tremens 
14 
14 
Disorderly conduct 
.... 4,679 
4,159 
8,838 
Intoxication 
.... 5,462 
7,593 
13,051 
Vagrancy 
.... 1,007 
625 
1,652 
Total 
....13,220 
12,692 
25,912 
“ Of the 254 persons admitted to the Asylum for the Insane in 
a single year, 127 were intemperate, 69 moderate drinkers, 
55 unknown, and only 3 abstainents. Another year’s record 
shows 280 intemperate, 90 moderate drinkers, 17 abstainents 
and 11 unknown. If we assume, and we believe it to be much 
within bounds, that 70 per cent, of the crime and pauperism of 
the city is chargeable to the use and abuse of intoxicating 
liquors, we shall have to charge to liquor that percentage of the 
cost of the Police Department, of the Department of Charities 
and Correction, of the Criminal Courts, and probably a consid- 
erable fraction of the Health and Fire Departments. In 1880 the 
following appropriations, excluding the money for street clean- 
ing, were made: 
For Police Department $3,459,917 
Police Courts and General Sessions 350,000 
Charities and Correction 1,618,680 
Total $5,428,597 
“ Awarding 70 per cent of these items to liquor, we find the 
figures to he $3,800,015. With various items that cannot he pre- 
cisely classified, we may put the round sum at $4,000,000 or $3.30 
for each man, woman and child of our population. 
What does rum pay back ? In plain terms, hardly one cent 
on the dollar. The Excise Board do not seem to know how 
many places they have licensed, nor to have any definite idea 
of how many rumshops there are in the city. But in 1877, the 
year of the smallest receipts for licenses, a census was made by 
police precincts. This showed in the whole city 7,874 liquor 
shops, of which 2,177 had licenses. There were at that time in 
the Fourth Precinct 440 liquor shops to a population of 20,000, 
and in the Fourteenth 387 to a population of 30,000. Here was 
a “gin-mill” for every sixty inhabitants. The Ninth Pre- 
cinct had just about as many inhabitants, with twice as much 
territory, and 250 liquor shops—one to every 200 inhabitants. 122 
Alcohol in Society. 
Norw, the records of police arrests for the last six months of 1880, 
show this comparison: 
Liquor Arrests 
Shops 
Men 
Women 
Total. 
Fourth Precinct 
.. 440 
2,072 
1,259 
3,331 
Fourteenth Precinct... 
.. 387 
2,153 
1,361 
3,514 
Ninth Precinct . 
.250 
889 
192 
1,081 
“ The precincts named, correspond almost exactly to the 
wards of the same numbers. The two rum-ridden precincts (the 
fourth and fourteenth) furnish almost 20 per cent, of all the ar- 
rests in the city. It is needless to say that more than seven- 
eighths of the arrests were chargeable to drink. It only remains 
to say that the present system of excise has not reduced the ex- 
pense of the city for the support of pauperism or the punish- 
ment of crime to the amount of one dollar. It was never intend- 
ed or expected to do so.” 
In Massachusetts, Hon. E. Trask, while lieutenant-gov- 
ernor, had before him “ six hundred applications for pardon 
for criminals confined in prison, all but two of whom com- 
mitted their crimes while under the influence of liquor.” 
A chaplain of the Charlestown prison says : “ Since I 
have been there, I have conversed with over fourteen hun- 
dred different men ; and I have spoken with them particu- 
larly with regard to the matter of intoxicating drinks ; and 
out of that number, fifteen-sixteenths have stated that 
liquor had something to do with their coming there.” 
Judge Sanger, of Boston, gives it as his opinion that 
11 There are few cases into which the use of intoxicating 
liquors do not more or less enter.” 
“ Crime and tippling,” said Governor Andrew, u are so 
linked together, that if we could banish tippling, the judges 
have a thousand times declared that crime, unable to live 
alone, would follow too.” * 
The reports of the State Board of Charities corroborate 
this testimony. Says the report for 18G7 (p. 202), speak- 
* “ Speech in Representatives Hall, Boston, April 3, 1867,” p. 
73. Social and National. 
123 
ing of the aggregate returns of convicts: “ About two- 
thirds are set down as intemperate, but this number is 
known to be too small. Probably more than 80 per cent, 
come within this class, intemperance being the chief occa- 
sion of crime.” 
The report for 1868 (p. 137), says: “Of.all the prox- 
imate causes or occasions of crime, none is so fruitful as 
intemperance. The returns show that from 60 to 80 per 
cent, of our criminals are intemperate, and the proportion of 
those whose crimes were occasioned by intemperance is 
probably even greater.” 
And the report of 1869 (p 175): “The proportion of 
crime traceable to this great vice must be set down, as 
heretofore, at not less than four-fifths.” The same is the 
testimony of the inspectors of the State prison, 1868, (p. 4): 
“ About four-fifths of the number committed the crimes for 
which they were sentenced, either directly or indirectly by 
the use of intoxicating drinks.” 
In Pennsylvania, Judge Allison, in sentencing a prisoner 
who had been convicted of murder, took occasion to speak 
of the previous good character of the prisoner, describing it 
as an enviable one, independent of the offence for which 
he was about to be sentenced, and referred to the fact that 
the use of intoxicating liquor had been the cause of his 
crime and disgrace; at the same time remarking that this 
was but a type of nearly all the murder cases that had pre- 
viously come under his notice—his observation and experi- 
ence having convinced him, that to the use of intoxicating 
liquor was to be attributed the numerous murders yearly 
committed—“ that blood and rum went hand-in-hand.” 
The same year, the prison inspector reported that “of all 
offences against the laws, more than three-fourths are directly 
chargeable to the use of intoxicating beverages; ” some 
prison officers even making the proportion greater, as, for 
instance, in Lancaster County, where the officers positively 124 
Alcohol in Society. 
assert that nine-tenths of all offences are directly charge- 
able to the use of liquor. And the inspector, in a very 
emphatic manner, asserts his conviction that the highest es- 
timates are nearest the truth. He states the fact that, in 
one county, “ out of thirty-seven prisoners remaining in 
prison Dec. 31st, 1866, twenty-seven were habitual drunk- 
ards, and ten claimed to be moderate drinkers.” 
The prison agent of Philadelphia, in his report for 1870, 
says: 
“ An ending of the bad effects of this unholy business may be 
seen in the fact that there have been thirty-four murders in the 
last year in our city alone, each one of which was traceable to 
intemperance; of our 38,000 arrests in our city within the year, 
seventy-five per cent, of this number were caused by intemper- 
ance ; ignorance and drunkenness are the real causes of nearly 
all the misery in the world. The last is immeasurably worse 
than all the others combined; for such is the benumbing and 
stultifying effect of intoxicating drinks that they change a man 
of reason and feeling into a brutalized monster. Hence it is 
that the knife, the dagger, the bludgeon and the pistol are in 
such frequent use. No sooner has our county disposed of one 
case of murder or assassination than the liquor shops furnish 
others to supply its place.” 
A short time ago, Judge Pierce of Philadelphia, said in 
an address in that city: 
“Science has revealed, by the aid of the microscope, the 
presence of living and often disgusting objects in a drop of 
water. The stomach revolts at the spectacle, under the glass, 
of the creatures which tenant every refreshing draught, how- 
ever invisible to the naked eye. Let me tell you what once 
came out, under the process of justice in the Court of Oyer and 
Terminer in this city, from a single gallon of whiskey, which to 
most eyes seemed innocent and harmless enough. There came 
out of it two murderers, two widows, eight orphans, two cells 
in the State Prison filled with wretched convicts for a term of 
years. The whiskey, moreover, was used in connection with 
the administration of one of the ordinances of religion—the 
sacrament of baptism. It was drunk at the christening of a 
child, and the men who drank it fought, and two lost their Social and National. 
125 
lives, and the further results were what I have said. Did not 
Shakespeare say well: ‘ O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou 
hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil ’ ? ” 
It is reported in the 11 Christian at "Work,” for January, 
1880, that u Mrs. Elizabeth Comstock, of Michigan, the 
widely known Quaker missionary, has visited 115,000 
prisoners, and of this number she finds that 105,000 were 
brought to prison through strong drink.” 
The Grand Jury of Kings County (Brooklyn), N. Y. 
said in March, 1888 : 
“ Our county penitentiary and lunatic asylums and alms- 
houses are being overcrowded with the subjects of crime, of 
insanity, of poverty, mainly the results of the use of strong 
drink, and our local criminal courts are being burdened with 
trials brought about largely through the use of such drink.” 
The “ Kentucky Temperance Advocate ” says : “ About two 
years ago Judge A. W. Bartlett, of Trimble County, refused to 
license the sale of intoxicating drinks to any man in the county, 
and was sustained by the courts, and as a result there is not 
now a criminal case on the docket, nor a criminal in jail, nor a 
pauper in the county; and in contrast with this, look at the 
license counties in the same State. Anderson, with her two 
whiskey murders in one week ; Jefferson, with from forty to 
fifty whiskey murders per year ; Pulaski, with ten whiskey 
murders recently ; Bourbon, with ten whiskey murders now on 
the docket; Scott, with her docket crowded.” 
Testimony of this kind might he accumulated indefinitely. 
Let this, however, suffice, for nothing appears, or can ap- 
pear, to contradict it. A few words will be added, show- 
ing how physicians are accounting for the fact, and how 
their testimony is corroborated by the proof that drunken- 
ness increases or diminishes in proportion to the amount of 
intoxicants sold. 
Peter Borne, in his very valuable work, 11 The Tetotal- 
leBs Companion,” thus sets forth the connection between 
drinking and crime (pp. 31, 32): 
“ During the seven years between 1812 and 1818, both inclusive, 
the annual average number of prisoners committed for trial in 126 
Alcohol in Society. 
England and Wales was 11,305; hut during the seven years be- 
tween 1826 and 1832, the annual average was 21,796; the commit- 
tals having doubled all hut a trifle, during the twenty-one years; 
while the population had increased only about one-third. Now 
observe the cause of this great increase in the commitments. 
During the first of the above periods, the annual consumption 
of British spirits were five millions of gallons. In the last, it 
had risen within a little to nine million gallons or almost double. 
That the matter may he still more manifest, take the following 
facts for consideration. During the four years succeeding 
1820, the number of criminals committed for trial in England 
and Wales was 61,260, while the consumption of spirits was 
twenty-nine million gallons. But in the succeeding four years 
(ending 1828), the number of committals had swelled to 78,345, 
while the consumption of spirits had increased to forty-two 
million gallons. The calendar thus sympathizing with the in- 
creased consumption of intoxicating liquors during the same 
period. 
“ In the next four years (ending 1832), the number of commit- 
tals was 91,366, while the consumption of spirits was forty-eight 
million gallons, the increase of committals during the eight 
years only being upwards of thirty thousand—just one half, or 
fifty per cent.—the consumption of spirits in England and 
Wales increasing in the same time sixty-eight per cent.; with a 
very decided increase also in the consumption of malt liquors. 
Further, in the first of the above periods of four years (1821-4 
inclusive), the number of licenses granted in England and Wales 
for the sale of intoxicating liquors, was 351,647 ; while in the 
last period, ending with the year 1832, it amounted to 468,438 ; 
the increase being 116,791 licenses. Thus is established an im- 
portant fact; viz. that public houses, drinking and crime, in- 
crease in a corresponding ratio.” 
The testimony of Dr. Nott, previously quoted, is a con- 
firmation of this phenomenon, viz.: “In Scotland, in 1823, 
the whole consumption of intoxicating liquors amounted to 
2,300,000 gallons, in 1837 to 6,776,715 gallons. In the 
mean time, crime increased 400 per cent.” 
Similar the condition of things in Ireland, as shown by 
the falling off of crime, as drunkenness diminished. Judge 
Noah Davis, of New York, thus states the case : Social and National. 
127 
“ Before the close of October, 1838, Father Mathew had en- 
rolled in Ireland more than 250,000 names on his pledges of to- 
tal abstinence. Well, names are nothing. Things are much. 
Lord Morpeth, when Secretary for Ireland, gave these statistics. 
Of cases of murder, attempts at murder, offences against the per- 
son, aggravated assaults, and cutting and maiming, there were, 
he says, in 1837, 12,096 ; 1838, 11,058; 1839, 1,097 ; 1840, 173. 
Between 1838 and 1840 the consumption of spirits in Ireland 
had fallen off 5,000,000 gallons ; the public-houses where liquor 
was retailed had lessened by 237 in the city of Dublin alone : the 
persons imprisoned in Bridewell (the principal city prison), had 
fallen in a single year from 136 to 23, and more than 100 cells 
in the Bridewell being empty; the Smithfield prison was actu- 
ally closed.” * 
“ My sole purpose,” Judge Davis adds, “ is to establish that 
intemperance is an evil factor in crime, by showing that what- 
ever limits or suppresses the one, diminishes the other in a ratio 
almost mathematically certain. Whether judging from the de- 
clared judicial experience of others, or from my own, or from care- 
fully collected statistics running through many series of years, I 
believe it entirely safe to say that one-half of all the crimes of this 
country and of Great Britain are caused by the intemperate use 
of intoxicating liquors; and that of the crimes involving per- 
sonal violence, certainly three-fourths are chargeable to the 
same cause.” (P. 21.) 
(h). Tlie great “ Social Evil,” Prostitution, is, in a de- 
gree wholly incalculable, created and continued by drink- 
ing. “ Many prostitutes, it is true,” says Dr. Tait, Police 
Surgeon, Edinburgh, in his work on u Magdalenism,” “had 
no claim to the title of drunkard before surrendering them- 
selves to a life of licentiousness ; but comparatively few 
have yielded to the entreaties of their first seducer without 
being previously brought under the influence of intoxicat- 
ing liquors. Most of the married females in the lower, and 
all belonging to the genteel ranks of society, who have be- 
come prostitutes, had previously contracted habits of intem- 
perance. These habits became the constant source of dis- 
* “ Intemperance and Crime,” p. 12 128 
Alcohol in Society. 
sension and wrangling between them and their husbands, 
till a formal or voluntary separation took place between 
them. In the poorer classes, a tendency to dissipation can- 
not be otherwise supported than by prostitution; whilst in 
the richer no woman who is under the influence of liquor is 
capable of resisting attempts that may be made upon her 
virtue.” 
To the same effect Duchatelet, in his Work on 11 Prostitu- 
tion in Paris,” speaking of the “ Peculiar defects of pros- 
titutes,” alludes to intemperance, as follows: 
“The love of strong liquors may be placed at the head of 
these defects ; it may be considered as general, though in dif- 
ferent degrees. They early acquire this habit, from a desire to 
prevent reflection; and they insensibly accustom themselves 
to it, until the practice becomes so strong as to preclude all 
chance of returning to a better state, and finishes by plunging 
them into the lowest state of brutality.” 
In the report to the English Parliament, on Public 
Houses, in 1853, is the testimony of a woman who kept 
twenty-six brothels: 
“That if all the public houses were closed early, she would 
have to close some of her houses. The women I have placed in 
institutions tell me that their best time is when men are ex- 
cited by drink ; they come out of these houses at eleven, 
twelve, or one o’clock in the morning, and during those hours 
they have more command over the men than at other times.” 
“ It was stated before the Committee of the House of Com- 
mons, that at a dinner party, composed chiefly of distillers, one 
of these very patriotic and chaste gentlemen gave as a toast, 
‘ The distillers’ best friends, the poor prostitutes of London.’ ” * 
For further testimony on this subject, as also for statis- 
tics on the extent of prostitution, and the number of pros- 
titutes, the reader is referred to “ Alcohol in History.” 
As it is commonly said by those interested in the manu- 
facture and sale of intoxicants, that opposition to their traf- 
* “Anti Bacchus.” By Key. B. Parsons, p. 55. Social and National. 
129 
fie proceeds from Puritan fanatics, we cannot better con- 
clude this section of our work than by employing the lan- 
guage of one who is so far removed from puritanism as to 
be a lecturer against all religion. Col. Robert G. Inger- 
soll, in an address to a jury in a case involving the manu- 
facture of ardent spirits, is reported to have said : 
“ I am aware there is a prejudice against any man engaged in 
the manufacture of alcohol. I believe from the time it issues 
from the coiled and poisonous worm in the distillery, until it 
empties into the hell of death, dishonor, and crime, that it is de- 
moralizing to everybody that touches it, from the source to 
where it ends. I do not believe that anybody can contemplate 
the subject without being prejudiced against the crime. All we 
have to do is to think of the wrecks on either side of the stream 
of death, of suicides, of the insanity, of the poverty, of the de- 
struction of the little children tugging at the breast, of weep- 
ing and despairing wives, asking for bread, of the man of genius 
it has wrecked, the man struggling with imaginary serpents, 
produced by this devilish thing; and when you think of the 
jails, of the alms-houses, of the asylums, of the prisons and of 
the scaffolds on either bank, I do not wonder that every thought- 
ful man is prejudiced against this vile stuff called alcohol. In- 
temperance cuts down youth in its vigor, manhood in its 
strength, and age in its weakness. It breaks the father’s heart, 
bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes natural affection, 
erases conjugal love, blots out filial attachments, blights pa- 
rental hope, and brings premature age in sorrow to the grave. It 
produces weakness, not strength ; sickness, not health; death, 
not life. 
u It makes wives widows, children orphans, fathers fiends, 
and all paupers. It feeds rheumatism, nurses gout, welcomes epi- 
demics, invites cholera, imports pestilence, and embraces con- 
sumption. It covers the land with misery, idleness and crime. 
It engenders controversies, fosters quarrels, and cherishes riots. 
It crowds your penitentiaries and furnishes victims to the scaf- 
fold. It is the blood of the gambler, flic element of the burglar, 
the prop of the highwayman, and the support of the midnight 
incendiary. It countenances the liar, respects the thief, esteems 
the blasphemer. It violates obligations, reverences fraud, hon- 
ors infamy. It defames benevolence, hates love, scorns virtue 
and innocence. It incites the father to butcher Ms helpless 130 
Alcohol in Society. 
children, and the child to grind the parental ax. It bums up 
men, consumes women, detests life, curses God, and despises 
heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perfidy, denies the jury 
box, and stains the judicial ermine. It bribes voters, disqualifies 
votes, corrupts elections, pollutes our institutions and en- 
dangers the government. It degrades the citizen, debases the 
legislator, dishonors the statesman, and disarms the patriot. It 
brings shame, not honor: terror, not safety ; despair, not hope ; 
misery, not happiness; and with the malevolence of a fiend, calm- 
ly surveys its frightful desolations, and stained with havoc, it 
poisons felicity, kills peace, ruins morals, wipes out national 
honor, then curses the world, and laughs at its ruin. It does 
that aUd more—it murders the soul. It is the sum of all villa- 
nies, the father of crimes, the mother of all abominations, the 
devil’s best friend, and God’s worst enemy.” * 
IV. Passing now to consider The Drink System as Sub- 
versive of National Prosperity, we find ourselves on the 
threshold of an almost limitless theme. In the essay im- 
mediately preceding this, and so often referred to in these 
pages, 11 Alcohol in History,” we have attempted a sketch 
of the extent and effects of drunkenness among ancient and 
modern nations, and an indication of the character of the 
evils which invariably accompany and follow it. The sub- 
ject demands treatment in this connection; and while seem- 
ing sameness may appear to be inevitable, it will be our 
aim to avoid mere repetition and to make the former Essay 
and the present supplemental to each other; each some- 
what independent of the other, and yet most complete in 
their united testimony. 
We commence, then, with a few examples of National 
Demoralization in Ancient Times, traceable to the use of 
intoxicating- beverages. 
(a)- Assyria was a world-conquerer, and while engaged 
in its subjection of every opposing nation, was characterized 
by bravery, abstinence, and frugality,—its name a synonym 
for power and magnificence; but, as Rollin assures us, lux- 
* “ Tlie National Freeman.” April, 1881, pp. 99,100. Social and National. 
131 
ury, intemperance, sensuality, loosened its reins of power, 
prostrated its splendor in the dust, made its people imbe- 
cile and cowardly. Nineveh was taken by the troops of 
those kings who, but a short time before, were vassals or 
tributaries of the monarchy. The Assyrians, trusting not 
to the courage of their souls and the strength of their arms, 
as their indomitable fathers had done, shut themselves up 
within their massive walls, and looked solely to these for 
their safety ; but in vain, for their great city was taken ; 
its inhabitants put to the sword ; and its drunken monarch 
was slain in the midst of his debauchery. 
Babylon, the remnant of the Assyrian Empire, presents 
a similar instance of greatness, and riches, and power ob- 
tained through abstinence; and alas! of loss of all these 
through intemperance. 
“ The very night of its overthrow was one of general debauch- 
ery; the king, with his satraps and nobility, were drinking 
from the vessels brought from the temple at Jerusalem. The 
soldiery, and even the men on guard, were wallowing in drunk- 
enness; and in this condition, were surprised and hewn down 
by the Medes and Persians, who had for some time been besieg- 
ing the city, and having turned the course of the river, availed 
themselves of its bed as a path, and marched into the city be- 
neath its mighty gates. The king and his drunken compan- 
ions were slain in the midst of their revelry.” 
The Persian Empire, built on the ruins of the Babylo- 
nians, was founded by the conqueror of Babylon, a man of 
strict abstinence, a bold rebuker of intemperance in others, 
Cyrus the Great, “ who, for military skill and bravery, may 
be compared with the greatest of the warlike great; for 
wisdom, with Solomon ; and for the application of it, with 
Solon.” His portrait, as drawn by Xenophon, reveals a 
wisdom and virtue so rare, that many have suspected his 
biographer of drawing largely on imagination. In the 
first book of the Cyropsedia, Xenophon relates of Cyrus, 
that, when a boy, on the occasion of a visit to his grand- 132 
Alcohol in Society. 
father, Astyages, the king of Media, he took a great dis- 
like to the king’s cup-bearer, because that official being al- 
so the only one allowed to introduce persons to the royal 
presence, did not permit the young prince admission to the 
king so often as he desired. 
On one occasion, when Cyrus was allowed by the king 
to make presents of the meats on the table to any one he 
pleased, he at once began distributing them to the king’s 
officers in waiting; to one, because he had taught him to 
ride; to another, because he waited well upon his grand- 
father ; and to a third, because he took good care of his 
mother. The cup-bearer was the only official to whom he 
gave nothing. The king expressed concern at the neglect 
shown to this officer, for whom he had a special regard, and 
who deserved it, he said, because of the dexterity with 
which he served him. “Is that all, father?” said Cyrus. 
u If that be sufficient to merit your favor, you shall see 
that I will quickly obtain it; for I will take upon me to 
serve you better than he.” 
Immediately equipping himself as a cup-hearer, and hold- 
ing the cup in an adroit manner, he presented it to the king 
with a dexterity and a grace which charmed him exceed- 
ingly. Then throwing himself upon his grandfather’s neck, 
and kissing him, cried out in great joy, 110 Saccas, poor 
Saccas, thou art undone! I shall have thy place! ” 
Astyages embracing him, said : “ I am mighty well pleased, 
dear child; nobody could serve me with a better grace ; 
but you have forgotten one essential ceremony, that of 
tasting; ” alluding to the duty of the cup-bearer, as an 
indication and assurance that there was no poison in the 
cup, to pour some of the wine into his left hand, and taste 
it before presenting it to the king. Cyrus quickly replied 
that it was not from forgetfulness, but because he believed 
that there was poison in the liquor. And on being asked 
why he thought so, replied that he so concluded from the Social and National. 
133 
conduct which he had witnessed when it was drank at a 
former entertainment. “ For,” said he, “you all began to 
sing ridiculously; and without attending to the singer, you 
swore he sang divinely; then every one telling stories of 
his own strength, you rose and fell to dancing, but without 
rule or measure, for you could not even keep upright; then 
you entirely forgot yourselves; you, that you were a king, 
and they that you were their ruler; then I discovered, for 
the first time, that you were celebrating a feast where all 
were allowed to talk with equal liberty, for you never 
ceased talking.” “ Why,” said Astyages, “have you never 
seen the same thing happen to your father?” “No, 
never,” said Cyrus. 
As Cyrus grew to manhood, his temperance principles 
grew and strengthened, and he carried them into his gov- 
ernment with such effect, that his empire speedily increased 
from 100,000 subjects to the largest of that early day. To 
so great a degree did he restrict the use of wine, that it 
was not allowed except on festive occasions; and even 
then it was provided that no large vessels should be used, 
on account “ of its enervating effects both on the body and 
mind.” (Cyropsedia, Eighth Book.) 
The Medes, on the other hand, who formed part of the 
Empire, were notorious drunkards, and their pernicious ex- 
amples gradually undermined the virtue of the Persians, so 
that the nation in time became the most corrupt and drunk- 
en on the face of the earth. Prof. Rawlinson, in the 4th 
volume of “ Ancient Monarchies,” says of the Persians: 
“ Instead of water, wine became the usual beverage; eacb 
man prided bimself on the quantity be could drink ; and the 
natural result followed, that most banquets terminated in gen- 
eral intoxication. Once a year, at the feast of Mitheas, the 
King of Persia, according to Denis, was bound to be drunk. A 
general practice arose of deliberating on all important af- 
fairs under the influence of wine, so that in every household, 
when a family crisis impended, intoxication was a duty.” 134 
Alcohol in Society. 
What wonder, then, that after one short war with the 
troops of Alexander of Macedon, Babylon bowed to the 
dictation of another conqueror. 
The evidences of debauchery and lust which everywhere 
met the eyes of the conqueror, so shocked the good sense 
of Alexander, that he expressed his feelings in most marked 
disgust. But soon he began to give himself up to all the 
madness of intemperance, and died of a frenzied fever 
brought on by drunkenness. 
Athens, in its early day, and during its rise, was renowned 
for temperance; the strict laws of Solon severely punishing 
intemperance and all other irregularities of life. The Spar- 
tans also greatly abhorred intemperance. Plutarch says 
that it was customary for the fathers of families to make 
their slaves drunk, in order that their children, seeing them, 
might be disgusted with the exhibition. Plato declares 
that the vice of intemperance was so effectually rooted out 
of the republic of Sparta, that in no town or village could 
be found any drinking association, nor anything resembling 
one. If any man found another intoxicated, even though 
he should plead in justification that it was the feast of 
Bacchus, his excuse could avail him nothing as a screen 
from punishment. The Locrians had a law punishing with 
death any man who should drink wine, unless by a physi- 
cian's prescription. Lycurgus, of Thrace, cut up all the 
vines in liis kingdom, and passed severe laws against the 
importation of wine from any country. Such were the 
Greeks in their youth, and marvellous was the glory to 
which they attained. But after the final expulsion of the 
Persians, a decline began. Athens lost its moral tone, 
Sparta relaxed her laws, and Thrace, as it had been the 
fabled birth-place of Bacchus, became, in its degeneracy, 
the principal theatre of the infamous rites by which his 
name was celebrated. 
Rome commenced its career distinguished by rare abste- Social and National. 
135 
miousness, under the influence of which the small dominion 
of the Latin Kingdom extended by little from one tract of 
land to another, then to states, finally to kingdoms, till at 
length it became so compacted and concentrated into a 
power with which no other could successfully contend, that 
it has been known to this day as the chief mistress of the 
world. In its earlier years the cultivation of the vine, 
which in its wild state grew throughout Italy, was alto- 
gether neglected, and wine was so rare among them that 
milk was the common beverage employed in their sacrifices. 
As intercourse with other nations, especially with Greece, 
became more extensive, the love of wine increased, till at 
length the triumphs of arms abroad were celebrated at 
home with long continued libations of native and imported 
intoxicants. Bacchanalian festivals also became frequent, 
and slowly, but surely produced enervation of the national 
character, the extinction of that indomitable ardor which 
once so greatly distinguished the people, and to which they 
were indebted for their success and greatness: 
“ Finally, like the preceding empires, the vitals of the Eoman 
constitution became corroded by intemperance ; effeminacy and 
supineness were brought on; and the vast political fabric 
(whose huge shadow, as it followed the sun described a mighty 
circuit extending to the extreme borders of the known world,) 
being thus sapped and undermined, fell, pile upon pile, with a 
crash to which history presents no parallel.” 
(b). If we turn to modem times, we are confronted by 
an array of evils springing from intemperance, and threat- 
ening the well being of nations, that are more fearful and 
ruinous than all other calamities combined. Their effects, 
so invariable and utterly appalling, would not be endured 
by any people if they were a new calamity just developing 
among us, or even reasonably anticipated as the result of 
some newly proposed experiment. But they have ceased 
to be novel or experimental: they are real, and certainly 
ruinous; and because this is so, probably, they fail to com- 136 
Alcohol in Society. 
mand the attention they deserve. Let us look at them anew, 
and be roused from our indifference. 
Consider, then, the effects of the Drink System upon 
national development, strength and wealth. As we have 
before said, the home is the unit in the national life. In- 
temperate homes make intemperate neighborhoods, and the 
circle of influence widens into the more general community, 
the state and the nation. Hence the influences are not only 
direct in forming the condition of the mass, but also fear- 
fully counteractive in determining the character and for- 
tunes of communities, neighborhoods and homes. 
The solidarity of the race is undeniable, and therefore, 
whatever affects one affects all, and whatever affects all 
reaches backward and affects and influences every home. 
None of us do or can live to ourselves alone, least of all is 
it possible for this result in a “ government of the people 
by the people.” Vice, crime, pauperism, individual de- 
basement, social corruption, national shame and ruin, 
are the sure fruits of the evil of intemperance. These 
dwarf all national development, waste strength and de- 
stroy wealth. The money spent for intoxicants by four of 
the leading powers—Great Britain, France, Germany, and 
the United States, is annually three billion dollars. This 
is the direct expense only, the sum that goes out of the 
pockets of the drinkers into the tills of the liquor sellers.- 
The indirect expense is as much more, Two thousand 
millions of dollars a year worse than thrown away! What 
would it not purchase if devoted to production, instead of 
destruction ? National debts would speedily disappear if 
this wasted sum could be applied to them ; cities could be 
cleansed, and disease warded off from our crowded centres; 
industries could be encouraged that would give all citizens 
profitable employment; and gains sufficient for the support 
and comfort of old age would be in reach of all who toil 
for daily bread. Social and National. 
137 
Statistics from the chief of the bureau at Washington 
give the amount of spirituous and malt liquors and wines 
consumed in the United States for the year ending June 
30, 1887, as follows : 
Gallons. 
Distilled domestics 66,183,360 
“ foreign 1,490,685 
Malt liquors 675,311,932 
Wines, all kinds 18,439,929 
Total 761,425,906 
This gives a rate of 1 38-100 gallons of distilled spirits 
per capita; malt liquors 11 1-4 gallons, and wines 31-100 
gallons, a total of 12 83-100 gallons, for every man, 
woman and child in this country, at a cost of $12.17 per 
capita, reckoning the present population at 60,000,000, and 
the amount expended at $750,000,000. Probably the 
amount is really nearer $900,000,000. And concerning it 
u Bonfort’s Wine and Spirit Circular,” viciously says, in 
1888: 
“ The sum of $900,000,000 is surely very reasonable, when we 
come to consider all the good that is done, and all the fun there 
is bad in drinking beer, whiskey, champagne, claret, etc. 
What is a pitiful sum of $15 a year per capita for all this hap- 
piness ? We are perfectly certain that the same benefit could 
not be derived from the same money spent in any other way. 
Seventy-five dollars a year is all that each home pays for such 
happiness.” 
Not long since, in a sermon delivered at Westminster 
Abbey, the Archbishop of York stated that the annual 
drink bill of England is £140,000,000, or about $700,000,- 
000. “The Western Brewer,” for March 1882, has the 
following: 
“ The number of breweries in Great Britain in 1880 was 26,111; 
in Germany, 23,940; in the United States, 3,293 ; in France, 
3,100; in Belgium, 2,500; in Austria-Hungary, 2,297; in Hol- 
land, 560; in Russia, 460; in Norway and Switzerland, 400 
each; in Denmark and Sweden, 240 each. The quantity of 138 
Alcohol in Society. 
beer produced in Great Britain was about 49,000,000 hectolitres 
(the hectolitre is equal to about 22 gallons); in Germany, 
about 37,000,000; in the United States, 22,000,000; in Austria- 
Hungary, 11,000,000; in Belgium, 8,000,000; in France, 7,000,- 
000; in Eussia, 3,000,000; in Holland, 2,000,000.” 
The same journal for January, 1882, says: 
“ Tlie quantity of French wine consumed in England, was in 
1859, 695,000 gallons ; while in 1880 the consumption amounted 
to 6,986,000 gallons. England is still in the main inhabited 
by a population of beer and spirit drinkers. Eleven hundred 
and ten million gallons of beer, and 40,000,000 of spirits are 
annually consumed in the United Kingdom, while simulta- 
neously the yearly consumption of wines of every kind hardly 
exceeds 16,000,000. The annual consumption of beer in Eng- 
land is 25 gallons per head of the population.” 
Look now at the confessed results of this ruinous habit, 
as they are set forth, not by total abstinence men and pro- 
hibitionists, but by shrewd political observers, and by the 
secular press, as matters of fact so startling as to force at- 
tention to them. What a fearful showing, in this respect, 
as also an argument against the claim of the advocates of 
beer-drinking, that wine and beer countries are not cursed 
by intemperance from ardent spirits, is the following, trans- 
lated from a recent number of the u Naclrrichten aus 
Deutschland und der Schweiz ” (News from Germany and 
Switzerland): 
“ Complaints are coming in from different parts of Germany, 
Austria, and Switzerland in regard to the rapid increase in the 
consumption of whiskey, and the consequent civil disturbances 
and physical inj ury to the working-classes. In the north and 
east of Germany the worst kind of potato-whiskey has displaced 
the corn-whiskey—that is, the latter has, on account of the 
unsatisfactory harvest, risen so greatly in value that poorly- 
paid workmen cannot afford to buy it ; but the North German 
holders of large estates provide in the most ‘ liberal ’ way ‘ a 
poor man’s drink ’: for a nominally low rate they produce 
potato-brandy, of which even the poorest workman can buy 
more than is good for him. Especially in Upper Silesia has the Social and National. 
139 
whiskey pe3t secured a foothold, which is evidenced by nume- 
rous newspaper reports. 
“The situation is a sad one in Switzerland also. Swiss 
physicians have asked that the allowance of drink to the sol- 
diers he diminished. The decrease in the size of the Swiss as a 
race, as compared with former times, and the light muscle of 
the rising generation, are wholly attributed to the consumption 
of whiskey. A physician recently said that as long as spirits 
were not removed from the workingmen’s tables, and the milk- 
can did not resume its former place, so long would the people 
retrograde and give place to another race that would be less 
bold, venturesome, and enterprising, and more easily contented. 
Another cause for complaint was found in the fact that many 
workmen openly declared that they would rather endure the 
pangs of eternal punishment than work at the present low rate 
of wages. This feeling and the large consumption of whiskey 
were together the cause of the alarming situation.” 
The New York “ Nation” not long ago published a let- 
ter from a Berlin correspondent, on the alarming increase 
of intemperance, and the use of distilled spirits in place of 
or in addition to the use of beer. Belgium, he says, has 
since 1840, more than doubled the use of ardent spirits, and 
in the industrial counties has a dram-shop for every seven 
persons. In Germany the dram-shops increased, in two 
years, twelve thousand two hundred and sixty-one—about 
ten per cent. The late Emperor of Germany, in an address 
to his parliament, called attention to the serious increase 
of crimes and misdemeanors committed by men in a state 
of drunkenness, and Parliament has sought to limit the 
number of licensed dram shops. 
Of the effects in Great Britain, Mr. Gladstone has said: 
“ More evils come from intemperance to the people than 
from war, pestilence and famine, those three great scourges 
of the human family.” So the London “ Times: ” “ The 
use of strong drink produces more idleness, crime, want and 
misery, than all other causes put together.” 
Mr. Bruce, the home secretary under the former Gladstone 
ministry, confessed that intemperance was “not only a 140 
Alcohol in Society. 
great evil, but the greatest of all evils with which social 
reformers have to contend.” 
11 Startling as it may appear,” says Charles Buxton, in 
his essay—How to Stop Drunkenness—“ it is the truth, that 
the destruction of human life, and the waste of national 
wealth, which must arise from the tremendous Russian war, 
are outrun every year by the devastation caused by nation- 
al drunkenness. Nay, add together all the miseries gen- 
erated in our times by war, famine and. pestilence, the three 
great scourges of mankind, and they do not exceed those 
that spring from this one calamity.” 
“ It; is, in short, intoxication that fills our jails. It is intoxi- 
cation that fills our lunatic asylums. And it is intoxication 
that fills our work-houses with poor. Were it not for this one 
cause, pauperism would he nearly extinguished in England.” 
(Pp. 1, 11.) 
“1 am convinced,” says Grace Greenwood, u that Eng- 
land’s heart of oak is being eaten out by the fire of intem- 
perance.” 
Ireland, cursed for centuries by English misrule, has 
been yet more severely cursed, and is to this day bearing a 
more fearful burden, from whiskey, than from its severest 
political oppression. Bishop Doyle, of the Catholic Church, 
an undoubted sympathizer with the Irish, in a pastoral 
charge, in 1831, thus truthfully addressed his people: 
“ What are the sources of your evils? A disregard of your- 
selves, springing out of your own worthlessness, your own idle- 
ness, your own drunkenness, your own want of energy and 
industry in improving your own condition. These are your 
vices, the fruits of long-continued and grinding oppression, the 
almost hereditary vices of the Irish people. Your situation 
never can or will improve until unceasing industry succeeds to 
idleness, until obedience to the laws and self-respect become the 
characteristic of the Irish people. Till then yon may complain 
of oppression, hut it will not cease. You may rail at the law, 
hut it will persecute you. No power on earth can at once rem- 
edy your evils. The Government and Legislature are endeav- Social and National. 
141 
oring to heal them, hut time is necessary for the accomplish- 
ment of so great a work. More depends on you than on acts of 
Parliament. All the laws that ever were enacted would not 
make an idle or a violent people rich and happy.” 
This picture represents most truthfully the Ireland of to- 
day, a half century after the words of wholesome warning 
were penned. Whiskey is the tyrant who oppresses Ire- 
land now. The amount involved in the total rental of land 
concerning which, and no doubt justly, there has been so 
much feeling and trouble, is $57,000,000, while the aver- 
age liquor bill is annually $69,000,000, over ten dollars 
per head for every man, woman and child in that unhappy 
country. What wonder that sympathy for such a peo- 
ple often gives way to indignation at their criminal beastli- 
ness. 
Mr. John G. Richardson, the great linen manufacturer 
of Bessbrook, writes from Belfast, to the “London Hews,” 
that Ireland’s greatest need is a change in her liquor laws ; 
that “ in the year of famine over fifty millions of dollars 
have been spent in drink in that down-trodden country; 
and that those districts which are most clamorous against 
the landlords and the rents, are the largest consumers.” 
A correspondent of the “Metropolitan Journal,” sug- 
gests the notoriously frequent grog-shop as a potent factor 
in the general distress of Cahirciveen. He says: “ I am 
told that the duty on spirits sold in this cheerful townlet 
exceeds the whole annual revenue of the barony of Iver- 
augh.” 
In the city of Cork more than one-half the shops are re- 
tail drink-shops, whose annual income has figured at one 
million dollars. 
As we write this we are favored with an examination of a 
new and reliable work setting forth the general statistics 
of the United Kingdom, from which we obtain the follow- 
ing items of costs for the year 1879: 142 
Alcohol in Society. 
POLICE FORCE. 
England and W;ales £ 3,058,671 
Scotland 304,972 
Ireland 1,217,456 
£4,581,099 
PRISONS. 
England and Wales £430,985 
Scotland 67,475 
Ireland 145,700 
£644,160 
PAUPERS. 
England and Wales, £8,286,213 
Scotland 848,974 
Ireland 1,124,909 * 
Total £10,300,096 
Making a total for these three items, £15,523,550, or $77,617,- 
750. 
What we have seen to be true of Switzerland, is true 
of France as to the extent of drinking. For many years 
there was drunk annually in France, of wine, 770,500,000 
gallons; of beer 80,000,000; of brandy, 16,000,000; being 
a total of 867,100,000 gallons, or an average of 24 gallons 
to every man, woman and child of the population. Of late 
years the consumption of absinthe has become enormous. 
Beer is also used in constantly increasing quantities. 
u The Western Brewer ” for January 1882, says : 
“ The consumption of beer in Paris is now something enormous, 
although, a few years ago it was scorned as ‘ that disgusting mix- 
ture, the German National drink.’ There is now a great impor- 
tation from Germany, pouring in two gigantic streams, one dark 
brown and the other blonde, whereas there was formerly only 
a thin liquid thread from Alsace, which came for consump- 
tion by the patriotic Alsatians living in Paris. 
* “ Statistical Atlas of England, Scotland, and Ireland,” by G. 
Philip Bevan, F.S.S., F.G.S., etc. Edinburgh and London, 
MDCCCLXXXII. Social and National. 
143 
** The first Parisian beer houses were kept almost exclusively 
by Alsatians, and were modestly kept in remote quarters, away 
from the splendid boulevar-ds. The landlords, in their increas- 
ing prosperity, gradually came out of their obscurity into more 
attractive localities, and the wine adulterators, and phylloxera, 
and the exorbitant Parisian taxes, increased the popularity 
of the drink, until now the famous breweries of Germany all 
have their regular beer-vans on the railways to Paris. . . . 
. Beer has broken the sway of coffee and absinthe in Paris, 
the inordinate use of which has been seriously weakening the 
nerves and undermining the virility of the Parisians.” 
It is not true that the consumption of absinthe has di- 
minished, but simply that beer is adding to the drunkenness 
of the French. One notable effect of it all, is, that “three- 
fourths of the Parisians are poor. There are in the city 
684,952 tenements, of which 468,641 are let for less than 
$80 per year.” Bad off as the poor in the large cities of 
the New World are, they dwell in a paradise when com- 
pared with the poor of absinthe and beer-cursed Paris. 
Similar results of poverty, shame, crime and loss are en- 
tailed upon the United States, as the foregoing pages abun- 
dantly show. According to statistics compiled by David 
Tatum, the actual cost (direct and indirect) and waste to 
the United States by alcoholic liquors, is fifteen hundred 
millions, with only fifty millions returned to the General 
Government in revenue. For every dollar received, thirty 
dollars is paid out to repair liquor damages. What propor- 
tion is received and paid in each State, it would be impos- 
sible to say; but a few hints are found in the experiences 
in special localities. For example, it was found in Phila- 
delphia, a few years ago, that for every fourteen dollars re- 
ceived in payment of liquor licenses, one hundred dollars 
were paid out by the city in liquor damages. 
In New Bedford, Mass., under license law, it was esti- 
mated that eighty cents of every dollar required in taxes 
was caused by alcohol; and that every twenty cents of 
liquor revenue cost the city a dollar, for its results. Chief- 144 
Alcohol in Society. 
Justice Davis says: “If all the evils of whatever kind 
were divided into five parts, the liquor traffic would be re- 
sponsible for four of them.” 
Governor Dix, of New York, said in one of his veto mes- 
sages : 
“Intemperance is the undoubted cause of four-fifths of all the 
crime, pauperism, and domestic misery of the State.” And Gov- 
ernor Gaston, in his message to the Legislature of Massachu- 
setts, in 1875, employed these words : “ Intemperance has been 
the most prolific source of poverty, wretchedness and crime; it 
has filled the state and the country with its destructive influen- 
ces; and its progress everywhere heralds only misfortune, misery, 
and degradation.” 
What is involved in such statements, especially when 
we consider that they apply with equal force to all the 
States in the Union, it is difficult for ns to grasp. Take, 
then, another method of attempting to comprehend the 
fearful loss thus indicated. A few years ago, the “ London 
Economist,” in an attempt to show the cost of war for a 
series of years, compiled two tables relating to the wars of 
the last twenty-five years, from the official statistics of the 
various nations concerned; including, in addition to the 
troops slain, a portion of the deaths occasioned by the rav- 
ages of the wars among the civil population. The tables 
were the following: 
I. Lives Lost, 1852-77: Killed or Battle, or Died 
of Wounds and Diseases. 
Persons 
Crimean War 750,000 
Italian War (1859) 45,000 
War of Sleswick-Holstein 3,000 
American Civil War— 
The North 280,000 
The South 520,000 
800,000 
War between Prussia, Austria and Italy in 1866 45,000 
Expeditions to Mexico, Cochin-China, Morocco, Para- 
guay, etc 65,000 Social and National. 
145 
Franco-German War of 1870-1871— 
France 155,000 
Germany 60,000 
215,000 
Turkish Massacres of Christians in Bulgaria, Armenia, 
etc., 1807-77 25,000 
Total 1,948,000 
II. Cost, 1852-77. 
Crimean War $1,700,000,000 
Italian War of 1857 \ 300,000,000 
American Civil War— 
The North $4,700,000,000 
The South 2,300,000,000 
7,000,000,000 
Sleswick-Holstein War 35,000,000 
Austrian and Prussian War, 1866 330,000,000 
Expeditions to Mexico, Morocco, Paraguay, etc., (say 
only) 200,000,000 
Franco-Prussian War .3,000,000,000 
Total $12,065,000,000 
“ This loss of life,” said the compiler, “is equal to about half 
of the population of the whole metropolitan area; and we may 
vaguely imagine what would be the effect upon production and 
consumption of absolutely depopulating the whole of the west 
and north districts of London. The loss £2,413,000,000 sterling 
of capital ($12,065,000,000) is equal to about eight or ten years 
revenue of all the governments of Europe and North America. 
“ But a public revenue, let it be remembered, is mainly applied 
in the payment of services and the promotion of public works, 
which are to a large extent useful. The $12,065,000,000 of 
money have been absolutely annihilated. Further, the for- 
tresses, ships, artillery, etc., destroyed by war must be replaced 
by capital taken, over a series of years, from productive pur- 
poses. And this is also true of the pensions and rewards 
granted to maimed and disabled soldiers and sailors.” 
Compare this bill of war costs with the drinking bill of 
the United States. Dr. Young, chief of the bureau of sta- 
tistics, estimated the sale of liquor in 1871, to be $600,000- 146 
Alcohol in Society. 
000. This is known to be a low estimate, as indeed all 
official estimates must necessarily be, for while they include 
the illicit distilling and brewing, they do not pretend to 
take account of smuggled foreign liquors, nor of the adul- 
terated liquors, which, as we have before seen, make up so 
large a portion of the bar-room and saloon traffic. But 
take these official estimates, and multiply the sum by 25, 
and we have $15,000,000,000, or $2,935,000,000 more than 
the cost of all the wars during the same time. 
It is estimated that 505,200 persons are engaged in the 
wholesale and retail liquor trade, and 40,364 in the manu- 
facture of intoxicants. Their labor is a direct and total 
loss to the nation. At $2 per day, or $500 per year en- 
gaged in some useful industry, they would add to the 
wealth of the nation $272,812,000 per annum. At least 
600,000 drunkards lose half their time by drinking, making 
a loss of $150,000,000. At a low estimate there are 
1,500,000 made tipplers, and if they lose but one day in 
the week, it amounts to $156,000,000 per year. These 
items amount to $578,812,000, which multiplied by 25, 
gives us $14,470,300,000, or $2,405,300,000 more than the 
cost of the wars of the entire world for 25 years. 
It is estimated that the grain destroyed every ten years 
in the manufacture of intoxicants is valued at $428,954,842, 
which for twenty-five years 
would amount to $1,072,387,105 
Add to this for idleness and wasted labor, 
as given above 14,470,300,000 
Price paid for intoxicants. 15,000,000,000 
Total $30,542,687,105 
This is in excess of the cost of all the wars in the world 
for twenty-five years, $18,477,687,105. It is more than 
four times the amount of the war hills of both the North 
and South in the war of 1861—1865; and more than six 
times the cost of that war to the Federal Government. Social and National. 
147 
Add to this the cost of pauperism, crime, jails, courts, etc., 
comprising three-fourths of our taxes, and we have an al- 
most incredible expense and drain on the resources of the 
country. 
In Massachusetts, in 1880, the cost of crime caused by 
intemperance was $1,578,000; and the cost of pauperism 
from the same cause $1,200,000. If, making an estimate that 
comes short of the actual fact, we say that this represents 
one-tenth of the cost of crime and pauperism from this 
cause in the entire nation, we have $69,450,000 as the 
amount of these two items of expense in 25 years. Add 
even to this the sum of $240,000,000 invested in buildings, 
machinery, lands and labor to supply the demands of the 
liquor traffic, and we are confronted with an annual waste, 
from all these sources, of $1,464,485,444, in the United 
States alone. 
Comparing the 1,948,000 killed in all the great wars 
from 1852 to 1877, with those slain "by intemperance in the 
United States, we obtain startling results. Estimates of 
the deaths occurring annually directly from the use of in- 
toxicants, are put by some statisticians at 80,000; by 
others at 70,000. If we take the lowest estimate, it will 
give, for twenty-five years, a roll of victims to the rum 
traffic of 1,750,000, only 198,000 less than all the wars in 
the world, in the same length of time. The losses of the 
North during the war 1861—1865, averaged 56,000 per 
year; but the Drink System slays 14,000 in excess of that, 
every year. Is it any wonder that the alms-houses are filled 
with paupers—the widows and orphans of the men slain by 
rum? And still the carnage goes on. 
A similar story of the extent of drinking' in Russia, and 
of its like disastrous effects, is given in the following state- 
ment : 
“ The richest source [of revenue] is the duty on liquors, or in 
reality the brandy duty. For forty years past it has furnished 148 
Alcohol in Society. 
one-third of the whole revenue of the State. Brandy was form- 
erly treated as a monopoly in twenty-nine governments, and 
in others, the tax was farmed. In the middle of 1858 a gen- 
eral farming of this tax took place. In order that the revenue 
from this item should not diminish, the government, under the 
Czar Nicholas, forbade ‘ temperance unions,’ but in the midst of 
their struggle for emancipation, the peasants themselves recog- 
nized the evil consequences of drunkenness, and here and there 
made a vow only to drink brandy in case of illness, and at fam- 
ily rejoicings, under the penalty of punishment to those who 
should transgress. 
“ The farmers sought to revive the love of drink by cheap 
prices, and even by making presents of brandy, but only with 
partial success. They therefore sought the assistance of gov- 
ernment, as they were unable to pay the rents. A ministerial de- 
cree actually forbade the carrying out of the agreements made 
by the peasants among themselves, under the pretext that such 
agreements were unauthorized. According to the statements 
of Prince Dolgorukov, the local principalities, won over by the 
farmers of the brandy tax, frequently employed active violence 
—sticks and staves—to force the peasants to drink brandy. This 
had its effect, and brandy drinking became more prevalent than 
ever. 
“ A few years afterwards a duty similar to the Prussian malt 
tax, was introduced in place of this farming, and the yield, 
which in 1853 was only £12,508,333, increased in 1865 to £21,- 
053,355. In 1869 the duty was raised to 8s. Id. per vedro. In 
1871 the gross receipts from this tax were estimated at about 
£23,750,000; the colossal figure of £33,695,217 ($168,476,085,) is 
now given as the estimate.” * 
Now, as one item of results, the same authority (p 557,) 
gives the following: 
“‘The Russian Review’ has been able to furnish accurate 
statistics from six governments only, viz., St. Petersburg, Mos- 
cow, Odessa, Kasan, Charkov, and Sarator, containing togeth- 
er a population of 9,500,000 souls. The number of crimes com- 
mitted in these amounted to 63,042, of which 38,742 were against 
property, (28,688 thefts, 3,811 incendiaries, etc.) 9,118 against 
persons, and the rest against the State, religion, etc. Among 
* “ The Condition of Nations, Social and Political,” etc. By 
G. Fr. Kolb, p. 381. Social and National. 
149 
those committed against persons were 3,700 acts of murder and 
manslaughter, 1,967 severe woundings, 109 rape and assassina- 
tion.” 
(c). If we look for the effect of the Drink System on 
National Morals, we find, that not only, as has been stated 
when considering its effects on individuals, it benumbs and 
deadens the conscience of drinkers, but also that it brutal- 
izes and degrades the makers and vendors of intoxicants. 
With the fact so manifest in the history of crime, pauper- 
ism, ignorance, and vice of all kinds and degrees, that the 
use of intoxicants is the chief cause thereof, it follows that 
all the pecuniary and personal interests of the dealers, are 
at war with the best interests of society and good morals, 
that corruption, evil habits, prodigality, vice in its many 
forms, and a low state of public morals are directly in the 
interest of the manufacture and sale of the sources of drunk- 
enness. So well convinced of this was the late Charles 
Buxton, one of the most extensive brewers of England, 
that, forced by his conscience to abandon the business, he 
declares, in his work so frequently quoted in these pages: 
“The struggle of the school, and the library, and the 
Church all united, against the beer-house and gin-palace, 
is but one development of the war between heaven and 
hell.” (P. 10). And he adds: 
u We are convinced that if a statesman who heartily wishes 
to do the utmost possible good to his country, were thought- 
fully to inquire which of the topics of the day deserve the most 
intense force of his attention, the true reply,—the reply which 
would be exacted by full deliberation, would be, that he should 
study the means by which this worst of plagues can be stayed. 
The intellectual, the moral, and the religious welfare of our peo- 
ple, their material comforts, their domestic happiness, are all 
involved. The question is, whether millions of our countrymen 
shall be helped to become happier and wiser,—whether pauper- 
ism, lunacy, disease, and crime, shall be diminished—whether 
multitudes of men, women and children, shall be aided to es- 
cape from utter ruin of body and soul. Surely such a question 150 
Alcohol in Society. 
as this, enclosing within its limits consequences so momentous, 
ought to be weighed with earnest thought, by all our 
(Pp. 12, 13.) 
William Lill, of Chicago, thirty years a brewer, said at 
a large public meeting, a few years ago, that he should 
never build nor own another brewery; that it was a busi- 
ness which demoralized both master and man; a manu- 
factory of drunkards in constant operation, and the curse 
began in the brewery itself, where every man was a beer 
barrel in the morning, and a barrel of beer at night. 
During the Woman’s Crusade against the Liquor Saloons 
of Ohio, in 1874, a saloon kept by J. C. Van Pelt, in New 
Vienna, was visited. After long and stubborn resistance 
the proprietor yielded to the prayers and persuasions of 
his visitors, destroyed his liquors and closed his saloon. 
Subsequently he addressed a public meeting in the place. 
“ He had felt, he said, for some days, convictions that he was 
doing a mean business, but had used every argument he could, 
to sustain himself—had tried to argue with the ladies, and get 
the best of the argument; it was not arguments, but their 
prayers and suffering that had touched his heart. No man or 
set of men would suffer and endure what the ladies had endured 
in this work. He referred to his saloon as a low doggery, say- 
ing, ‘ Yes, I’ll call it a low doggery, for no man can keep a high 
one.’ He had often taken the last ten cents from a man for 
whiskey when he knew the money had been earned by his wife 
or child. Every man who sells whiskey does this. Little faces 
thus robbed, had often appealed to his heart with greater force 
than any words of man. He was now determined to quit this 
business forever, and throw his strength on the other side of the 
question. He believed this emphatically a ladies’ work. He 
believed God had led them into this work. He wanted to en- 
courage them to go on till the country is freed from the greatest 
curse of the land. He had been thinking for several days that 
perhaps the great God who overrules all had allowed him to go 
into that low business that he might see the great iniquity, and 
be better able to influence others to quit the terrible business.” * 
* “ Fifty Years History of the Temperance Cause,” p. 354. Social and National. 
151 
For morg than two hundred years, the common consent 
of the citizens of the United States has required legislation 
on the subject of liquor selling, based on the fact that 
drunkenness is disgraceful, immoral and vicious; and so- 
called reputable liquor dealers have pleaded for restrictions 
and guards, for heavy licenses, and for distinction between 
reputable and disreputable places of sale; but invariably 
license laws fail to protect any class in the community; to 
throw any check over dealers, or to diminish the use of 
intoxicants. The distinctions between reputable and dis‘ 
reputable places vanish, and the most restrictive law is 
evaded with impunity by all who engage in the traffic. 
The opportunity to sell is deemed a sufficient justification 
for selling. 
Equally well known is it that religion and morality are 
in array against the traffic, yet what blasphemy of religion, 
and ridicule of morality, are indulged in by those interested 
in the iniquitous business. “The Western Brewer,” for 
February, 1882, contains the following: 
“ The Rev. Hugh Montgomery finds that $1,250,000 is spent 
for liquors each year in New Haven, not counting what is spent 
by people who drink at home, and do not patronize bars. 
Whereat the Rev. Hugh is wroth. Yet this latter-day apostle 
does not inform us how much money is paid by the people of 
New Haven to feed and clothe him, house him, and allay his 
carnal desires, for which he renders no return but his lying 
cant, for which he ‘ toils not, neither does he spin.’ ” • 
And the same number says, in an article entitled “Urn. 
taxed Church: Taxed Brewery 
“ The business of saving souls and running churches being 
free and non-taxable, is a very lucrative one in America, and 
will continue to be, so long as money is got in that way easier 
than in any other that is lawful. But if churches are to pay no 
tax because they are 1 doing good,’ breweries should certainly 
be put on the free list. Beer is a moral and civilizing agent, 
continually * doing good ’ to all who have ‘ faith’ in its efficacy, 
and use it liberally. Exactly like religion, it is next to impos- 152 
Alcohol in Society. 
sible to get too much of it. Beer is always saving men from 
the crying evil of strong drink, and helping the State reform 
its citizens. It would prove a most powerful ally of the church ; 
but not until, like the church, it is untaxable, will breweries 
consent to such a compact. And even then we think the trade 
would be loth to join hands with superstition, and cant, and 
meek hypocrisy The liberal citizens of America 
should demand that churches be taxed, or breweries also be put 
on the free list. One is as much an agent of morality as the 
other. One is a great industry, employing labor, and providing 
an honest living for tens of thousands ; the other is an organ- 
ized system of alms-gathering, misleading in its claims, and 
despotic in the use of its untaxed wealth.” 
The same number said: 
“ Upwards of 700,000 foreigners immigrated to our shores dur- 
ing 1881, the largest ever known in the history of the nation. 
As a rule all these people are beer-drinkers.” What it expects 
from emigrants it assures us in the January number : “ Half a 
million emigrants are hooked by the steamship lines to arrive 
during 1882. We need them. Emigration is the only leaven 
that will save America from lapsing again into Puritanism. ” 
What kind of leaven is thus being furnished, and how 
well fitted it is to do the work of destroying Puritanism, 
and all forms of religion and morality, a recent writer 
from Switzerland to the “New York Tribune/7 thus informs 
us: 
“ It is, I believe, the firm conviction of nearly all our consuls 
and diplomatic representatives abroad, that an alarming pro- 
portion of those people who emigrate to the United States are a 
positive injury, as citizens, to any country. I will try to show 
that, though there are good people who indulge the supreme 
nonsense that every immigrant landing is worth seven or eight 
hundred dollars to us, there are many communities in Europe 
willing to give a handsome sum to he well rid of thousands and 
thousands whom we so heartily welcome. 
“I do not refer to the occasional society or community that 
may subscribe to aid good citizens to cross the ocean, hut to 
those more numerous communities and local governments that 
pay money to get rid of people whom they know to he had citi- 
zens, and of no good use anywhere. Of the emigrants sent to Social and National. 
153 
us, a major part have been utter failures at home, unfortunate 
and unlucky men, so called, who would never prosper any- 
where. No small part are adventurers seeking fortunes, politi- 
cal and otherwise, in a country where they have good reason to 
believe the most worthless may rise to position. Most alarming 
of all are the thousands of paupers, paid for coming, and the 
jail-birds, flying from justice. Hardly a ship lands that does 
not bring a dozen of them. Of course the Socialists, Commu- 
nists, Mormons, Nihilists, and the generally disorderly, of what- 
ever name or class, flock to our shore as to a congenial harbor. 
Here they hope to execute plans in freedom, for which they 
would have been imprisoned at home. A recent writer has 
pointed out the fact that we have in the United States already 
more than two millions belonging to these disorderly classes. 
“ That hundreds and thousands of paupers, crippled persons, 
criminals, and even idiots, are being sent to us by communities 
and local governments in Europe, is now beyond a doubt. It is 
proven officially, and in a hundred instances. It is astonishing 
and barbarous that certain town councils and village authori- 
ties vote money out of the town purse to compel their criminals 
and paupers to emigrate to the United States ; and yet who can 
see so much harm in it, so long as the American people are fools 
enough to bid high for the rubbish? The people so helped 
swear never to return. Why should they ? Banishment to the 
United States is not half so bad as a jail, a workhouse, or an 
asylum for idiots. It is conferring mercy, and material good, 
and considerable honor on such subjects, to get rid of them in 
this way, especially when one reflects that in a very few years 
these jail-birds, paupers, idiots, and what not, will bloom out 
into the full glory of American citizenship. 
“ One little canton of Switzerland spent in a short series of 
years, not less than one and a half millions of francs in a des- 
perate attempt to dispose of its poor to other countries, and the 
greatest regret was that some good citizens left with the worthless. 
Within a month another town has publicly voted forty dollars 
a head to all who will emigrate. America is a cheaper poor- 
house than any to he had at home, say these economists, and it 
is also the cheapest jail. 
“It is no uncommon tiling on the Continent for villages and 
clubs to make a common purse to defray the expense of half a 
dozen loafers across the sea, on the one condition, that they 
never return. Almost every month, of late years, has brought 
difficulties and angry correspondence between local officials in 154 
Alcohol in Society. 
Europe, and our consuls and diplomatic representatives as to 
the shipping of worthless subjects to our shores. But a few 
months ago seven hundred Italians, wretched, poor, and dirty, 
were shipped off in a body to the United States. They were all 
ignorant, and of the lowest classes. They were all Roman 
Catholics, of the most bigoted kind, and probably not a man 
of them could read or write his own name. In a few years 
some country court will swear these people all in as citizens of 
the United States, and their votes will balance the votes of 
seven hundred of the most intelligent and patriotic citizens of 
the country. Can there be any question as to whether this 
importation (and there are many like it) was an injury to the 
United States ? Is it, on the other hand, not clear that making 
citizens of them is an outrage on Americans ? 
“ Half of the people of Massachusetts are not able to pay a 
poll tax now. Does Massachusetts wish several thousand more 
penniless citizens, who are ignorant as well ? Does any other 
State or territory ? If so, there are seven hundred, aye, seventy 
times seven hundred more penniless Italians ready to come. 
“Let us consider for a moment what the effect of all this is 
to be on the heretofore contented and industrious working 
classes of America. Labor has been honorable among us. 
Will it continue so, when the laboring classes are thoroughly 
mixed with the lowest off-scouring of European towns, and 
when foreign Communists, Socialists, paupers, and jail-birds, 
shall form half the working class, and enforce their vices by the 
aid of their votes ? What is the position of a workingman in 
the State of California, to-day, compared with that of a work- 
ingman in those States where the worst foreign elements have 
not yet got a foothold ? What, too, is to be the social effect on 
the moral and Christian working-classes of America, of degrad- 
ing them to a level with the dissolute and infidel scum that we 
are importing ? 
“Are not, in short, onr free immigration and naturalization 
laws bringing a wretched curse upon the working-classes of the 
United States ? What can he more certain than that in a few 
years a wide gulf will exist between the working and the non- 
working classes of America ? We are preparing the way to de- 
grade the laborer, by compelling him to work side by side with 
men vastly his inferiors in intellect, in moral worth, in every- 
thing that has, in our country, until now, dignified labor.” 
Mr. George William Curtis, in liis oration at the one Social and National. 
155 
hundredth anniversary of the first battle of the American 
Revolution, proved by statistics: 
“ That now, immigrants and the children of immigrants are 
a quarter of the whole population of the United States. This 
enormous influx of foreigners has added an immense ignorance 
and entire unfamiliarity with republican ideas and habits to 
the voting class. It has brought other political traditions, 
other languages, and other religious faiths. It has introduced 
powerful and organized influences, not friendly to the republi- 
can principle of freedom of thought and action.” 
Most worthy allies are the class thus described, to the 
cause of beer and rum; the mockery of all that is sacred, 
and the destruction of morality and purity. What an in- 
famous business that must be which acknowledges its de- 
pendence on such help in overthrowing the religious con- 
victions and efforts of Americans. What a further demon- 
stration it makes of its fitness for such company, and its 
hearty sympathy with the God-defying pests of the old 
world, in its utterance through its mouth-piece, “The West- 
ern Brewer,” as witness the following, in the March 
(1882) number: 
“A crazy fanatic out in God-forsaken Kansas, writes the 
‘Western Brewer’ to complain that we do not use ‘ respectful 
language ’ when we speak about the temperance people. Of 
course we do not. Who can use respectful language when 
writing of people no sane man can respect ? We shall keep on 
using just such language And you may kiss—ex- 
actly as you please, or not, the rod. But if you don’t we’ll lay 
it on by ! This is true liberty.” 
It is the boast of the brewers that they are contributing 
largely to the revenue of the country, and that all attempts 
to curtail their business are attempts to rob the government. 
But coupled with this boast is the claim that beer-drinking 
supplants spirit-drinking, and that a true temperance ad- 
vance is made by encouraging the use of beer. In an arti- 
cle entitled “The Evangelizing influence of Beer,” in “The 
Western Brewer,” for June, 1881, we find this language: 156 
Alcohol in Society. 
l< The introduction of lager beer and the popularity it speed- 
ily attained were, therefore, fortunate things for the country. 
The increasing consumption of the milder beverage lessened 
the proportionate use of spirits, and the consequence was 
greater sobriety among the people One of the most 
efficient agents in bringing about this improvement has been 
lager beer. It satisfies the thirst, produces sufficient stimula- 
tion, serves all the purposes of conviviality, and may be safely 
drank in considerable quantities. Accordingly it has, year by 
year, driven out distilled liquors more and more, and now, not 
only in the places especially for its sale, but in a large part of 
the bar-rooms, it is kept on draught, and is in more demand than 
any other beverage The temperance people ought to 
rejoice that so mild a beverage as lager beer has become the 
most popular drink of the country. Its increasing use is aid- 
ing the cause of practical temperance in the most efficient 
way, for it may be drank daily by the majority of people 
without endangering their sobriety, while the habitual use of 
whiskey can be persisted in by only a few without lamentable 
consequences.” 
If it is true that beer is supplanting ardent spirits, then 
the brewers are, by their own argument, foes to the gov- 
ernment, since ardent spirits contribute annually to the rev- 
enue about five times the sum contributed by beer. But it 
is not true, nor has it ever been true that fermented drinks 
take the place of distilled drinks. The facts in the United 
States are well set forth in the tables published by the rev- 
enue department, where it is shown that for the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1880, there was received from fermented 
liquors an increase of $2,100,482.76, over the previous 
year; -and from distilled spirits an increase for the same 
time, of $8,615,224.10, more than four times the amount 
gained by beer. This is true the world over. Beer is never 
a substitute, but always an additional beverage. England, 
in 1830, passed an act of Parliament providing for free 
brewing, under the delusion that the consumption of gin 
and whiskey would thereby be lessened, and drunkenness 
be diminished. Says the London “Times:’7 Social and National. 
157 
“The idea entertained at the time was that free trade in 
beer would gradually wean men from the temptations of a reg- 
ular tavern, and that it would promote the consumption of a 
wholesome national beverage in place of ardent spirits. The 
results of the experiment did not confirm the expectations of its 
promoters. The sale of beer was increased, but the sale of spir- 
ituous liquors was not diminished.” 
“ Four years after the experiment began, a committee of the 
House of Commons reported an addition of 50,000 public houses ; 
tweuty years later, a House of Lords Committee found that 
the multiplication of houses for the sale and drinking of intox- 
icating liquors had risen from 8,830 to 123,306. The disastrous 
results of the experiment are thus summarized by the London 
‘ Globe ': “ The injury done by the beer act to the peace and 
order of rural neighborhoods, not to mention domestic happi- 
ness, industry, and economy, has been proved by witnesses from 
every class of society, to have exceeded the evils of any single 
act of internal administration 'passed within the memory of 
man.” 
“ The Russians consumed last year,” says ‘ The Western Brew- 
er for April, 1882, “ 2,500,000 hectolitres of beer, which aver- 
ages three to four hectolitres per head of the inhabitants.” 
That is an aggregate of about 55,000,000 of gallons; an average 
of 66 to 88 gallons a head. In another column of the same issue 
is this item of information : “ According to the returns of the 
Imperial Statistical Bureau for the year 1877—the latest at pres- 
ent published—the consumption of beer in that city (St. Peters- 
burg), during the year amounted to 4,144,000 wedro. The we- 
dro is about two and three-quarter gallons. The consumption of 
spirits amounted to 2,344,000 wedro. Compared with the num- 
ber of inhabitants, this was at the rate of three wedro of spirits, 
and five and one-half wedro of beer per head per annum. 
“ There were 47,000 police arrests for drunkenness in the city 
during the year, and 100 deaths from alcoholic poisoning.” 
The comments of the Chicago “Daily News,” at the 
time of the session of the Brewers’ Congress in that city, are 
a just treatment of the "brewers’ presumption : 
“ The fact is, that the use of beer as a pretended temperance 
beverage, is a delusion and a snare. It is the first step to indul- 
gence in stronger liquors. Thousands of persons are daily 
and hourly beginning the use of stimulants with beer, who would 158 
Alcohol in Society. 
never think of commencing such use with whiskey. But by in- 
dulgence in beer in warm weather, or when natural thirst is ex- 
cited by either mental or bodily exercise, or a combination of 
both, many persons begin to feel and appreciate the alcoholic 
stimulant it contains, and finally long for a less diluted medium 
of such stimulant, and which is more rapid and more potent in 
its effects. In this way the use of beer leads unconsciously to 
the use and finally the abuse of the stronger stimulants, and the 
subject of them is imperoeptibly, pleasantly, and gently led 
down that fatal decline, whose terminus is the very pit of hell 
itself.” 
The u Inter-Ocean,” a daily paper published in Chicago, 
in a recent issue, thus draws attention to the extent and ef- 
fects of the Drink System in that city: 
“Twelve miles of solid building fronts devoted to dram 
shops, houses of ill-fame, and other dens of vice and prostitu- 
tion. How’s that for a young city? One thousand school 
teachers, and six thousand prostitutes! A. score or so of Chris- 
tian missions, and a thousand professional thieves. What 
wonder that with these 350 low concert saloons and one hundred 
gambling houses, the arrests by the police last year numbered 
31,000, and the property stolen valued by the hundred thous- 
and ? What wonder, when the allurements, and temptations laid 
in the path of youth are considered, that we find 25 per cent of 
the 31,000 persons arrested last year were under 21 years of 
age ? 
“ It won’t do to say that other cities are as had, and all large 
cities have their criminals. There is no city on the continent— 
we doubt whether there is in the world—that displays such 
open, shocking, horrible vice as this. And it is spreading and 
infecting regions and people deemed heretofore proof against 
it. The sickening facts just coming to light about some of the 
balls attended by young persons making pretences to respecta- 
bility are enough to cause a shudder of fear in the hearts of 
many anxious parents. Meanwhile, with a law against these 
pestilence-breeding dens, the authorities fold their hands and 
say that they are abused in the newspapers. Abused, forsooth! 
If any abuse or entreaty or demand could awaken them to their 
duty in this business, the newspapers would indeed be recreant 
if they did not employ it.” Social and National. 
159 
(d). The ruinous effects of the Drink System are still 
further manifest by the influence which it exerts on elect- 
ions, on legislation, and on the administration of law. It 
is lamentably notorious that our politics are to-day rotted 
to the core by the dram-shops of our land. The Spirit and 
Wine Dealers’ Unions, and the Brewers’ Associations have a 
powerful control of the twc great political parties in the 
United States. Whiskey dictates the course of one party, 
and beer compels the other to do its bidding. And the 
history ot both for the last twenty-five years demonstrates 
that they have maintained their unity and existence by the 
absolute subjection of the temperance element to the liquor 
power within their ranks. If, here and there, an occasional 
stir and excitement has led either party to the advocacy of 
temperance measures, and to secure or favor temperance 
legislation, neither of them has been found willing to sus- 
tain such principles or action when they could makes votes, 
power and political capital by sacrificing them. Sometimes, 
by studied effort, ambiguous resolutions or mere platitudes 
have been placed in party platforms as a bait or lure to 
temperance men; but each party is unambiguously pledged 
by the resolutions of its national conventions, to oppose all 
effective temperance legislation.* Nor does it matter to 
either party what laws are on the Statute Book for the 
suppression of this evil, nor what oaths are taken to en- 
force all the laws, a mental reservation that under no cir- 
cumstances is the success of the party to be jeopardized, 
qualifies and vitiates all official obligations. This is no- 
toriously so in our large cities, where the desire to conciliate 
the vilest of the vile, and to gain their votes, corrupts 
Mayors, Aldermen and Councils. The standard of mo- 
rality lowered here, and integrity giving way at this point, 
how can we wonder at the general demoralization, bull- 
dozings, repudiations, Whiskey and Star Route Rings, con- 
* See “ Alcohol in History.” 160 
Alcohol in Society. 
nivance with Polygamy, failure to protect in their rights the 
millions legislated into citizenship, the wilful overriding 
of Civil Service Reform, and general departure from the 
traditions and principles of the government, which so 
basely characterize both of our great political parties! 
And why should we wonder that so much political power 
and influence centering in our large cities, State legislation 
shall be controlled by it, the country members being 
overawed by the supposed significance to the party of 
keeping such immense numbers within the party ranks! 
Since 1862, when the brewers organized a national as- 
sociation, for the purpose, as they avowed in the preamble 
to their constitution, of exercising an “ influence in the in- 
terest of the craft in the legislature and public administra- 
tion,” they have been a powerful and dangerous factor in 
our political system; have dictated party attitude on the 
liquor question so persistently and thoroughly that no party 
now dares to throw off the yoke and disobey them. We 
will not multiply quotations from their journal of proceed- 
ings here, since copious extracts may be found in “Alcohol 
in History.” Suffice it to say that the advice of their attor- 
ney at Washington, who boasts that he has defeated na- 
tional legislation against beer, and obtained pledges from 
government officials that no legislation on that question 
will be attempted in Congress that does not meet with the 
approval of the brewers, has been fully carried out, where 
he said at one of their annual meetings: 
“First Beer, and then Politics—and if you are prudent, and 
awake to your own interests, you can have both at the same 
time, without one interfering with the other. Support that 
party that supports you, and go against that which wants to 
destroy you You are men of means and influence ! 
Use those means, and that influence against the Republican 
party, until every temperance or damage law has been eradi- 
cated from the statutes; until the very words ‘ temperance 
humbug,’ become nauseous to every Republican. Continue 
that policy, and our Republican friends, who like, if not the Social and National. 
161 
beer, at least to place the ‘ loaves and fishes ’ before mere party 
politics, and who are smart enough not to touch anything that 
does not pay, will soon be cured of their puritanical proclivi- 
ties.” 
Elsewhere in their proceedings, in the presence of the in- 
ternal revenue commissioner, or some one high in office who 
has been sent to represent the government in their associa- 
tion, and to give the assurance that the great desire of the 
government of the United States is to legislate in such a 
way as will secure the interests of the brewers, the advice 
is given to vote for men of all parties who will favor their 
rights in all legislation. 
The “ Washington Sentinel,” the organ of the brewers, 
published the following significant article on the policy it 
was forcing on members of Congress, Republicans and 
Democrats alike, in the winter of 1888 : 
“ Some of our German contemporaries are still believing, or at 
least pretend to believe, that we need more speech-making here 
in Washington before the Congressional committees, if the 
District is going to escape from prohibition. We differ from 
them, and we ought to know. We regard it as utterly absurd 
to assume that any speech pro or contra prohibition, made 
before the committees of Congress will affect the minds of the 
respective members of the latter. Every one of them knows 
what prohibition is. In that respect nothing can enlighten 
them. Indeed, there is but little new that can be said by either 
side on that question. All agree, however, prohibitionists and 
anti-prohibitionists, that prohibition is not temperance. Pro- 
hibition is a political and not a social question, and must be 
treated accordingly. The Democratic members of those com- 
mittees must be reminded that it is against their platform and 
best interests to further prohibitory measures. The Republican 
members must be warned not to increase the power of the pro- 
fessional prohibitionists, or rather, third-party men, by follow- 
ing their dictates. In short, matters of that kind must be 
managed quietly. Self-interest alone guides both parties and 
members. Sentimental questions have but little weight with 
them if they do not agree with their political welfare and 
aspirations. There might be some danger that one or the 162 
Alcohol in Society. 
other would go wrong, if we had no Presidential election before 
us. But that election makes them both cautious. Both are 
unwilling to burn their fingers. That was clearly shown the 
other day in the Senate District Committee, when even the 
Republicans voted against prohibition. That will more or less 
influence the four Republicans on the House Liquor-Traffic 
Committee, and we believe that hardly one of them will vote 
for prohibition. The Democrats, of course, are against prohibi- 
tion, and hence it is entirely superfluous to make speeches for 
or against prohibition before that committee, at least.” 
At what a cost,—the loss of self-respect, of integrity, of 
all that makes success desirable,—do men bow to the dic- 
tates of this iniquitous traffic, and yet, in spite of their pro- 
tests and their shame, obey it. The “Kansas City Journ- 
al” (Republican), thus pours out its complaints: 
“ For several years it has not been over easy to get the right 
kind of men to run for office. What are the reasons ? For 
years candidates have been assessed at ruinous rates. Only 
recently the mayor of this town was quoted as saying that it 
cost him the salary of his office to secure the election. He was, 
of course, assessed a large amount for what the politicians call 
legitimate expenses. The balance went where it was expected 
to do the most good. Where it went only the fellows who are 
in the habit of working money out of candidates can tell. The 
fact that the expenses of rimning for office are so monstrous is 
in itself an indication that the system is bad. Where does the 
money go ? For years three-fourths of the cash expended has 
gone to placate the dram-shop influence. It is not enough to 
allow the dram-shops to dictate the kind of candidates that 
must be put in the field. The dram-shop men must be kept all 
right by a constant flow of money over their bars. But the 
expenditure of money is not the worst feature. It is the dis- 
gusting scenes of riot and dissipation that become common to 
every campaign. AVe have known men to enter the political 
field with the firm resolve not to subject themselves to the moral 
and physical degradation required by these dram-shop cam- 
paigns. We have seen them hang back and protest against the 
swilling policy. We have seen them yield to the so-called in- 
evitable, and vie with the worst in working the dram-shops. It 
was the same old story : ‘My friends told me I must do this or 
retire from the race.7 No wonder the men the people would Social and National. 
163 
like to place in office cannot be induced to become candidates. 
The expenditure of a small fortune, the risk of health, and the 
certainty of a bad conscience are no light factors to estimate 
against the advantages of an office. We do not believe that 
these debasing influences are necessary in filling offices of trust. 
If they are, then the life of popular government will be indeed 
of short duration. If these evils cannot be corrected we shall 
go from bad to worse in municipal politics, and the time will 
come when law-abiding people will not have the courage to 
even protest. We know all about this matter of dram-shop 
working. We are compelled to see it, and we are asked to puff 
and work for candidates who pass their nights in throwing 
money over the bars, and their days in shaking hands with 
persons they would not dare meet when plying their midnight 
business. We are sick of this business. We are tired of its 
results in spoiling officials. We hate its demoralizing influences 
in municipal affairs.” 
Rev. Dr. Loftus, of Alabama, thus states in a number of 
“The Voice,” in May, 1888, the exact truth with respect to 
the hold which the liquor power has on both leading politi- 
cal parties: 
“Republicanism is handicapped by the foreigner and the sa- 
loon in the North : Democracy is handicapped by the saloon and 
the negro South. Northern Republicanism is largely Prohibi- 
tion ; Southern Democracy is largely Prohibition. Northern 
Democracy and Southern Republicanism are in a large majority 
for whiskey.” 
(<?). The effect of the Drink System on health and longev- 
ity, has already been treated at some length in this work, 
as we have noticed its physical effect on the individual ; 
but as it has a special bearing on national prosperity, it 
deserves mention in this connection. Dr. Richardson, in 
his lecture on “ Twenty-one Historic Landmarks,” gives 
the following as the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth facts 
demonstrated concerning the use of intoxicants : 
“We know that the slow, insidious effect of alcohol on per- 
sons taking it day by day and year by year, at last gives us 
great populations who, not being intoxicated in the special or 164 
Alcohol in Society. 
acute form, are still its victims in the same way. We know 
that there are populations who can go about and just take the 
‘ physiological quantity ’ which brings them up to the first stage; 
and then numbers who begin rather early in the day, and go 
from bar to bar and place to place, are perpetually in the sec- 
ond stage ; and others who go on day by day, and never go to 
bed thoroughly sober, are in the third stage. 
“ And when we go into our asylums and hospitals we find the 
victims of general paralysis, who are unable to help themselves, 
who are practically speechless, and practically dead drunk from 
the permanent use, and this because they have advanced in this 
slow, insidious manner into the fourth stage, in which they are 
ripe and ready to drop into the grave. Of this great population 
this fact is standing well out before the world, and the more 
fully it is now declared, the more certainly will, I think, the 
common sense of mankind come to bear upon it, and say we 
will not be representatives in the sole form of what you may 
call death by drink, any more than we will be the degraded 
representatives of it in the active form at the table, when the 
glass of wine is commenced, up to the time when there is per- 
fect insensibility. 
“Anotherpoint. Twenty-one years ago these facts about dis- 
ease and short life from drink, not being so recognized, our in- 
surance companies were blind to them; but now, so keen are 
they on this question of the effect of drink upon the persons who 
come to be insured, that on the lives of those who sell strong 
drink there is actually an extra tariff, and the question asked 
by the insurance companies is the question of sobriety ; for the 
company knows that there is nothing so fatal in a general way, 
or so likely to lead, not simply to disease from the agent itself, 
but springing up and intensifying by its employment other dis- 
eases, as the free use of this particular destructive national en- 
emy. 
“ Another point. We have figures in regard to the mortality 
in reference to this agent which are startling, and which twenty- 
one years ago we should never have conceived as possible. 
Lately, we have got much more refined examination of facts 
than formerly. There has been a difference of opinion as to the 
real mortality from the use of strong drink. Dr. Farr, who 
thought that the mortality was very much overrated, has 
since said that forty to fifty thousand a year die from what he 
calls * tippling.’ Dr. Farr, before he resigned his post, was so 
good as to allow me (being then engaged in delivering a course Social and National. 
165 
of Cantor Lectures on the mortality in industrial occupations to 
the number of seventy) to examine the returns, and this came 
out, as a startling fact, that there were variations from 70 to 
138, 100 being the standard—that is to say, if the mean mortali- 
ty of the whole of the occupations in the years examined was 
100, then the most favorable occupations went up to 70, and 
those that were least favorable came down to something consid- 
erably over 100. 
“We find that when we get to one occupation, we get to the 
lowest hut one. Amongst those engaged in the sale of spirits, we 
find 138 deaths to the hundred to the mean of population. The 
grocers, who before they had license to sell spirits, were stand- 
ing in a most favorable place on the scale—86 to 100—since they 
began to sell the drink have begun to go down, and show a 
higher mortality. Then you see what an important point we 
have scored, that just in proportion as this agent is approached 
by the multitude which deals with it, just in proportion does 
that vast multitude begin to die with the rest of its fellows.” 
(pp. 14-16.) 
Morel, the superintendent of a large French hospital, 
where he has had great experience, speaking in his work on 
the u Degeneracies of the Human Species/7 of alcohol and 
other narcotics, as for example, opium, says : 
11 Under the influence of these poisonous agents, there have 
been produced perversions so great in the functions of the 
nervous system, that in the result, as we have demonstrated, 
are the true degeneracies of the present time, whether in influ- 
ence direct from the poisonous agent, or by the transmission 
of hereditary power in the child.” 
Says Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, in his little work on u The State 
and the Liquor Traffic: ” 
“ The prohibition of its use to children (now made an enact- 
ment in Germany as to beer), the common consent that it is 
not a necessary part of human aliment in any usual food sense, 
the severe limitations as to the small quantities that can he 
medicinal, and the constant warnings against acquiring for our 
patients habits even in the use of such six per cents, as the 
fermented liquors, show the prevailing sentiment of my profes- 
sion as to its deleterious effects when considered in relation to 166 
Alcohol in Society. 
the average health and life, and as to that associated life which 
becomes the body politic of the nation.” (Pp. 26, 27). 
We have alluded both in this and the preceding Essay 
to the attitude of Life Insurance Companies in regard to 
intoxicants in general, and may add here, as one of the 
most significant things that has been done in opposition to 
the common plea of the harmlessness of beer, that the 
Home Life Insurance Company of New York, has reprinted 
for the use of its agents, in the form of a circular, extracts 
from the “ Pacific Medical Journal,” strongly condemning the 
custom of beer drinking, and affirming that the fashion of 
the day, which sets strongly toward the substitution of beer 
for other stimulating liquors, is one of 11 great magnitude, 
and deserves the attention of medical men, as well as that 
of the moralist.” 
Sir Astley Cooper’s testimony as to the result of his ex- 
perience in Grey’s Hospital, is quoted, that: 
“ The beer-drinkers from the London breweries, though pre- 
senting the appearance of rugged health, were the most incapa- 
ble of all classes to resist disease; that trifling injuries among 
them were liable to lead to the most serious consequences ; and 
that so prone were they to succumb to disease, that they would 
sometimes die from gangrene in wounds as trifling as tlio 
scratch of a pin.” The tendency to the use of beer is therefore 
regarded by the company as “ cause for apprehension and alarm 
that just as public opinion, professional and unprofessional, is 
uniting all over the world in the condemnation of the use of 
ardent spirits, the portals of danger and death are opening 
wide in another direction.” 
This fact with regard to beer is corroborated by a writer 
in the u Quarterly Journal of Inebriety ” i 
“ The constant use of beer is found to produce a species of 
degeneration of all the organism, profound and deep-seated. 
Fatty deposits, diminished circulation, conditions of congestion 
and perversion of functional activities, local inflammations of 
both the liver and kidneys, are constantly present 
In appearance the beer-drinker may be the picture of health, Social and National. 
167 
but in reality lie is most incapable of resisting disease. A 
slight injury, severe cold, or shock to the body or mind, will 
commonly provoke acute disease, ending fatally. Compared 
with inebriates who use different forms of alcohol, he is most 
incurable and more generally diseased.” 
(/). The effects of the Drink System on the army and 
navy show it to be a great National Curse. This evil is 
manifest in several ways. Sometimes, as already noted in 
allusion to the results of drinking in Switzerland, it so 
dwarfs and enfeebles the race that no defensive material can 
be furnished. Another instance of this is given in Prussia. 
Dr. Wald, of Konigsberg, is reported to have said at the 
Bremen Conference, in 1852, that, “ In the conscription of 
that year for a district of Western Prussia, out of 174 young 
men, only four were admissible, the rest being physically 
incapacitated by dram drinking.” 
Then, again, the morale of an army is always disturbed 
by the losses and inefficiency of its soldiers on account of 
drink. The Report to the British Parliament in 1834, thus 
sets this forth : 
“ The comparative inefficiency of the army and navy, in 
each of which intemperance is a canker-worm that eats away 
its strength and its discipline to the very core; it being proved 
that one-sixth of the effective strength of the navy, and a much 
greater proportion of the army, is as much destroyed by that 
most powerful ally of death, intoxicating drinks, as if the men 
were slain in battle; and that the greatest number of accidents, 
seven-eighths of the sickness, invaliding, and discharges for in- 
capacity, and nine-tenths of all the acts of insubordination, and 
the fearful punishments and executions to which these give 
rise, are to be ascribed to drunkenness alone.” 
Boston suffered severely from this intemperate tendency 
of the British troops during their occupancy of the city, in 
1768. Mr. Drake, in his History of Boston, says : 
“ Some outrage was complained of every day, and the nights 
were rendered hideous by drunken brawls and revels. The 
regular town watch were insulted during their rounds, and 168 
Alcohol in Society. 
invaded in their watch-houses in the night. Distilled spirits 
were so cheap that the soldiers could easily command them; 
and hence scenes of drunkenness and debauchery were constant- 
ly exhibited before the people; vastly to the prejudice of the 
morals of the young.” (P. 755.) 
The same difficulty has been experienced in the French 
army. Marshal Bugeaud says: “ The habitual use of 
spirits and of absinthe, leads the soldier to indiscipline and 
mutiny. In campaign, it is their most fatal enemy, and 
during the first years of the occupation of Algeria, strong 
liquors caused, in the ranks of our army, more ravages than 
the bullets of the Arabs.” 
The secular journals state that 11 Drunkenness caused 
the punishment of 23,000 British soldiers in 1881.” 
When the renowned Havelock was a candidate for the 
adjutancy of his regiment, and his appointment was op- 
posed, a return was ordered of the offences committed, and 
the punishments inflicted in the several companies, and it 
was found that his men were the “ most sober and best be- 
haved in the regiment.” Subsequently it became proverb- 
ial that u Havelock never blunders, and his men are never 
drunk.” 
In his report of a campaign in India, Havelock says: 
“ Let me not be accused of foisting in unfairly a favorite top- 
ic, when I remark in how great a degree the self-denial, mercy, 
and generosity of the hour may he attributed to the fact of the 
European soldiers having received no spirit ration since the 8th 
of July, and having found no intoxicating liquor among the 
plunder of Ghuznee. No candid man of any military experience 
will deny, that the character of the scene in the fortress and 
citadel would have been far different, if individual soldiers had 
entered the town primed with arrack, or if spirituous liquors 
had been found in the Affghan depots. Since, then, it has been 
proved that troops can make forced marches of 40 miles and 
storm a fortress in 75 minutes without the aid of rum, behaving 
after success with a forbearance and humanity unparalleled in 
history, let it not henceforth be argued that distilled spirits are 
an indispensable portion of a soldier’s ration.” Social and National. 
169 
To similar effect is the statement of Sir John Hall, con- 
cerning the British troops in Africa: u In Caffraria the 
troops could not obtain liquor, and the consequence was, 
that drunkenness, disease, insubordination, and crime were 
unknown, and yet that army was frequently placed in the 
very position which the advocates of spirits would have 
said required a dram ; ” and he expresses his decided con- 
viction that “ if spirits had been withheld, the sickness and 
mortality in the Crimea (1855—56) would have been re- 
duced one-half.” 
u A section of the British forces in India, was divided into 
three parts, abstainers, moderate drinkers, and drunkards, for 
the purpose of testing the rate of mortality more accurately 
than it was usually done, with the following results : 
No. 
Deaths 
Death rate 
per 1,000. 
Abstainers.... 
450 
5 
11.1 
Moderate 
2,318 
100 
23.1 
Drunkards.... 
948 
42 
44.5.” 
But the personal damage to the drinker, manifest in his 
physical weakness, and even in his death, is not, perhaps, 
the worst feature of the effects of drinking in the army. 
The blunders made by drunken officers have often jeopard- 
ized and in some instances prevented success, at a worse 
than useless loss of life ; and the incapacity of a drunken 
and unreliable army has frequently prevented taking ad- 
vantage of grand opportunities for success. The following, 
from the April (1882) issue of the u National Temperance 
Advocate,” is pertinent in this connection : 
“ It is an encouraging sign of the times that drunkenness in 
the public service is coming to he regarded much more than 
formerly as a grave offence. In a late debate in the United 
States Senate upon a hill to restore to a lieutenancy in the 
army an officer who was dismissed by court-martial for drunk- 
enness, a Kansas senator, Mr. Ingalls, spoke of the demoralizing 
influence upon the army of the practice of condoning the 
offence of intoxication, and called attention to the fact 170 
Alcohol in Society. 
that during the administration of President Hayes more than 
seventy officers, dismissed for drunkenness, had been restored 
to their positions. The hill, at the conclusion of the Senate 
debate, was finally recommitted to the Military Committee. It 
is to be hoped that henceforth no more drunken officers will be 
allowed either in the military or any other branch of the public 
service. The New York ‘ Observer/ commenting upon the recent 
Senate debate, says very pertinently : ‘ No drunkard should he 
an officer in the army. The responsibility is too great for any 
man to have who is in danger of being overcome by strong 
drink. Once degraded by and for intemperance, the poor man 
should he kept out of the army forever—required to spend his 
days in such service as will not make him responsible for the 
fate of a battle or the lives of his fellow men.’ It adds : 1 Let 
us have a temperate army.’ If such counsels had obtained 
during the great war of the Rebellion, there is no doubt but that 
many thousands of precious 1 ives on both sides would have been 
spared. The least that the Government can properly do is to 
forbid and remove the drink temptation as far as possible.” 
The efficiency of the Naval Service is also crippled by 
intemperance. 
“ An important remonstrance against the restoration of 
naval officers who have been retired or dismissed for drunken- 
ness, or who have resigned to avoid court-martial, was once 
presented in the United States Senate by Senator Anthony, of 
Rhode Island, bearing two hundred and sixty-five signatures 
of officers of all grades in the navy. The remonstrance declares 
that: 
“Drunkenness is the most common cause of dismissal. To 
restore an officer to active service and former rank who has 
been dismissed for this vice, destructive to his power for good, 
is to imperil human life that is sufficiently exposed to peril by 
battle, storm, and shipwreck, under the coolest management. 
Reform, however specious its appearance on shore under the 
restraining influences of family, friends, and hopes of restora- 
tion through personal solicitation, proves generally delusive at 
sea, under the peculiar temptations of alternate monotony and 
fierce excitement in a naval career. 
“ The good fellowship of mess-life has seductive influences 
that peculiarly strain a weak character and shatter the fairest 
shore-promises of amendment. Probably every member of your Social and National. 
171 
honorable body would shun the railway or the steamboat line 
where the practice of restoring to rank and service officers once 
discharged for drunkenness should be tolerated for an hour. 
The peril to human life and national reputation by restoring a 
reformed drunkard to command is infinitely greater in a ship 
of war.” 
In a speech on the subject, Senator Anthony said : “If 
it be hard upon the offender to be dismissed without hope 
of restoration, is it not hard upon the ships, upon the sea- 
men, upon the flag of the navy, to entrust them into hands 
that are trembling with inebriety ? 
“Drunkenness, however pardonable in many places, is one 
of the most serious offences that a naval officer can commit. It 
involves the liability to every other offence. There is no crime 
that a drunken man may not commit ; and there is no condi- 
tion more deplorable than that of a naval vessel in charge of a 
drunken officer, endowed with all the authority of command, 
without any of its discretion, entitled to the implicit obedience 
of his subordinates, unable to form a plan or to give an intelli- 
gent order. 
“ The young officers of the navy should be taught by severe 
example that a man convicted of drunkenness on duty should 
never be drunk on duty again; that the service shall not twice 
be imperilled from this cause by the same man.” 
(g). The elfects of the Drink System on distinguished 
men, especially on rulers, legislators and jurists, show how 
inimical it is to national prosperity. Ancient history re- 
cords many instances of it, and our own times furnish some 
most disgraceful examples. The story is doubtless famil- 
iar to most adults, of the woman who appeared before 
Philip, seeking redress, but the king, being under the in- 
fluence of liquor, insultingly decided against her. 
“ I appeal from such an unjust decision,” exclaimed the 
injured woman. “ And to whom,” said the king, “ can you 
appeal from the king ? ” “ I appeal to Philip sober,” was 
the ready response; and in his sober hours Philip reheard 
the case and reversed his decision. 172 
Alcohol in Society. 
Vopiscus, the biographer of Bonosus, says of the 
latter : “ It was his common practice to make those am- 
bassadors drunk who were deputed by foreign nations to 
attend his courts. By this means he readily discovered 
the instructions confided to them, of which he afterwards 
availed himself in state negotiations.” 
In Great Britain the drinking habits of members of Par- 
liament have long been noticed and deplored. When, in 
1834, a petition was presented to the House of Commons, 
complaining of the prevalence of crime and drunkenness, a 
defence of drinking was attempted by a member, who is re- 
ported to have said: “ There were persons who looked 
with jealousy on every enjoyment of the poor. If a poor 
man did get tipsy, what great harm was there in it ? Gen- 
tlemen did so. (“No,” was the reply.) He had seen 
members of that house in that state; aye, and within the 
house too.” 
In the life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. i. p. 354, is a letter from 
him to his friend Lord Cockbum, dated London, 22nd May, 
1834, in which he says: “1 had a jolly dinner with the 
Scotch members on Tuesday, about thirty-two present, two 
tories, Cumming Bruce, and Pitfour. They stayed till one 
o’clock, and were not all sober.” 
Canon Farrar in liis 11 Talks on Temperance,” records 
the names of several eminent in British Legislation, who 
debased themselves with intoxicants. And during a re- 
cent session of Parliament, the disgraceful scene has been 
witnessed of a member attempting to speak in behalf of 
Ireland, and talking so incoherently as to be led out of the 
Hall by his sadly mortified friends. 
Of the political effects of too much wine, the u London 
Primitive Methodist,” gives this illustration: 
“ The Duke of Orleans was the eldest son of King Louis Phi- 
lippe, an inheritor of whatever rights his father could transmit. 
He was a yery noble young man—physically noble. His gene- 
rous qualities had made him universally popular. One morning, Social and National. 
173 
he invited a few of his companions to breakfast, as he was about 
to depart from Paris to join his regiment. In the conviviality 
of the hour he drunk a little too much wine. He did not become 
intoxicated ; he was not in any respect a dissipated man ; his 
character was lofty and noble; but in that joyous hour he 
drank just one glass too much. In partaking the parting 
glass he slightly lost the balance of his body and mind. Bidding 
adieu to his companions, he entered his carriage ; but for that 
glass of wine he would have kept his seat. He leaped from his 
carriage; but for that glass of wine he would have alighted on 
his feet. His head struck the pavement. Senseless and bleed- 
ing, he was taken into a beer-shop, near by, and died. That 
extra glass of wine overthrew the Orleans dynasty, confiscated 
their property of one hundred millions of dollars, and sent the 
whole family into exile.” 
In our own country, examples are far too numerous. 
President Jefferson said, near the close of his administra- 
tion : ;• 
“ The habit of using ardent spirits by men in public office 
has produced more injury to the public service, and more trouble 
for me, than any other circumstance that has occurred in the 
internal concerns of the government during my administration ; 
and were I to commence my administration again, the very first 
question that I would ask in relation to every candidate for 
public office, should be, ‘ Is he addicted to the use of ardent 
spirit ?' ” 
Read the memoir of Gov. George N. Briggs, and you 
will be surprised aud shocked at the names and numbers 
of Congressmen mentioned by him as his colleagues, who 
were ruined by drink. How sad the career of the brilliant 
Thomas F. Marshall, who, finding himself, in the midst of 
a busy session, utterly unfitted for the discharge of his du- 
ties, called on Gov. Briggs to administer the total absti- 
nence pledge ; and who, full of good resolves, entered on a 
grand career as a temperance lecturer, but fell again, and 
went speedily to a drunkard’s grave. 
How touching is the story of the talented Senator Yates, 
of Illinois, who, after confessing the degradation and shame 174 
Alcohol in Society. 
which drinking had brought him to, signed the pledge, and 
at a meeting of the Congressional Temperance Society, in 
1867, said: 
“I have promised God ; I have promised that proud common- 
wealth, which for twenty-five consecutive years has honored 
me with all her public positions, in the Legislature, as Governor, 
as member of both Houses of Congress; I have promised all who 
love me, and I have promised Katie and the children that I will 
never touch, taste, nor handle the unclean thing ; and by the 
blessing of God I intend to fight it out on this line to the last 
day in the evening of my life. If all you, gentlemen, would do 
the same thing, you would lose nothing in mind, body, or estate. 
. . . . The man who is to legislate for a great country, to 
help make laws and constitutions involving the destinies of 
millions of human beings, ought to be a man of reflection, mor- 
al principle, integrity, and, above all, a sober man. Go into 
your legislative halls, State and National, and behold the drunk- 
ard staggering to his seat, or sleeping at his post, and ask your- 
self the question, whether he is not more fit to be called a mon- 
ument of his country’s shame, than the representative of free- 
men? 
“ Would it not be most fearful to contemplate that ill-fated 
epoch in the history of our country, when the demon of intem- 
perance shall come into our legislative halls without shame, 
remorse, or rebuke; when he shall sit upon juries, upon the 
bench, and drunkenness run riot among the people. Who then 
will protect the ship of state upon this maddening tide ? who 
will steer her in her onward course amid the dashing billows? 
who spread her starry flag to the free, fresh, wild winds of 
heaven ? After I signed this temperance pledge, 
I wrote to a little lady out in Illinois, who weighs about a 
himdred pounds, has black hair and flashing black eyes, and 
1 a form fairer than Grecian chisel ever woke from Parian 
marble/ and I received the following answer : ‘ My Dear 
Richard—How beautiful is this morning ! how bright the sun 
shines! how sweetly our birds sing! how joyous the children! 
how happy is my heart! I see the smile of God. He has answered 
the prayer. Always proud of your success, you have now 
achieved that success which God and angels will bless. It is 
the shining summit of human aspiration, for you have con- 
quered yourself. All who love you will aid you to keep the 
pledge. I love you, my dear boy ! Katie.” Social and National. 
175 
Alas ! poor man, liis Avill, weakened by indulgence, could 
not cope with temptation ; and sinking to the lowest degrada- 
tion,—a beggar in the streets,—he stumbled into a drunk- 
ard’s grave ! How sadly he represents scores of distin- 
guished men unfitted by the intoxicating bowl to discharge 
the great duties to which the suffrages of the people have 
appointed them. The gifted Washington correspondent 
of the New York 11 Independent,” writing with reference to 
the meeting of the Congressional Temperance Society in 
1879, says: 
“As one recalls the several deaths this winter of members 
from inebriety—splendid men, who died because they were 
drunkards—the wish is horn that every member of Congress 
would become a member of this temperance society. Even 
with its comparatively limited following, there can be no doubt 
of its saving power. Although the sale of liquor in the Capitol 
has been prohibited, it is still slyly dispensed, under the name 
of ‘ Cold Tea.’ Liquor is yet to be had in the Capitol by men 
who will have it; but the quantity thus sold is indeed a mini- 
mum, compared to the tides that used to flow. A senator 
intoxicated is now a rare sight. When one, under great stress 
of temptation, loses his balance, he for the present goes into 
sudden but certain disgrace. Poor McDougall! Poor Sauls- 
bury ! Were they not perpetually drunk in open Senate ? No- 
body expected to see them sober. Men under the visible influ- 
ence of liquor were constantly speaking on national questions 
in both houses of Congress. The change for the better is posi- 
tive and perfectly apparent. Even the glamour of splendid 
powers has lost its power to hide any dark spot of moral obli- 
quity. At present it is demanded of public men not only to 
seem, but to be reputable.” 
Great as the improvement has been, it is left to a recent 
Congress to record one of the most shameful pages of the 
history of intemperance. The revelations made concerning 
the Congressional delegation that attended the funeral of 
President Garfield are disgusting and indecent in the ex- 
treme. The hill of expense therefor includes u Seventeen 
hundred dollars paid for champagne, brandy, whiskey, 176 
Alcohol in Society. 
cigars and lunch, and three hundred dollars additional are 
charged for cocktails.” “ I became very much disgusted,” 
says one of the delegation. “ It appeared as though a 
great many Congressmen thought the journey was a grand 
junketing trip, instead of a funeral procession.” 
Who could possibly have descended to a lower depth ? 
and what execration of such an act will be too severe? 
How pitiable and humiliating is the thought that the laws 
of this great nation are made by such men ! 
But drunkenness is not in our legislative halls only. It 
soils the robes of justice, and finds its victims among those 
who are appointed to interpret and declare the law. Two 
such instances have recently been brought to light, and the 
offenders expelled in disgrace from their high positions. 
After about a year spent in a legal examination into the 
charge of drunkenness and incompetency in consequence 
thereof, preferred against the Judge of the Seventh District 
Civil Court, of the State of New York, the Supreme Court 
adjudged him guilty, and in the Spring of 1879 deposed 
him from the judicial office he had thus disgraced. Judge 
Brady, in giving the decision, said: 
“ We feel compelled to declare that the evidence convicts the 
respondent of intoxication upon the bench on several occasions 
while attempting to discharge his duties. We cannot avoid 
expressing our regret that an otherwise capable and efficient 
officer should have exposed himself to the unfortunate judgment 
we are obliged to pronounce.” 
During the winter of 1882, the Senate of the State of 
Minnesota was in session as a Court of Impeachment, trying 
the Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit, on charges of drunk- 
enness preferred by the House of Representatives. 
How many, too, of those whom the nation delights to 
honor for services rendered in the late war of the rebellion, 
sink into the very depths of debasement by intemperance. 
As these words are being written, the Newark “Daily 
Advertiser” brings the following sad case to our notice : Social and National. 
177 
“ Gen. Wm. W. Wright, a well-known engineer, who marched 
with Sherman to the sea, and has been prominent in political 
affairs, died in Moyamensing Prison Thursday night. He had 
been arrested and sent there for lying drunk in the street. 
Gen. Wright became connected as civil engineer with the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company in 1848. Leaving the employ 
of the company in 1854, he was appointed revision engineer of 
the Honduras Interoceanic Railway Survey, which was made by 
John C. Trautvine in 1857. After remaining under Trautvine 
until the surveys were completed, he travelled about the world 
until the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, during a 
part of which he served as chief of the Engineering Corps of 
the Army of the Potomac. After the war he became careless in 
his personal habits and finally descended lower and lower until 
he became a common sot.” II. 
RELIGIOUS. 
New Testament Cautions and Injunctions of our Lord and 
His Apostles—Drunkards not to Inherit the Kingdom of God 
—Regulations Respecting Bishops and Officers—Scripture 
Truths a Commendation of Abstinence—The Expediency of 
Christian Love a Law—Opinions of the Christian Fathers— 
The Drink System Antagonistic to Religion, in its Effects 
upon Ministry and People, Sabbath-Schools, Missions, Sab- 
bath Desecration, etc. 
WE come now to speak of the effects of the use of in- 
toxicating drinks upon religious welfare; to note 
how this Evil of the Drink System wars upon man’s high- 
est nature; how it hinders religious growth in the individ- 
ual, and retards its influence in the world; as also to con- 
sider what is true in regard to the Scriptural treatment of 
this great subject. So much of this ground as has been 
gone over in the preceding essay, on “ Alcohol in History,” 
will be merely touched upon here, and the reader is referred 
to that work for a more general treatment of much under 
this head, that is purely historical. 
I. Aiming to get at the beginning in so much as relates 
to tlie records of tlie religion professed by the Christian 
world, we turn to the New Testament for our knowledge 
of the opinions of our Saviour and his Apostles. Remember- lieligious. 
179 
ing the frequency and vehemence with which the Old Testa- 
ment writers speak of intemperance, it may at first surprise 
us that so little is said in the New Testament, and espe- 
cially to the Jews, in regard to this great evil. The surprise 
will vanish, however, when we reflect on the changed for- 
tunes and the greatly distressed condition of Israel, from 
the time of the utterances of Malachi, their last inspired 
prophet, down to the advent of Jesus. Subject alternately, 
to the rule of the Persians, Egyptians and Romans, and en- 
during long periods of suffering from each, a reformation 
in some of their personal habits, especially in those of a 
convivial nature, had taken place. This change, although 
not universal, had become sufficiently general to furnish a 
reason for less frequent warnings against intemperance. 
Yet during that period of changing fortunes, as attested by 
the Apocryphal -writings, the true character and effects of 
the intoxicating cup were held up before the people for 
their instruction and admonition. 
A notable instance of this is given in the first Book of 
Esdras: 
“ O ye men, how exceeding strong is wine ! it causeth all men 
to err that drink it. It maketh the mind of the king and of 
the fatherless child to be all one: of the bondman and of the 
free man, of the poor, and of the rich: It turneth every thought 
into jollity and mirth, so that a man remembereth neither sor- 
row nor debt: And it maketh every heart rich, so that a man 
remembereth neither king nor governor; and it maketh to 
speak all things by talents : And when they are in their cups, 
they forget their love both to friends and brethren, and a little 
after draw out swords: But when they are from their wine, 
they remember not what they have done.” (Ch. iii. vs. 18-24.) 
So in Ecclesiasticus we read (xxxi. 31): 
“Rebuke not thy neighbor at the wine, and despise him not 
in his mirth ; give him no despiteful words, and press not upon 
him with urging him to drink.” 
During the same period, at least two Jewish sects sprung 
up, distinguished by their abstinence,—the Essenes, in 180 
Alcohol in Society. 
Palestine, and the Therapeutse, at Alexandria. Josephus 
and Philo assert that they strongly resembled the older 
Pythagoreans ; that they followed none but peaceful avo- 
cations ; opposed slavery and violence; were remarkable 
for their virtue and integrity, and abstained entirely from 
all wine and strong drink. Josephus also mentions their 
longevity, which, he says, “ is to be ascribed to their sim- 
ple and plain diet; and the temperance and good order 
observed in all things.” 
Evidences also abound to show the existence of the sect 
of the Nazarites in large numbers, about the time of the 
advent of Christ, both of those who were under perpetual 
vowts of abstinence, and those who had assumed limited 
obligations, extending from thirty days to a term of years. 
John the Baptist, like Samson and Samuel, was a Nazarite, 
even from his birth, and doubtless many who were baptized 
by him in Jordan, were distinguished by similar vowrs. 
Notwithstanding these facts, however, intemperance was 
not wholly unknown, and its effects were recognized by our 
Saviour, and spoken of by him as evil and only evil. In 
his discourses on his Second Coming to triumphantly estab- 
lish his spiritual kingdom, he more than once speaks of 
drinking and drunkenness as unfitting men for its reception 
and enjoyment. Thus in Matt. xxiv. 49—51, “to eat and 
drink with the drunken,” is said to disqualify for that 
watchfulness for the coming of the Son of Man “ in an hour 
that ” the unfaithful “ is not aware of,” and certain to ap- 
point him “ his portion with the hypocrites.” The same is 
repeated in Luke xii, 45, 46, in answer to Peter’s inquiry, 
whether the Saviour’s parables relating to his Second 
Coming refer to the apostles, or to all. So in Luke xxi. 
34, Jesus says, discoursing on the same topic : “ Take heed 
to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged 
with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and 
so that day come upon you unawares.” ’Religions. 
181 
So the Great Apostle, Paul, writing to Gentile converts, 
as to the Corinthians, in enumerating the classes who can- 
not “ inherit the kingdom of God,” mentions “ drunkards;” 
and also in the Epistle to the Galatians, says of those ad- 
dicted to “ drunkenness : ” “ They shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God.” To the Romans he writes : Let us not 
walk u in rioting and drunkenness,” and in first Corinthians 
he commands the disciples not to keep company with a 
man that is “ a drunkard.” Peter, whose ministry was 
chiefly with the Jews, says to those to whom he wrote his 
First Epistle: u The time past of our life may suffice us to 
have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in 
lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, 
and abominable idolatries.” A plain indication that 
drunkenness was not prominently a Jewish sin, but one in- 
to which they were led by following the examples of the 
Gentiles, and one that was wholly incompatible with the 
demands of the Gospel. 
So in the Epistle to the Ephesians, who were converts 
from heathenism, Pan! gives this command : 
“Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; hut he filled 
with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns 
and spiritual songs, singing, and making melody in your heart 
to the Lord.” (Ys. 17, 18.) 
The effort is often made to have it appear that the 11 ex- 
cess ” is in the drunkenness, and not in a moderate use of 
wine. But this error vanishes, when we consider that the 
wine here referred to was the concomitant of a heathen 
feast, a gathering put in contrast, by the apostle, with 
Christian assemblages. Conybeare and Howson, in their 
translation, render the passage, u Be not drunk with wine, 
like those who live riotously,” and comment thus : 
“ Throughout the -whole passage there is a contrast implied 
bet ween the heathen and the Christian practice, e. g., when 
you meet, let your enjoyment consist not in fulness of wine, hut 
fulness of the Spirit; let your songs be, not the drinking songs 182 
Alcohol in Society. 
of heathen feasts, but psalms and hymns, and their accompani- 
ment ; not the music of the lyre, hut the melody of the heart •, 
while you sing them to the praise, not of Bacchus or Venus, hut 
of the Lord Jesus Christ.” 
Regarding this Epistle as in many respects identical with 
the Epistle to the Colossians, they translate the parallel 
in the latter: 
“ Give, therefore, unto death, your earthly members: fornica- 
tion, uncleanness, shameful appetites, unnatural desires, and 
the lust of concupiscence, which is idolatry Let 
your singing he of psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs sung 
in thanksgiving, with your heart, unto God.” (iii. 5-16.) 
Their comment is: u St. Paul appears to intend (as in 
Eph. v. 18, 19, which throws light on the present passage) 
to contrast the songs which the Christians were to employ 
at their meetings, with those impure or bacchanalian strains 
which they formerly sung at their heathen revels.” The 
paraphrase by Maeknight is substantially the same. The 
reference, is to the use of wine in their former 
mode of heathen life, and not to the moderate or immoder- 
ate quantity employed. Jerome, the most critical of the 
Christian Fathers, connects the words rendered “ in which ” 
—en ho—grammatically with wine, taking asotia, the word ren- 
dered u excess,” to signify “ luxuria,” a meaning well borne 
out by Paul’s enumeration of the peculiarities of heathen 
life, as quoted above. Doddridge considers that u by a 
figure, the asotia is supposed to reside in the wine, as the 
effect in the cause.” Modem physiological discoveries,—as 
recorded in preceding pages, and more fully presented in the 
first chapter of “ Alcohol in History,” so plainly showing that 
physical and moral evils attach to the so-called moderate 
use of intoxicants, as well as to what is commonly styled 
drunkenness, justify the criticism and rendering made by 
J erome. 
Not only were these general instructions given, but spec- 
ial commands were laid on the Bishops and other officers Religious. 
183 
of tke church, similar to those laid on the priests under the 
old dispensation, forbidding their use of wine. After 
Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, had, while intoxicated, 
dared to offer strange fire on the altar, for which profane 
act they lost their lives— 
“ The Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor 
strong drink, thoti nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the 
tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die : it shall be a statute 
forever throughout your generations: and that ye may put 
difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and 
clean; and that ye may teach the children of Israel all the 
statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand 
of Moses.” (Leviticus x. 8-11.) 
The things denominated “ holy and unholy/’ “ unclean 
and clean/’ were doubtless those fitted for sacrifices, and 
those not to be accepted as offerings. If the Jewish Priest 
should be unfitted by wine for discrimination between these 
material things, how much more would the Christian min- 
isters, the Rpislcopos, whose office is one of peculiar sanc- 
tity, requiring in those who exercise it, great circumspection 
and holiness of conduct, be unfitted as teachers and exam- 
ples of a people all of whom are u Kings and priests unto 
God,” if sincere disciples of the Redeemer. Hence, writing 
to Timothy, Paul says: “ A bishop must be blameless, 
the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, 
given to hospitality, apt to teach : not given to wine.” And 
to Titus : “ A bishop must be blameless, as the steward 
of God; not self-willed, not soon angry, not given to wine, 
no striker, not given to filthy lucre; but a lover of hospi- 
tality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate.” 
The expression u not given to wine,” which occurs in both 
passages, is understood by many apologists for wine drink- 
ing, as merely a warning or caution against the too free 
use of wine. But this is an unwarranted interpretation, as 
the original words from which the translation has been 
made are derived from para, meaning near or by, and oinos, 184 
Alcohol in Society. 
wine. Literally, a bisbop must not be seen in company 
witli wine, at a wine banquet, or wherever wine is served. 
Tbe word rendered “ vigilant,” is evidently more signifi- 
cant than tliis word, or any other which the translators have 
selected from the English language, e. g., 11 sober,” in 1 Tim. 
iii. 11; or “ watch,” in 2 Tim. 4, 5 ; or “ awake,” in 1 Cor. 
xv. 34. Literally the word u Neephalios” means “with- 
out wine,” and indicates total abstinence. 
Dr. F. R. Lees well says in his works, vol. II. p. 92 : 
“The Jewish-Greek writers of the first century of our era— 
the contemporaries of the Apostles—furnish the most complete 
and accurate illustrations for determining the use of words in 
the New Testament—such writers, for example, as Philo and 
Josephus, Jews both by descent and education. As a learned 
writer has observed: ‘The Greek of Josephus is precisely the 
Greek of the Apostolic age—a circumstance which will not he 
thought unimportant by those who know the gradual changes 
which time effects in the significance of language. Josephus 
wrote Greek just as the majority of the New Testament writers 
wrote it, not as his native tongue, hut as a language acquired 
in the business-of life.7 Now, Josephus, in referring to the Di- 
vinely appointed abstinence of the priests, while wearing the 
sacred garments as God’s tetotal servants, uses the very word 
employed by the Apostles in their exhortations to sobriety: 
‘ They abstained from wine ’—apo alcraton nee phontes. 
“ Philo Judaeus, likewise, very frequently uses the word to 
designate abstinence from that kind of wine which he describes 
as the inspirer of lust and the generator of disease—it was his 
word for tetotal.” 
Chrysostom also gives the weight of his authority to that 
rendering which signifies total abstinence from wine, for in 
his homily on the passage, he says: “A proper caution; 
for if those who served in the temple did not taste wine at 
all, much more should not these.” 
Many of the principles announced in the New Testament, 
as also of the precepts of duty enjoined on all men by our 
Lord and his Apostles, so far as they have any application 
to the Drink System,—and certainly they do apply to this Religious. 
185 
and to whatever influences human life,—involve the duty 
of personal abstinence. The prayer and injunction, “Lead 
us not into temptation,” “ Watch and pray that ye enter 
not into temptation,” with others of similar import, are an 
emphatic condemnation of any use of that which, as we 
have seen, works evil and only evil, and whose whole his- 
tory is one of allurement, deception, and shame. 
In the conflict which Paul wages against sin, he takes 
the ground that no man can pride himself on his ability to 
stand, no matter how he thinks or what he does, but he 
warns against such presumption: “ Let him that thinketh 
he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” He is to consider his 
weakness, the power of temptation, the allurements of evil, 
and is to adopt such measures as will keep him from tam- 
pering with danger. 
The application to the subject in hand is manifest 
and conclusive. With the testimony before us, not of 
speculation, but of scientifically established facts, that any 
use of intoxicants as a beverage is harmful, and that the 
fearful tendency is to be led on from the use of little to 
much, the so-called moderate drinker is emphatically the 
man who, thinking that he stands, has most need to “ take 
heed lest he fall.” The path of safety, says Dr. Richard- 
son, is “ the path of perfect abstinence from alcohol in every 
disguise.” “ The mere moderate man,” he affirms, 11 is 
never safe, neither in the counsel he gives to others nor in 
the practice he follows for himself.” 
The result of his experiments ancl observations, he thus 
relates : 
“I observed as a physiological, or perhaps a psychological 
fact, that the attraction of alcohol for itself is cumulative. 
That so long as it is present in a human body, even in small 
quantities, the longing for it, the sense of requirement for it, is 
present, and as the amount of it insidiously increases, so does 
the desire,” 186 
Alcohol in Society. 
Can a man indulge in the use of such an insidious poison, 
and not run into temptation ? Has any man greater need 
to watch and pray lest he fall into sin ? 
So also all the injunctions to purity of heart, and against 
sensualism, the lusts and desires of the flesh j bear directly 
on this subject, since they must of necessity include the 
avoidance of whatever incites impurity, lust and unlawful 
desire. The evidence that the use of intoxicating liquors 
does all this vile work has been abundantly presented, and 
is irrefutable. 
The same is true, too, of the commands to cultivate and 
practice the milder virtues, long-suffering, gentleness, peace, 
meekness ; and to exercise a noble and broad-hearted phi- 
lanthropy ; and to lay down our life, if need be, for the 
good of others. These all require a clear and self-con- 
trolled will, a spirit of self-sacrifice, a conviction that no 
selfish consideration can be allowed to weigh against the 
demands of the highest good of our fellow-men. And since 
the indulgence in intoxicants renders the attainment of 
these impossible, abstinence must be the condition of obedi- 
ence to the commands. 
Especially is this duty of abstinence enjoined by the 
principle of Christian Expediency, as announced by the 
Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, and re-affirmed to 
the Corinthians. He says : 
“ Let us, therefore, follow after the things which make for 
peace, and things whereby one may edify another. For meat 
destroy not the work of God. All things, indeed, are pure ; 
but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence. It is good 
neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby 
thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast 
thou faith, have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that 
condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” 
As another has said : 
“ We believe the inspired apostle here lays down the rule of 
action for the remedy of an evil in his time, which is carried Religious. 
187 
out by abstinence to remedy the evil of intemperance in ours. 
In supjmrt of this position— 
“Look at the circumstances in which this Scripture was 
penned. These Roman believers lived in circumstances where 
idolatrous practices prevailed in the customs of social existence. 
Meats and drinks were often offered to the gods before being 
presented for family use. The heathen considered them as sa- 
cred things, and reckoned participation of them as homage done 
to their idols. This was a situation in which it is clear, Chris, 
tians were required to act with great caution, lest they should 
lend any countenance to idolatry. Some might be led to tamper 
with questionable practices through the influence of fashion ; 
others might be drawn into sin through joining in customs 
which wounded their conscience. To this danger of doing 
what their heart condemned, Jewish converts were especially 
exposed. The ceremonial law which had taken such fast hold 
on the conscience of their nation, enacted numerous restrictions 
respecting meats and drinks. These converts brought over 
their early feelings with them into the Christian faith, and it 
was a stumbling block for them even to see fellow believers 
eating what they regarded forbidden meats. They might be 
weak in this, they might be indulging only an early prejudice— 
they might have no right to set up their conscience as the stand- 
ard of action to others; all this might be so ; but these are the 
circumstances in which these divine words were penned.” 
“ Look next, then, at the laws which this Scripture reveals. 
To us it appears plain that the personal danger of joining in 
these feasts is referred to as a reason why Christians should 
shun them. If they joined in practices which were full of temp- 
tation, they might be led into sin. Is not this peril hinted at 
in the words, ‘ Happy is he who condemneth not himself in that 
thing which he alloweth ’ ? They might deem themselves strong 
to stand and in no danger of injuring themselves or religion by 
eating those meats; but where there is risk, in actions to which 
duty does not call, the apostle suggests it is not wise to enter 
into temptation 
“ But the good of others is here made the grand argument to 
the abstinence recommended. More, perhaps, might have been 
said with truth of personal danger ; but, in harmony with the 
genius of the gospel, the strength of the appeal is laid on Chris- 
tian benevolence. It is admitted that all distinctions of meats 
ordained by the law is abolished. It is allowed that all who 
can, may use them with a pure conscience. For themselves 188 
Alcohol in Society. 
they had received this right and liberty from Christ, and none 
might compel them to give it up. 
“But after all these concessions, what does Paul yet counsel? 
Does he say, you may act on your own right in taking what you 
believe will do yourselves no injury, and if others, following 
your example, do what to them is an occasion of sin, the fault 
lies with them, not with you? No, verily, Paul had not so 
learned Christ. After admitting their abstract right, he 
appeals to their love for their Christian brethren, and asks, 
will you not for their sakes deny yourself in these indulgences ? 
You are under no obligation to eat these meats, you may 
abstain from them without sin. Your partaking of them is an 
occasion of grief and sin to some for whom your Lord died, 
will you not, on their account, give up your right in a matter 
like this? Were it a matter of duty, or essential to religious 
enjoyment, no one might allege his weakness as a reason for 
you to abstain. But it is not so ; for ‘ the kingdom of God is 
not meat and drink, hut righteousness, and peace, and joy in 
the Holy Spirit.’ Since, then, the claims of Christian love are 
so powerful, and the nature of religion so spiritual, and the 
welfare of others so important, ‘let ns follow after the things 
which make for peace, and things whereby one may edify 
another.’ 
“ Such is the Bible law for the remedy of a great evil in the 
apostolic age. Its great principle is, * All things are lawful for 
me, hut all things are not expedient.’ It makes its chief appeal 
to Christian benevolence, and says to a Christian man, 1 For 
the sake of your brother believer, will you not abstain from an 
indulgence which to him may prove an occasion to sin ? ’ It 
was a rule of action this, which the noble Paul honored and 
followed in his own life. He says, ‘ If meat make my brother 
to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth, lest I 
make my brother to offend.’ This is the theory and practice of 
abstinence in the primitive age. 
u Look now, therefore, at the application of this Scripture to 
the principle of total abstinence from strong drink in our times. 
It will surely he admitted by all, that the rule of action here 
laid down is applicable to other cases of conscience than that 
immediately noticed. It will he granted, we suppose, by every 
one, that evils may arise in which Christians shall require to 
regulate their course by this Scripture, if they would not inj are 
their own souls, and cause others to offend. It is the part of all 
who revere the Divine authority to search out where it applies, Religious. 
189 
and to act by it as binding on their consciences. Our business 
is to discover when circumstances are analogous; and whenever 
this is ascertained, we find in this rule our law. 
“Now, as abstainers, we see so close a parallel between the 
usages and evils of ancient idolatry referred to in this Scripture, 
and the usages and evils connected with present intemperance, 
that our duty is plain. We think here of the two great sins 
which are the origin and occasion in both cases of all the 
troubles and dangers deplored—idolatry and intemperance. 
Here, too, the parallel cannot be denied. Now, therefore, we 
think of the evils arising out of these usages respectively: 
There might be a falling before temptation, and a going back 
to idolatry, or offending a Christian brother, in the one case; 
there may be a yielding to intemperance, or causing a fellow- 
man to fall into it, in the other. Here, too, surely, no one will 
take exception to the parallel. 
“We think, then, of this rule of duty which Paul in this 
Scripture prescribes. He does not counsel caution merely, he 
exhorts to abstinence; and since the parallel holds good in all 
the other points, does not this inspired rule of conduct require 
of us abstinence from the use of intoxicating drinks I Since in 
all these points the two cases are shown to be analogous, do 
not the very same arguments which moved these primitive be- 
lievers to abstain from these meats, bear with similar force on 
us, to cause us to abstain from these drinks ? 
“ Here, too, much might he said in support of abstinence, on 
the ground of personal risk of becoming, by indulgence, the vic- 
tim of intemperance. True, indeed, every person who so in- 
dulges imagines there is no danger for him. Others have fallen 
into the snare, but he knows how to stop in time. He may be 
told he moves close to a precipice, but he will not venture so 
near as to risk his falling over the edge! He knows how to 
pluck the rose without feeling the thorn ! Thus many a delud- 
ed one has proceeded on his reckless way, every step his mind 
becoming more blind to his danger, the evil habit growing, 
and dragging him on with diminished power to resist it, till he 
appeared a confirmed drunkard. With hundreds of thousands 
of such examples in men of genius, of talent, of strong resolution, 
of eminent name in the nation and the church, thus becoming, 
through drinking customs, the victims of intemperance, he is 
surely a bold or a conceited man, who shall say, I will follow 
this practice, but there is no fear of me falling into this vice. 
“ But Paul, in this passage, does not insist on considerations 190 
Alcohol in Society. 
of personal danger, though, as before remarked, he might see 
these to be not without force. He bases his great argument on 
benevolenco, and in this, too, we follow his example. We say 
to our non-abstaining friends, ‘ Supposing it all true that you 
allege respecting your right to use these drinks in moderation, 
as you call it, and respecting your safety in so doing, yet what 
have you to say to this motive from benevolence ? Admit that 
you may affirm here all things are lawful, yet are they all expe- 
dient ? Allow that you have the right to use these drinks, yet, 
out of love to the good of your fellow-man, to whom your action 
is an occasion to fall, are you not bound by this apostolic rule 
to abstain V We know not a single reason you can adduce for 
your practice in these drinks, that the strong believers in Paul’s 
day could not with equal force have set forth for their practice 
of using these meats. Do you allege your liberty to use these 
drinks with caution and care—so might they! But it is not 
watchfulness against abuse, or occasion of abuse they are coun- 
selled to practice, it is entire abstinence. 
“ Do you affirm you see no necessary connection between 
your use of these beverages and the sins of others falling into 
intemperance ? So might they ! But surely you do not require 
to be told that it is not the work of a benevolent spirit to in- 
sist upon having demonstrative evidence of occasioning an evil, 
before it will cease an indulgence that may cause it. Paul does 
not, you observe, go to prove, by a logical process, that the 
use of these meats must lead to sin in weak brethren, as a 
known cause leads to its effect; he reckons it quite sufficient to 
say that it may lead to this; and he himself declares he will 
wholly abstain, lest he should make his brother to offend. Can 
you then be acting out this principle of this inspired man, if 
you still indulge in these luxuries, assigning as your reason, 
that you see no necessary connection proved between your 
drinking and the drunkenness of your fellow-men ? Is it not 
enough to prompt your benevolent action to consider, that your 
example, otherwise, may occasion injury; and is there not 
proof sufficient, to move you to abstinence, in this logic of love : 
‘ I will drink no wine, lest I make my brother to offend’ ? ” * 
II. The opinions of the Christian Fathers and their early 
successors, and the action against intoxicants and intem- 
* “ Scripture Testimony Agaiust Intoxicating Wine,” by Rev. 
William Ritchie. Pp. 171-179. Religious. 
191 
perance by early church councils, are all consistent with 
the attitude and utterances of Christ and his Apostles. 
Said Clement of Alexandria, one of the most eminent of 
the Fathers, in commenting on the passage, u Wine, where- 
in is excess: ” 
“ I admire those who have chosen an austere life, and desire 
no other beverage than water, the medicine of a wise temper- 
ance, avoiding wine as they would fire. Young men and 
maidens should forego this medicament altogether, for hence 
arise irregular desires and licentious conduct. The circulation 
is hastened, and the whole body excited, by the action of wine 
on the system. The body inflames the soul.” (Psedagogue, 
Bk. ii.) 
So Chrysostom: “ Wine produces disorder of mind, and where 
it does not cause drunkenness, it destroys the energies and 
relaxes the faculties of the soul.” 
And Augustine, opposing the celebration of a Christian 
feast by indulgence in dissipation, says: 
“ See to it, that, since ye desire to celebrate this day in a 
carnal manner, ye do not make yourselves unfit for celebrating 
what this feast means, eternally with the angels. Perhaps that 
drunken man whom I reprove, will say to me, ‘ Thou hast, for- 
sooth, preached to us that this feast announces to us eternal 
joy; shall I not, therefore, do myself some good?’ Yes, 
thou mightest truly do thyself good, and not harm! For it 
announces joy to thee if thou art a temple of God. But if thou 
defilest the temple of God by drunkenness, the apostle tells thee 
(1 Cor. iii. 17), 'If any man defile the temple of God, him 
shall God destroy.’ ”* 
Jerome is also quoted as saying: “ Whatever inebriates and 
throws the mind off its balance, fly as if it were wine which is 
suspected to contain poison.” 
An old English writer quotes some of the early Christian 
preachers. Speaking of drunkenness as “ the root of all 
evil, the rot of all good,” he adds : 
“ It poisoneth the very soul and reason of a man, whereby 
the faculties and organs of repentance and resolution are so cor- 
* “ Neander’s Memorials of Christian Life,” pp. 262, 263. 192 
Alcohol in Society. 
rupted and captivated, that it makes men utterly incapable of 
returning, unless God should work a greater miracle upon them 
than was the creating of the whole world. Whence Augustine 
compares it to the very pit of hell, out of which (when a man is 
once fallen into) there is no hope of redemption. As what says 
Basil: * Shall we speak to drunkards ? We had as good speak 
to lifeless stone or senseless plants, or witless beasts, as to 
them, for they no more believe the threats of God’s word than 
if some impostor had spoken them.’ ”* 
Cyprian, Ambrose, and others, seriously reprove the wine 
drinking of their day, and especially the tendency to per- 
vert the festivals instituted in honor of the martyrs, to Bac- 
chanalian revels. Augustin, already quoted on this sub- 
ject, frequently denounces such feasts as innovations on 
the precepts of the Scriptures, saying on one occasion, that 
the people not only turn them into drunken feasts on the 
days particularly consecrated to the martyrs, u but on every 
day of the year.” Cyprian laments that “ Drunkenness is 
so common with us in Africa, that it scarcely passes for a 
crime. And do we not see Christians forcing each other 
to get drunk, to celebrate the memory of the martyrs ? ” 
Ecclesiastical canons of the fourth century forbid any 
ecclesiastic to visit taverns ; and the tavern keeper, Nean- 
der says, in his Memorials, was held in worse repute than 
were men in any other trade or calling. (P. 100). 
The African Synod of A. D. 418 prohibited the lascivi- 
ous feasts of the Gentiles, especially such as fell on the 
nativity of any of the saints; and also commanded the 
heathen not to force Christians to drink with them at any 
time. Later, under the Justinian code, monks were for- 
bidden to enter places where liquor was sold, under pain of 
chastisement upon conviction before a magistrate, and of 
expulsion from their monasteries. Still later, Boniface, 
Archbishop of Mentz, sharply reproves the English bishops 
that they not only did not punish drunkenness in others, 
* “ The Blemish, of Government,” etc., by E. Yonge, 1655. Religious. 
193 
but especially that they were guilty of it themselves. 
Drunkenness,’7 he says, was a special sin of the English 
nation, u and one of which neither the Franks, Lombards, 
Romans, nor Greeks were guilty ; ” and he adds, 11 This is 
most certainly a great crime for a servant of God to do op 
to have done, since the ancient canons decree that a bishop 
nr priest given to drink should either resign or be de- 
posed.’7 * 
The foregoing citations, given in the briefest manner, in 
order to avoid repetition of what is dwelt on more at large in 
the preceding Essay—conclusively show that the use of in- 
toxicants, however it may have prevailed in apostolic and 
later times, wus heartily condemned and denounced by the 
acknowledged authorities. If—as we shall see was the 
3ase,—the church, or any portion of it, in later times, sanc- 
tioned and encouraged intemperance, we may be sure that 
such encouragement was wholly foreign to the teachings of 
the New Testament writers and to the church authorities 
nearest the times of the apostles, and is therefore rebuked 
and censured by them. 
Intemperance has prevailed in greater or less degree, un- 
fortunately, in all periods of the Christian era, and has al- 
ways been inimical to the religion of Jesus Christ, and 
greatly impeded its progress in the world. Most sad of all 
ihings in its history in the church is the fact that at times 
from mistaken policy, and at times from the suggestions 
and connivance of ecclesiastical authority, it has been un- 
wittingly or designedly encouraged by those in position and 
power. Instances of mistaken policy abound in early 
times, in the attempts to make it easy for the heathen in 
different nationalities to profess Christianity, by allowing 
many of their former feasts and seasons of noisy rejoicing 
to be brought with them into their new relations, changed 
* For other testimony on this point, as also for copies of the 
decrees of ecclesiastical councils, see, “ Alcohol in History.” 194 
Alcohol in Society. 
only in name; a permission which too often made the new 
converts, and generations of their descendants, Christian 
only in name. Christmas and Easter Festivals partook 
largely of this character in some localities; Saints’ Days 
were often mere substitutes for Bacchanalian frolics$ and 
eagerness to add to church revenues, in many instances, en- 
couraged the sale and use of intoxicants. 
As indicating the dangers and evils which proceeded from 
this policy, and also the demoralization attendant on the 
corruptions of clergy and people, we cite a few historical 
facts, referring for more extended notice to the work men- 
tioned in the preceding foot-note. 
In the seventh century, at the Synod of Trullus, the 
clergy and laity were commanded not to partake of the 
feasts of the Bacchanalia; on pain, the former, of deposi- 
tion, the latter of excommunication. The fact of such a 
caution, indicates the extensive sway of intemperance. 
In England, the king devoted immense sums of money 
to the celebration of the various festivals of the church. 
The monasteries were filled with guests of all characters, 
and the riot and debauchery common to the lowest descrip- 
tion of taverns in our day, were scenes of every-day occur- 
rence in these mansions erected for the service of God, 
during the festivals of Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christ- 
mas. 
The Danes and Anglo-Saxons were in the habit of 
quaffing immense draughts to the honor of the Saviour, the 
Virgin, and the Apostles. Some writers aver that in early 
Anglo-Saxon times both nunneries and convents were 
places in which the worst vices were practised. It became 
quite common for nobles and others to purchase crown lands 
on pretence of establishing monasteries. Having secured 
their lands, they made themselves abbots, collected disso- 
lute and expelled monks around them, and led riotous lives. 
Some of the nunneries were of the same character. Of the 
nuns of Ooldingham it is said that they spent their time in .Religious. 
195 
feasting, drinking and gossiping. 11 They also employed 
themselves in working fine clothes, dressing themselves 
like brides, and acquiring the favor of strange men.” * 
In the tenth century, Edward I., the Anglo-Saxon mon- 
arch, was murdered, at a feast held in honor of St. Augus- 
tin, he and his domestics being all so drunk that they 
could offer no resistance to the assassin. 
Early in the twelfth century, Abp. Anselm ordered in 
his Canons, that “ Priests shall not go to drinking matches, 
nor drink to pegs,” from whence we infer that pegs in drink- 
ing cups, which had been devised by St. Dunstan to limit 
potations, had become a means for increasing them. About 
this time originated in England the well-known merry- 
makings, or gatherings at which, accompanied by a lavish 
consumption of liquor, important local business, both cleri- 
cal and lay, was transacted. These meetings were called 
“ales,” from the drink provided in them, and were espe- 
cially designated by the season at which they were held, as 
“ Easter-ale,” u Whitsun-ale ; ” or by the object in whose 
behalf they were convened, as u bid-ales ” or u help-ales,” 
when charitable contributions were made for those in need; 
“ bride-ales,” wedding festivals ; or “ church-ales,” where 
the money received from them was devoted to the church. 
Sometimes they were held in the church edifices, and 
very frequently the clergy were parties to agreements for 
them for the benefit of the church. A copy of one of these 
agreements is given in the preceding Essay. 
They were continued to the time of the Reformation, and 
beyond, being encouraged by Abp. Laud, and other digni- 
taries of the Established Church, and became such a pub- 
lic nuisance that they were finally suppressed by Queen 
Elizabeth. 
In Collett’s 11 Relics of Literature,” an account is given, 
as quoted by White and Pleasants, of a festival celebrated 
* “ Fosbrooke’s British Monachism,” yol. I. pp. 16, 17. 196 
Alcohol in Society. 
in France in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, by 
the authority, and under the patronage of the Homan Cath- 
olic Church, called ‘ The Feast of the Asota; ’ the ceremo- 
nies of which appear to have been identical with the rites 
of Bacchus, as celebrated in the ancient Bacchanalia. The 
description of these ceremonies is ascribed to Pierre Corbeil, 
Archbishop of Sens, who is said to have left a manuscript 
missal, beautifully illuminated, in which these impious 
ceremonies are detailed with disgusting minuteness. The 
priest, smeared with the lees of wine, danced and sung in 
the church, and around the very altar—the officers of the 
church played cards in the sanctuary, eating and drinking 
to abomination—old shoes were burnt on the censer, in- 
stead of incense during the celebration of mass—and the 
dignitaries of the church, at the conclusion of their orgies, 
were carried home in carts, (probably because they were 
too drunk to walk) practising all the way the most indecent 
postures, and making the welkin ring with songs of a grossly 
lascivious or bacchanalian character. These ceremonies 
lasted for several days, and clergy and laity participated 
in them, in about an equal degree. 
Daring the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as set forth 
in the 10th vol. of u Henry’s History of England,” gross 
intemperance prevailed among the clergy and laity of Eng- 
land. The historian gives the following picture of the 
times : u The secular clergy were no enemies to the pleas- 
ures of the table, and some of them contrived to convert 
gluttony and drunkenness into religious ceremonies, by 
celebrating ‘ glutton masses/ as they very properly called 
them. These 1 glutton masses ’ they celebrated five times a 
year, in honor of the Virgin Mary, in this manner. Early 
in the morning, the people of the parish assembled in the 
church, loaded with ample stores of meats and drinks of all 
kinds. As soon as mass ended, the feast began, in which 
clergy and laity engaged with equal ardor. The church 
was turned into a tavern, and became a scene of riot and Religious. 
197 
intemperance. The priests and people of different parishes, 
entered into a formal contest which of them should devour 
the greatest quantity of meat and drink in honor of the 
Virgin Mary.” 
It is apparent without being said, that such practices 
were irreligious and vile, and that they were antagonistic 
to all that was sought to be secured by the religion of 
Jesus Christ. In more modern times such gross outrages 
have not been sanctioned by any branch of the Christian 
Church ; but all sects have frowned upon and condemned 
intemperance. And yet, either from false distinctions be- 
tween moderate and intemperate drinking, or from a va- 
riety of causes not readily named, intemperance has been, 
and to-day is, the greatest antagonist of the Christian 
Religion. 
The struggle with the Drink System, is, as Mr. Buxton 
well said, a struggle against the Church, as well as 
against the School and the Library. And Horace Mann 
pertinently asks: u What can Bible or Christianizing 
societies do with the intemperate ? At best they can only 
address moral and religious sentiments whose animation is 
suspended.” If we examine a few particulars we shall 
more clearly see the force of these general observations. 
We say then, that the Drink System is antagonistic to the 
Christian Keligion. 
III. Look then at its effects upon ministers and people. 
How many of the former have fallen and lost their reputa- 
tion in consequence of intemperance. They furnish, per- 
haps more strikingly than do any other class of men, ex- 
amples of the great danger of what is so erroneously, at 
least so ambiguously, called “ moderate drinking.” Many 
of them, and presumably all, were honest, sincere and earn- 
est in their Christian profession, and yet grace did not and 
could not prevent their stumbling and falling when they 198 
Alcohol in Society. 
experimented on themselves with those indulgences which 
stupify, debilitate, betray and enslave their victims. 
Less than a hundred years ago, Archdeacon Paley found 
it necessary, in addressing the young clergy, in the Diocese 
of Carlisle, to exhort them 11 not to get drunk, or to fre- 
quent ale-houses ... to avoid profligate habits, 
. . . . not to be seen at drunken feasts or barbarous 
diversions; ” and in reading the service, “ not to perform 
it with reluctance or quit it with symptoms of delight.” It 
was not superfluous advice. The headmaster of Tunbridge 
School, Dr. Knox, said: 
“The public have remarked with indignation that some of 
the most distinguished coxcombs, drunkards, debauchees, and 
gamesters who figure at watering places, are young men of the 
sacerdotal order.” 
So Arthur Young wrote that “The French clergy are more 
decent than the English ; they are not preachers or fox hunters, 
who spend the morning with hounds, the evening at the bottle, 
and reel from drunkenness into the pulpit.” 
Tlie American clergy of that period were not gamesters, 
not fox hunters, but many of them were frequently disguised 
by liquor ; and if they did not fall into other vices, greatly 
impaired their usefulness, and rendered themselves liable 
to temptations peculiar to inebriety. And this condition of 
things largely prevailed till the dawn of the Temperance 
Reformation in the present century. 
“ I know,” said Mr. Delavan, “ of two bishops, brothers, 
who fell, through wine. I know of one drinking a whole 
goblet of sacramental wine as his part, and then going 
from the communion table and disgracing himself with 
women ; for which he was tried and unseated. 
Prof. Leonard Woods, D. D., of Andover, said: 
“ I remember at a particular period, before the temperance re 
formation commenced, I was able to count up nearly forty min- 
isters, and none of them at a great distance, who were either 
drunkards, or so far addicted to drinking, that their reputation Religious. 
199 
and usefulness were greatly impaired, if not utterly ruined. I 
could mention an ordination that took place about twenty years 
ago, at which I myself was ashamed and grieved to see two 
aged ministers literally drunk; and a third indecently excited. 
With the light now cast on the subject, it seems to me incredi- 
ble, that a minister of the gospel can be in the habit of using 
any intoxicating liquor, without injuring his own piety and di- 
minishing the success of his labors. It tends to inflame all that 
is depraved and earthly, and to extinguish all that is spiritual 
and holy. It is poison to the soul, as really as to the body.” 
On such occasions, prior to 1810, as also on occasions 
like the dedication of churches, and the meetings of asso- 
ciations, liquors flowed freely, and were generally the 
largest items in the hill of expenses. Dr. Lyman Beecher 
mentions in his autobiography, that at an ordination which 
he attended in Goshen, Conn., “there was some hard 
drinking, and some complaint on account of the quantity 
of liquor consumed.” In those cheap times the liquor used 
at that ordination cost forty dollars. 
Rev. John Marsh, in his Autobiography, thus describes 
anincident, showing the general prevalence of the drink- 
ing habit among the clergy in 1818 : 
“Returning from the services to the public house, on a very- 
cold day in December, the council, composed of some thirty min- 
isters and delegates, were ushered into a large tavern cham- 
ber, where was a bright fire on one side, and, on the other, a 
table filled with all the materials for warming the stomach, 
and preparing for the repast which would soon be in readiness. 
“Among the ministers present was one who had thrown ofi' 
the dominion of King Alcohol. This was the Rev. Calvin 
Chapin, of the parish of Rocky Hill, in the town of Weathers- 
field; a man in whose heart was the law of kindness, but 
whose tongue was, when needed, beyond all others, a sharp 
sword. As the Rev. Mr. K. of Killingworth, a lovely brother, 
but not able to cope with him, was with twenty others mixing 
his tumbler of good things—Mr. C., singling him out for an 
attack, said: “ Brother K., what are you going to do with that 
stuff ? ’ ‘ Stuff,’ said Mr. K., ‘it is not stuff, it is good brandy.’ 
‘ Well, what are you going to do with it?’ ‘Do with it ? 200 
Alcohol in Society. 
Why, what do you suppose ? Drink it, to he sure.’ ‘ Well, 
asked Mr. C., ‘ what are you going to do then ? ’ ‘Do ? AVhy, 
walk about, I suppose.’ ‘ But suppose/ said Mr. C., ‘ you can- 
not ? There has been many a man who, after drinking that, 
could not walk at all; and I doubt whether, if you drink it, 
you can walk a crack. I will challenge you to do it.’ 
“Mr. K., still stirring his liquor, not able amid this storm to 
drink, and now the observed of all present, said: ‘ Well, I 
believe I shall try it.’ ‘ You had better not/ said Mr. C., ‘ you 
had better come and throw it in the fire or out of the window. 
If you want to get warm, take a coal of fire into your mouth, 
but don’t take that, and have it said, as it may he, that Rev. 
Mr. K. went to ordination, and could not get home.’ At length, 
one of the Fathers, provoked beyond measure by this universal 
stop put to the drinking custom, said, with a loud voice, ‘ Mr. 
€., do you let Brother K. alone, and let him have his drink; you 
are a real pest, a genuine blackguard/ and here ended the mat- 
ter. But this was the last ordination in that district of country 
at which liquor was provided. The Rev. Mr. K. afterwards 
became one of the most zealous and determined advocates of 
temperance, and for his opposition to the rum interest, was 
driven from his parish.” 
Rev. Richard Kneil said, some thirty years ago: 
“Nearly all the blemishes which have been found on the 
character of ministers, for the last fifty years, have arisen, di- 
rectly or indirectly, from the free use of intoxicating liquors.” 
But if drinking has weakened and unfitted the ministry 
for their work, equally ruinous has it been in destroying 
the religious life of the laity. Some years ago the Rev. 
J. R, Barbour published a pamphlet, in which he showed 
that in one hundred and thirty-five churches, out of eight 
hundred cases of excommunication, three hundred and 
seventy were for intemperance ; and of eight hundred and 
thirty-four confessions reported from the same churches, 
intemperance was confessed in three hundred and seventy- 
nine cases, besides fifty-six cases in which the individuals 
became intemperate soon after their exclusion, or were 
placed under discipline for indulgence in the same degrad- 
ing vice. Thus of one thousand six hundred and thirty- 'Religious. 
201 
four cases of discipline reported, eight hundred and five 
show the appalling power of this sin. But even this state- 
ment is far from exhibiting the full extent of the evil: the 
indirect influence of spirituous liquors must be added ; and 
in representing this, Mr. Barbour declares it to be bis de- 
liberate conviction, from documents to which he has had 
access, that seven-eighths at least of all the offences requir- 
ing discipline in the American church for the twenty or 
thirty years preceding his report, have originated directly 
or indirectly, in the use of strong drink. This startling 
and appalling statement was at the time of its publication 
coiToborated by similar evidence in regard to the Christian 
church generally. 
Peter Burne in the Tetotaller’s Companion, cites au- 
thorities to show that in Scotland, the Carnival, which pre- 
cedes Lent: 
“ Assumes the Bacchanalian form of uncontrolled dram- 
drinking. For days previous to the fast, the ‘ laddies and lass- 
es ’ are engaged in deliberating upon the first eligible place for 
holding the carousal.” 
And, observes a writer in the u Literary Morceaux ” : 
On the morning of the fast, every village pours forth its 
hand of devotees—not to the altar, hut to the pot-house. The 
church is deserted, and the vintner cannot find room for his 
customers. Religion gives way to usquebaugh. . . . The 
smuggler finds a ready market for his illicit commodity; and 
towards evening, douce Scotland can boast of as many cracked 
heads as Donnybrook Fair.” 
The widow of Rev. Charles Kingsley, says in the bio- 
graphy of her husband, that as late as 1844, a religious 
celebration in the parish over which her husband was set- 
tled, was made the occasion of drunkenness : 
“It had hitherto been the custom,” she says, “in Eversley, 
and the neighboring parishes, to let the confirmation candidates 
get over as they could to some distant church, where the cate- 
chumens of four or five parishes assembled to meet the bishop. 202 
Alcohol in Society. 
Consequently,the public houses were usually full on confirmation 
day, which often ended in a mere drunken holiday for boys and 
girls who had many miles to walk, and had neither superinten- 
dence nor refreshment by the way provided for them. When 
he became rector, matters were arranged very differently for 
the Eversley people On the day itself the young peo- 
ple assembled early for refreshment at the rectory, whence they 
started in two vans for Hackfield church. He himself went 
with the boys, and his wife, or some trustworthy person with 
the girls, and never lost sight of them till they returned, the 
girls to their homes, and the boys and young men, some of them 
married men, who from long years of neglect had never been 
confirmed, to the rectory, where a good dinner awaited them.” 
Recently, fourteen thousand ministers of the Established 
Church in England, memorialized the House of Lords, in- 
voking the aid of new legislation against the Drink System. 
Their convictions were thus emphatically expressed : 
“ We are convinced, most of us, from an intimate acquaintance 
with the people, extending over many years, that their condi- 
tion can never be greatly improved, whether intellectually, 
physically, or religiously, so long as intemperance extensively 
prevails among them, and that intemperance will prevail so 
long as temptation to it abounds on every side.” 
Eminent priests and other dignitaries in the Roman 
Catholic Church, are also earnestly testifying to the evils 
of intemperance as a bar to their work among their people. 
The Archbishop of Cashel, in Ireland, says, 11 There needs 
the united strength of church and state to grapple success- 
fully with the gigantic evil of intemperance.” 
And Cardinal Manning of England, thus vigorously ex- 
presses himself: 
“It is mere mockery to ask us to put down drunkenness by 
moral and religious means, when tlie Legislature facilitates tlie 
multiplication of the incitements to intemperance on every 
side. You might as well call upon me as a captain of a ship, 
and say, 1 Why don’t you pump the water out when it is sink- 
ing ? ’ when you are scuttling the ship in every direction.” Religious. 
203 
Bishop Keane, of that Church in the United States, 
called together the liquor dealers of Richmond, Ya., who 
were of his own communion, in the winter of 1881, and 
earnestly remonstrated with them against the evils of their 
business. He protested that he had no hard feelings to- 
wards anybody engaged in this business, but the kindest 
affection for all. 
“ It was a business full of danger, and every effort should be 
made to modify the evils that attended it. The honest carpen- 
ter, the honorable shoemaker, the hard-fisted and hard-working 
blacksmith, in fact, the members of all trades, could offer up to 
God all their work and every movement connected with it, 
thereby rendering honor to Him. But he would ask in all 
candor and charity what man who trafficked in liquor, could, 
upon rising in the morning, say, ‘ My God, I offer to Thee every 
glass of whiskey or other drink which I shall sell to-day; and 
I desire that it may be for Thine honor and glory ! ’ Why did 
such a proposition seem like blasphemy? The blasphemy was 
not in the proposition. It was in the bringing together of two 
such incongruous things as liquor-selling and prayer to the 
living God, in the suggestion that a traffic which has such a 
long train of evils—of evils which are infernal (no other epi- 
thet will characterize them) can be consecrated by prayer to 
God.” * 
Eev. Father Scully, Rector of St. Mary’s Parish, Cam- 
bridge, Mass., in his annual report of the parish, as pub- 
lished in the papers of Boston, Feb. 1882, earnestly depre- 
cates the prevalence of intemperance, and especially re- 
monstrates against the temptations set before the young 
people of his parish in the presence of liquor at church 
fairs. “ How,” he asks, u can we train our young to look 
with horror on the evils of 1 rum/ when lager beer is sold 
in our neighboring churches where fairs are held ? ” He is 
emphatic in the utterance of his conviction that intem- 
perance is the greatest of all foes to the spread of reli- 
gion. 
* u Unholy Alliances,” by J. E. Rankin, D.D., p. 12. 204 
Alcohol in Society. 
When the present Archbishop Bayley was Bishop of 
Newark, N. J., some years ago, he issued an edict that 
incorrigible drunkards of that diocese should not receive 
Christian burial. Bishop Wigger, who succeeds him, has, 
so sav the secular papers, recently announced that this rule 
will hereafter be enforced, and will be applied also to per- 
sons who sell liquor to drunkards and contrary to the laws 
of the State. “ Incorrigible drunkards ” he defines to be 
“ persons who habitually drink to excess until their death, 
against the repeated admonitions of their pastor.” 
As the foregoing testimonies fully show, there is entire 
unanimity of judgment among Christians of every sect, that 
the use of intoxicants produces disastrous effects, antagon- 
izing and destroying the influence of religious institutions 
and teachings. 
IV. This is also further manifest in the effects of the 
Drink System on Sunday-school and Missionary efforts. 
Scores of children in the Sunday-schools in various parts 
of Christendom are either from homes whose influence 
vitiates all Sunday instruction, or fall before the tempta- 
tions of the saloons and gardens which are rendered so at- 
tractive for the purpose of alluring them to ruin; and 
instances are not rare in which once earnest and devoted 
teachers became lost to their classes, and now, with some 
of their scholars, swell the ranks of the castaways through 
the deceitfulness of the inebriating cup. In England much 
attention is paid to gathering statistics on this point; and 
from many testimonies submitted in a report of the com- 
mittee of York Convocation, the following are selected: 
“A loss of nearly 80 per cent, of our elder scholars is due to 
drinking habits ” “ Drink and its concomitants draw away a 
large proportion of our elder scholars.” “Many of our elder 
scholars go to ‘ penny hops ’ in public houses, and lose all in- 
terest in good things.” “There are at present known to the 
clergy in this district ten or twelve men and women who, once Religious. 
205 
teachers in the Sunday-school, have fallen away through intem- 
perance ; two have been superintendents.” “ Drink has de- 
prived the Sunday-schools of this parish of some of the most 
promising young men. Several, after becoming teachers, have 
taken to drink, and have been utterly ruined.” 
These might he largely multiplied ; and the showing in 
the United States may he equally appalling, since, as is 
well known, complaint is made in all the churches, that 
many who are connected with Sunday-schools go no fur- 
ther in their religious education or interest, hut fail to 
identify themselves with any religious organization. 
If we take up the reports of Missionaries, whether Home 
or Foreign, we shall find that the Drink System is an ob- 
stacle always in their path, and the most difficult of all op- 
position with wThich they have to contend. There are 
numerous cases in which heathen nations resist the attempts 
to plant Christianity in their borders, in consequence of 
the intemperance of Christian professors, and their efforts 
to establish the traffic as a source of gain. Not a few 
missionaries have been tauntingly told to remain at home, 
and reform their own countrymen. The late Archdeacon 
Jeffries, of Bombay, for more than thirty years a mission- 
ary in India, said at a public meeting: 
“ When once the natives broke caste, and became Christians, 
they were no longer restrained from the use of strong drink, and 
they became worse than if they had never embraced Christiani- 
ty. If the English were driven out of India to-morrow, the 
chief traces of their having been there would be the number of 
drunkards they had left behind.” 
More recently, Baboo Chunder Sen said, at a meeting 
in London: 
“ What was India thirty or forty years ago, and what is she 
to-day ? The wailings and the cries of widows and orphans at 
this moment, methinks, fill the whole horizon of India. The 
whole atmosphere of India seems to he rending with the cries 
of poor helpless widows, who often go the length of cursing the 206 
Alcohol in Society. 
British Government for having introduced this very thing—in- 
toxicating drink.” 
Rev. Mr. Hume, of Bombay, confirms these statements, 
and declares, 
“ Intemperance to he the besetting sin of the native churches, 
and more of the converts gathered by missionaries, have fallen 
through this, than any other cause. I do not believe that there 
is a Protestant mission in India, which the Lord has blessed 
with converts in any number, that has not suffered from this 
cause; and I add with feelings of deep sorrow—which is not, in 
all probability, destined to suffer still more.” 
In Persia, where drunkenness has increased in the ratio 
of intercourse with the inhabitants of Christian countries, 
it has become a standing reproach to the Gospel, that a 
drunken Mussulman is disowned by his fellows, and turned 
over to the Christians as being one of them. When one 
of their countrymen is seen intoxicated, their common ex- 
pression is, “ He has left Mahomet, and gone over to 
Jesus.” 
The following punishment for drunkenness inflicted by 
a mob at Constantinople, will show how sensible Mahomet- 
ans are of the disgusting nature of the vice, and the light 
in which they look upon Christianity, in consequence of its 
prevalence among Christian professors. A drunken Mus- 
sulman was tied upon a lame mule, with his face towards 
the tail of the animal. On his head was placed a Euro- 
pean [Christian’s] hat, and behind him, back to back, was 
tied a dog, an animal greatly abominated by them. After 
parading him through the streets, stopping at every foun- 
tain to sprinkle him with water and mud, he was taken to 
the banks of the Bosphorus, and in mockery of the Christ- 
ian rite of baptism was plunged into the water with his 
innocent companion. The hair of the dog was then shaved 
off in the form of a cross, and the beard of the Mussulman 
was removed with the same razor. He was then twice Religious. 
207 
plunged into the Bosphorus, and his purification pronounced 
complete.* 
An American Missionary waiting from Siam, says : 
“Drunken Siameso are exceedingly common, so much so that 
I much dread meeting a large company, even for the purpose 
of preaching the gospel to them, being almost sure to find a 
number in the different stages of intoxication. I therefore fix 
my hour for preaching in the bazaar at 9 A. M., although I 
should be sure of having three or four times as many in the 
afternoon.” 
In u Young’s Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence on 
the Mosquito Shore,” it is said (p, 29): 
“ That at a missionary station there, the habit of drunken- 
ness had taken such a hold of the natives, that a missionary 
conceived it necessary to distribute spirits among them, to 
procure their attention while he unfolded to them the blessings 
of the gospel! No sooner, however, had he discontinued the 
practice, than it was shown most unequivocally that no interest 
was taken in his harangues : for while in the midst of an eloquent 
appeal, one of the chiefs arose, and quietly said—' all talk—no 
grog—no good,’ and gravely stalked away, followed by all the 
natives, leaving the astonished preacher to finish his discourse 
to two or three Englishmen present.” 
About half a century ago, Rev- John Pierpont, after 
telling of what he had seen at the port of Smyrna— 
u barrels of New England rum, with the Boston stamp, 
lying on the wharf,” and a vessel which took missionaries 
to that port unloading more mm, eloquently summed up the 
record against ns, by saying: 
“ Shall we make this goodly land of ours any longer to go up 
as such a stench in the nostrils of the nations ? It will cease to 
be done to some extent, when the vocation ceases to be regard- 
ed as honorable, because profitable. When the track of the ser- 
pent with his slimy folds, is seen over the piles of gold, follow it 
with your execrations, because, in heaping up these piles of 
* “ British Temperance Advocate and Journal,” No. 17, p. 
48. 208 
Alcohol in Society. 
gold, the love of man had no share. But, when we say these 
hard things against these men, are we not doing something to 
bring their vocation into disgrace ? Yes, I am; and I do it 
with this express purpose. When man shall have made this 
business as infamous as God has made it wrong, the nations of 
the earth will have less cause to complain of our own. I ask 
you to paint in your imagination, that vessel sailing up to the 
port of Smyrna, having nine missionaries, taking their lives in 
their hands, to convert the people to Christianity; and the same 
vessel carrying five thousand gallons of New England rum, to 
convert sober Mahometans into drunken Mahometans—or the 
still greater absurdity of drunken Christians.” 
Alas ! we have not yet ceased this inconsistency. 
The “Missionary Review of the World/7 for January, 
1888, contains a statement to the effect that the extension 
of European Colonial possessions and protectorates in 
Africa means such a fearful extension of the use of intox- 
icants in the Dark Continent as blasts the progress of civil- 
ization and missions, and hinders the elevation of the peo- 
ple ; and that it has caused the Archbishops of Canterbury 
and York, and the Bishop of London to address the fol- 
lowing letter to the Bishop of the British Colonies and 
dependencies: 
“My Lord: The attention of the Church has been recently 
drawn to the wide-spread and still growing evils caused by the 
introduction of intoxicating liquors among the native races in 
the colonies and dependencies of the British Empire, and in 
other countries to which British trade has access. Part of the mis- 
chief is certainly due to other traders than the British, hut Brit- 
ish trade, as exceeding in volume that of many other countries 
put together, is mainly responsible. This mischief cannot be 
measured by what we witness among our own countrymen. The 
intemperance is far greater, the evils consequent on intemperance 
are far worse. The accounts given of the numbers that perish 
from this cause and of the misery and degradation of those who 
survive, are painful in the extreme. And besides the grievous 
wrong thus inflicted on the native races, reproach has thus been 
brought on the name of Christ. The English missionary who 
preaches the Gospel, and the English merchant who brings the Religions. 
209 
fatal temptation, are inevitably associated in the minds of the 
heathen people, and by many not only associated, but identified. 
It is asserted by travellers of repute that in many parts of the 
world the moral character of the natives gains more by the 
preaching of Mahometanism than by the preaching of the gos- 
pel, for the former tends to make them sober. 
“ The evils of intemperance in the British Islands have, as you 
are well aware, long engaged the attention of the Church at 
home. The report of the lower house of Couvocation of the 
Province of Canterbury, in 1869, and that of the Province of York 
in 1873, in each of which a large mass of evidence from every 
class of society was got together, had a painful effect on the 
public mind at the time, and they have served as trustworthy 
manuals on the subject ever since. The formation of the Church 
of England Temperance Society has organized and concentrated 
the efforts of those churchmen who have been deeply impressed 
with the necessity of combating intemperance, and that society 
is daily growing in numbers and in influence. Owing to these 
and similar endeavors made by both Churchmen and Non-Con- 
formists, drunkenness has been and is still being diminished in 
these islands, and there is every reason to believe that before 
long public opinion will demand of the Legislature that steps 
should be taken to remove, wholly or partially, the temptations 
which now make it so difficult for weak men to lead sober 
lives. 
“ It is not for us nor for the bishops at home to suggest to your 
lordship or your clergy the best means for dealing with similar 
evils in our colonies and dependencies, and in the heathen 
countries in your own parts of the world. But we have felt it 
our duty to bring to your notice the painful accounts that have 
reached us, and to assure you of our warmest and most earnest 
sympathy with any efforts that you may see fit to make to deal 
with the serious difficulty. You may have the means of influ- 
encing your Legislature ; you may do much to form public opin- 
ion ; you can at least make it plain to all men that the Church 
is not, and never can he indifferent to this great sin. In what- 
ever you may he able to do in this matter you may he assured 
that the Bishops at home are supporting your actions with 
their earnest prayers, and wherever co-operation is found pos- 
sible, with their most hearty co-operation.” 
The Drink System is an equally formidable obstacle to 
the success of Home Missions. Thirty city missionaries 210 
Alcohol in Society. 
of Glasgow recently united in a declaration that, u whilst 
drinking, by keeping thousands from forming or from 
maintaining church-going habits, is rendering our labors 
more necessary, it is at the same time the greatest bar- 
rier to their successful prosecution.” Testimonies to the 
same effect are given by the city missionaries of England. 
In the Canterbury Convocation Report, are many com- 
plaints, the following being a specimen: 
“ The clergy everywhere, but in our large towns especially, 
are discouraged, cast down, almost driven to despair through 
the universal prevalence of drinking, and the temptations that 
are multiplied for its encouragement on every hand, under the 
protection of law. It thwarts, defeats and nullifies their Chris- 
tian schemes and philanthropic efforts to such an extent that it 
is becoming a matter of grave question, whether infidelity, re- 
ligious indifference, and social demoralization are not making 
head against us in defiance of all our churches, our clergy, our 
Scripture readers, and our schools.” 
Similar testimony is home by the city missionaries of 
this country. Says one : 
“ We may build churches and chapels, and multiply schools, 
but until the drinking habits of the people are changed, our 
efforts are well nigh in vain.” 
And another: “ After many years experience in city mission 
work, I feel convinced that until the church uses all her in- 
fluence for the entire removal of the drink traffic, she is doing 
little better than wasting money in supporting me as a mission- 
ary.” 
A prison warden of large experience, says : 
“ You may build a church in every street, and make your re- 
ligious organizations as complete as you will, but as long as 
you allow the dram-shops to be open, you will make criminals 
faster than you can reclaim them.” 
Sabbatli desecration is incited and aided by this great 
evil. In the summer season our papers abound in state- 
ments of drunken frolics at the sea shore and other places 
of Sunday resort. The beer gardens do their most flour- Religious. 
211 
ishing "business on that day, and there is a fearful tendency 
to multiply drinking facilities as baits and allurements to 
Sunday excursions. Violent opposition is made to the 
enforcement of Sunday laws, liquor-dealers and unprinci- 
pled politicians banding together in their open defiance 
of wholesome enactments. Just at this time the large 
cities in Ohio are cursed by this lawlessness. Of the 
results of the Sunday liquor traffic in Cincinnati, Richard 
Smith, editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, says : u I assert 
that 81 per cent, of all the crime in Cincinnati is trace- 
able to the use of intoxicating liquors on Sunday.” 
The Monday and Tuesday Police Court Reports all over 
the country show a large amount of liquor incited Sabbath 
desecration everywhere. 
Well might John Bright say, as he surveyed the whole 
field of Christian effort, antagonized at every point "by the 
Drink System: 
“Our path is before us, hut a monster obstacle is in the 
way ; strong drink—ale, wine, or brandy, by whatsoever name 
the demon is styled, in whatsoever way it presents itself, wheth- 
er in the beer-house, or the dram shop ; in the dining-room of 
the man of the w'orld, or on the table of the serious professor— 
this, this, prevents our success. Kemove this one obstacle, and 
our course will be onward; and our labors will be blessed ten 
thousand fold.” 
Unfortunately, as was said in a preceding chapter, pro- 
fessed Christian men and women are largely responsible for 
this hindrance of Christian work. Either their personal 
habits, as moderate drinkers, or their active social and po- 
litical opposition to dealing effectively with the drink mon- 
ster, or their indifference and unconcern, embolden traf- 
fickers and drinkers in their evil ways. In either case they 
weaken the influence of the church, and bring the cause 
of religion into sad disrepute. The “ Watch-Tower,” a relig- 
ious journal published in New York, has the following ring- 
ing words on this subject in a recent article, entitled 
u Temperance Work :” 212 
Alcohol in Society. 
“This work is lamentably neglected in our great cities, where 
its enemies are the busiest, and where they have the most skil- 
fully organized methods with which to impede its progress. In- 
temperance was never more defiant or potential, and yet the 
temperance problem, involving colossal issues, is failing to arouse 
modern Christian thought. Our churches are praying and la- 
boring to lead souls to Christ, but are they reaching out to res- 
cue and redeem the wretched victims of the wine-cup ? Do not 
some ministers hold lax views of the growing vice of intemper- 
ance ? Do not church members vote into municipal offices 
rumsellers, who make gain at the loss of the bodies an d souls 
of the victims of strong drink? Has not the time come, 
when judgment should begin at the house of God? The dis- 
criminating editor of ‘ Scribner’s Monthly ’ sharply criticises 
Christian ministers for indiscriminately condemning theatres, 
and says that ‘ there are Christian ministers who do this over 
the brims of their wine cups,’ assuming, with truth too, that 
they are doing more harm to the world in a single day ‘ than all 
the theatres and actors of the world are in a decade.’ 
Is it true ? Are we to confess that ‘ Christian ministers,’ are 
justly chargeable with the culpable practice of wine-drinking ? 
If so, Heaven pity us! Is it a fact that any Christian minister 
is allowed to preach, and at the same time habitually to drink 
wines and liquors ? Why should not every lover of the Lord be 
doing something to extinguish this curse which is blighting the 
flower of virtue, desolating homes, crumbling the temple of 
manhood, disintegrating the foundation of society, bringing dis- 
honor upon the State, cursing soul and body.” Ill 
EDUCATIONAL. 
The fallacy of relying on General Education to Prevent or 
Overcome Intemperance is shown by Intemperance in Col- 
leges and Schools—among men of the learned professions— 
in countries which are the most enlightened—and by the gen- 
eral tendency of Drink Facilities to counteract superior Edu- 
cation. The Remedy to he found in Instruction on the 
Composition and Nature of Alcohol—the Physiological 
Effects of Iutoxicating Drinks—that such Drinks are neither 
Food nor Fuel—that they are poison to Man’s entire Nature— 
at War with Political Economy and Moral Science—that 
Total Abstinence and Prohibition are demanded for the In- 
dividual and for the State. 
IT is not unfrequently said by those who fancy that 
something less than Total Abstinence and the destruc- 
tion of the drink traffic, will prevent or overcome intem- 
perance, that General Education may be relied on to exter- 
minate this vice. Unfortunately this is wholly a specula- 
tive theory, against the illusions of which a vast amount 
of sad experience stands arrayed. While it is true that 
Intemperance is an ally of Ignorance, and that thousands 
of its victims are found in the class who know nothing of 
schools or other means of intellectual culture and advance- 
ment, it is equally true that a very large number of inebri- 
ates have enjoyed the highest advantages of the best edu- 
cational institutions in the world. 
Lord Brougham, who made the subject of public and 214 
Alcohol in Society. 
general education a thorough study, said truly in the House 
of Lords, in 1839 : 
“ To what good is it that the Legislature should pass laws to 
punish crime, or that their lordships should occupy themselves 
in trying to improve the morals of the people by giving them 
education ? What could be the use of sowing a little seed here, 
and plucking up a weed there, if these beer-shops are to be con- 
tinued to sow the seeds of immorality broadcast over the land, 
germinating the most frightful produce that has ever been al- 
lowed to grow up in a civilized country ; and, he was ashamed 
to add, under the fostering care of Parliament.” 
Twenty years later, in Ms Social Science Address at 
Bradford, lie said: 
"It is painful to admit that we must reckon education as 
among palliatives only. There cannot be a greater fallacy than 
to set its effects in repressing crimes, against intemperance in 
producing them; and it is a dangerous fallacy for men to rely 
upon improvement in character and its effect in controlling the 
passions, as sufficient to counteract the direct tendency of in 
temperance. The influence of education is indirect and of grad- 
ual operation. The action of intemperance is direct and imme- 
diate. To rely upon popular improvements only, and take no 
measures for removing the great cause of crime, would he to 
lull ourselves into as perilous a security as theirs who should 
trust to the effects of diet and regimen when the plague was 
raging ; or who in that confidence before it broke out, should 
take no precaution against its introduction.” 
The same clear view of the relations of education to 
temperance, was held by the pioneer in the work of Com- 
mon School Education in America,—Horace Mann, when 
he said : 
“ If temperance prevails, then education prevails; if temper- 
ance fails, then education must fail. Intemperance is a upas 
tree planted in the open field of education, and before education 
can flourish, this tree must be cut down. Were all the inhabi- 
tants of a village to become intemperate, a schoolhouse would 
remove from it of itself.” Educational. 
215 
And another Massachusetts statesman, addressing sev- 
eral hundred youths in a public school of Boston, felt 
obliged to say: u It pains me to think that, judging from 
the past, thirteen of each hundred of these pupils will be- 
come drunkards.” 
Rev. William M. Thayer relates that at the conclusion of 
an address on temperance to some children in Boston, the 
educated drunken son of a wealthy citizen of that place 
said to him: 
“If I had been told about the dangers of the wine-cup and 
the beer-cup when I was a boy, as you have told these children 
to-night, I should not be the drunkard that I am; but I never 
heard in the Sabbath or public school, or, indeed, at home, that 
there was danger in the use of wine or beer.” 
Here is the great trouble, that the question of temperance 
has not been awarded any place in the studies which make 
up what is called general education ; and because of this, 
it is impossible that such education can either prevent or 
overcome intemperance. Dr. Channing saw this when he 
said : 
“ It is said that as large a proportion of intemperate men can 
be found among those who have gone through our colleges, as 
among an equal number of men in the same sphere of life, who 
have not enjoyed the same culture. It must not, however, be 
inferred, that the cultivation of the intellect affords no moral 
aids. The truth is, that its good tendencies are thwarted. Ed- 
ucated men fall victims to temptation as often as other men, not 
because education is inoperative, but because our public semi- 
naries give a partial training, being directed almost wholly to 
the development of the intellect, and very little to moral cul- 
ture, and still less to the invigoration of the physical system.” 
(Works, vol. ii. p. 309.) 
Let us glance at some of the most noticeable facts in re- 
gard to intemperance among the educated. 
I. Consider, first, that intemperance is a melancholy and 
disturbing fact in our higher institutions of learning. 216 
Alcohol in Society. 
In 1867, Rev. Dr. Warren, now president of Boston 
University, testified to a Committee of the Massachusetts 
Legislature, that there is, as he found in a residence of sev- 
eral years in Germany, a great amount of drinking among 
the students in the universities in that country. A later 
American student in Germany bears this testimony: 
“ When the student has, however, made his examination, after 
his hard pull of the last six months, hilarity reigns supreme. He 
gives drinking feasts first to all his acquaintances, and last tG 
hismost intimate friends. Wild is the sport, and no one, unless 
it is a cynic, leaves the hall of friendship in a presentable con- 
dition. The German student is by no means modest in his beer. 
The most quiet and sedate speak openly, of being slightly intox- 
icated, as if it were, as it is here, a mere matter of course; but 
at an entertainment, consequent on having made his degree, ho 
is indeed a cold friend, who does not complain on the morrow 
of excessive feline combats in the region of the brain. It is 
more than probable that coming from the scene of festivity, a 
desire to sing on the street occurs. No police is more strict than 
the German, and semi-wild singing on the street, brings down 
the entire police force. The students are brought to the Po- 
lice Station, the college beadle conducts them politely to the 
college prison, where they remain a few days, living on the fat 
of the land and seeing their friends whenever they wish, only 
one, however, being allowed admission at one time. The privi- 
lege of being governed by the university authorities, makes 
the student quite above the municipal government. The Liber- 
als are making efforts to abolish this privilege, which in some 
universities has already become a thing of the past; and it is 
probable that before long all German students must conform to 
rigorous laws, as do other citizens.” 
In an interesting sketch of u Prince Bismarck’s Mother,” 
reprinted in this country in u Littell’s Living Age,” it is said 
that she early discovered great marks of genius in her son, 
and was solicitous that his educational advantages should 
be of the highest order. The desire of the boy was to be 
educated at Heidelberg, but his mother preferred Gottin- 
gen. “ She was,” says the sketch, “ afraid that the art of 
imbibing enormous tankards of beer—an art so assiduously Educational. 
217 
cultivated in the former town that it may almost be said 
to form a part of the curriculum—would become a habit 
with her son. 1 A beer-vat cannot scale a mountain, and 
you have one before you, on the top of which is fame/ said 
she.” He yielded to his mother’s desires and went to* 
Gottingen. 
Dr. Lees (Works I. 30,) quotes from the report of the 
Oxford Commission, 1852, with regard to the Royal Uni- 
versity of Oxford, England. u The three great temptations 
of the place,” says one witness, “ are fornication, wine, and 
cards.” Another witness, a proctor of the University, re- 
veals some terrible facts in regard to the aristocratic 
u Bullingdon Club—a curse and a disgrace to a place of 
Christian education. Take the case of a young man com- 
ing up from home with good intentions of living regularly 
and working hard. He is invited to meet a few friends at 
supper—(remember, these suppers are most always in col- 
lege ;) he goes .... the result is, that if not made 
drunk himself, he sees others drunk; he hears conversa- 
tion and songs which no one can hear without pollution. 
. . . . I know that shortly before I left Christ Church 
[as tutor], school-boys who came up to matriculate were 
taken up there and made drunk.” 
In the United States we find this sad fact equally manifest. 
While James Buchanan was President of the United States, 
he thus addressed the young men of Eranklin and Mar- 
shall Colleges: 
“ There are many little eccentricities in the life of a college stu- 
dent that might be pardoned or overlooked ; but there was one 
habit, which, if formed at college or iu early youth would cling 
to them through after life, and blight the fairest prospects.” 
He referred to the use of intoxicating liquors, and declared, 
“ it would be better for that youth who contracted an appetite 
for strong drink that he were dead, or had never been born; for 
when he saw a young man entering upon such a career, a fond- 
ness for liquor becoming within him a governing passion, he 
could see nothing before him but a life of sorrow, and a dishon- 
ored grave in his old age.” 218 
Alcohol in Society, 
Dr. Nott, for many years president of Union College, 
said (Lectures on Temperance, p. 16): 
“ I have marked, too, how those pupils of my own, who, in 
spite of warning, and admonition, and entreaty, persisted in 
the use of intoxicating liquors, while at college, have, on enter- 
ing the world, sunk into obscurity, and finally disappeared from 
among those rival actors, once their companions, rising into 
life ; and when, searching out the cause, I have, full of anxiety, 
inquired after one and another, the same answer has been re- 
turned : ‘ He has become, or gone a sot into the grave.’ ” 
Rev. Daniel Read, LL. D. says (“ Centennial Temper- 
ance Volume,” p. 171): 
“ In the year 1856, I was called to the presidency of Shurtleff 
College, situated in the town of Upper Athens, 111. Upon Col- 
lege Avenue, the principal street of the town, between the col- 
lege and the post-office, a distance of about one-third of a mile, 
there were three liquor saloons. Of course all the students were 
exposed to the temptations presented in these saloons daily as 
they went to and from the post-office. As was to be expected, I 
found the use of liquor quite common among students, and the 
first year of my administration the faculty were obliged to 
send away fourteen young men on account of their intemper- 
ance, and of disorder growing directly out of the use of liquor.” 
The special Trenton, N. J., correspondent of the 11 Phila- 
delphia Ledger,” says that on the night of the 20th of 
December, 1881: 
“ Certain members of the Freshman class in Princeton College, 
indulged in an old-fashioned midnight revel, or what they 
termed, a serenade, with tin horns. Not satisfied with making 
disagreeable noises, they broke the fancy globes which covered 
the gaslights along the streets, and stoned, so it is said, some of 
the professors’ houses. Arraigned for trial, their counsel plead- 
e 1 for mercy, alleging that ‘ the outbreak was one growing out 
of a hilarious state of the students on the evening of the 20th 
of December, and that there was no malicious intent or con- 
certed effort to destroy property or to particularly annoy the 
citizens of Princeton.” Educational. 
219 
The court imposed a fine of $20 each, and said: u If 
light punishment is not effective now, the court will here- 
after impose the full penalty, which includes fine and im- 
prisonment.” 
In the testimony of Mr. Charles Stoddard before the Com- 
mittee of the Massachusetts Legislature, in 1867, before 
alluded to, Mr. Stoddard said : 
“ I was foreman of a grand jury of this Commonwealth in 1843. 
It was in evidence before the grand jury, that more than one 
hundred persons, mostly young men, were passed by one of our 
city police officers between the hours of twelve and two o’clock 
on Saturday night, in his walk between Cornhill Square and 
Cambridge, all in a state of partial or entire intoxication. They 
were Cambridge students and others, who came down to Corn- 
hill Square, which was a capital place in those times to get liquor, 
and they went home in this condition, to the great detriment of 
the public peace and order.” 
In a plea in behalf of the Washingtonian Movement, made 
by Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., to the students of Harvard Col- 
lege, occurred this language: 
“ Painful as it may be to say it, it is yet true, as we are all 
aware, tbat there are peculiar exposures in the life you are 
leading here. Separated from home, absent from the society of 
the domestic circle, and the occupations which there satisfy the 
mind and heart, young men are thrown together in a situation 
somewhat unnatural. They must compensate among one an- 
other for the want of what they have left behind. They must 
contrive such substitutes as they can for the companions and en- 
joyments which nature provides ; and in doing this, amid the 
chances of accidental companionship, in the thoughtlessness of 
inexperience, in the overflow of social gayety, in the excite- 
ment of numbers, festivity and song, what wonder that some 
are beguiled—that the unwary are entrapped, and the pure 
overwhelmed! 
“It is not necessary to seek any statistical comparison with 
young men in other walks of life; without such comparison, 
the roll of names is melancholy enough. One’s heart aches, who 
can look hack a quarter of a century, at calling up the images 
of promising boys and gifted men, whose beauty and promise 220 
Alcohol in Society. 
have been blighted by this terrible curse. Shall I tell you how 
many of my classmates and cotemporaries learned here to brave 
the wine-cup, and have perished by intemperance ? one of them 
under circumstances so appalling, after so protected a child- 
hood, that one would think it lawful not only to bind the in- 
experienced by a pledge, but in fetters of iron, rather than ex- 
pose him to the slightest hazard of so fearful a catastrophe. 
“ If that case could be brought before you in all its sad and 
loathsome details, and you could be assured that there was 
now sitting among you, one who was destined to pass through 
the same abandonment to the same end; you should not be told 
who, you should only know it to be one whom you daily meet 
and welcome, who has father and mother, now sitting at home 
talking of him, planning for him ; and sisters, whose own sweet 
hands at nightly toil provide for his support and comfort here ; 
and it should be told to you that he, meantime, unwarily begin- 
ning here, shall go on step by step to the extremity of that deep 
damnation ; suppose that all this were revealed to you, I believe 
that you would rise up as one man, and pledge yourselves with an 
oath to taste only water while life remained, so that he might 
be delivered. I can fancy that I already see you with glistening 
eyes offer yourselves to the act. 
“ Would you do this for that one? And do you not know 
that there are sitting on those seats, if we may judge the future 
by the past, in all human probability more than one, more than 
two, more than five, upon whom that sad fate will fall ? You 
could hardly be more certain of it, if an angel told you from 
heaven. But you can save them. Their fate is in your hands. 
You have but to rise up, as others around you are doing, and 
forswear the ruinous indulgence, and you thereby save them 
from the threatening ruin.”* 
“I had,” said Professor Goodrich, of Yale College, “a 
■widow’s son committed to my particular care. He went 
through the different stages of his education, and finally left 
with a good moral character and bright prospects. But during 
the coarse of his education, he had heard the sentiment ad- 
vanced, which I then supposed correct, that the use of wine 
was not only admissible but a real auxiliary to the temperance 
cause. After he had left college for a few years, he continued 
to be respectful to me. At length he became reserved; one 
night he rushed unceremoniously into my room, and his appear- 
_ * “ Works of Henry Ware, Jr., D.D.,” vol. III. pp. 120-1. Educational. 
221 
ance told the dreadful secret. He said he came to talk with 
me. He had been told during his senior year that it was safe 
to drink wine, and by that idea he had been ruined. I asked 
him if his mother knew this. He said no; he had carefully 
concealed the secret from her. I asked him if he was such a 
slaye that he could not abandon the habit. 4 Talk not to me of 
slavery/ said he; 41 am ruined, and before I go to bed I shall 
quarrel with the barkeeper of the Tontine for brandy or gin 
to sate my burning thirst.’ In one month this young man was 
in his grave. It went to my heart. Wine is the cause of ruin 
to a great proportion of the young men of our country. Another 
consideration is, that the habit of conviviality and hospitality 
is now directed to the use of wine.”* 
The late Professor Miller, of the University of Edin- 
burgh, who had large experience, and was a keen observer, 
says: “ In the great majority of inebriates of the educated 
classes, the habit is traced to the college time.” (“ Neph- 
alism,” p. 117). 
II. Intemperance as it exists among men of the learned 
professions, educated classes, and in the higher walks of 
life, is an unmistakable indication that general education 
is no prevention of drunkenness. By the Report of the 
New York Christian Home for Intemperate Men, for 1881, 
it appears that among those received for treatment, were 
11 one clergyman, five lawyers, three physicians, one teacher, 
three journalists, eight printers, and twenty-one mer- 
chants.” 
Mr. Parton found, on his visit to the Inebriate Asylum 
at Binghamton, N. Y., that, “a large majority of the 
present inmates are persons of education and respectable 
position. More than half of them were officers of the army 
or navy during the late war, and lost control of themselves 
then.” 
Eev. Dr. Wakely, in his “Temperance Cyclopaedia/’ 
says that: 
* “ The Fountain,” Boston, 1847, p. 197. 222 
Alcohol in Society. 
“Professor Gibbons, of Philadelphia, in a public address to 
the graduates of the Philadelphia Medical College, asserted 
that of all the physicians who have received diplomas to prac- 
tice medicine, from the various medical schools in America, 
during the present century, one-half have reeled into the drunk- 
ard’s grave.” 
He also quotes Rev. Ezra Styles Ely, and Philip S. 
White, as saying: 
“ We could give a sad list of divines who were much injured 
in health, reputation and usefulness, by the use of intoxicating 
beverages, who did not become notorious sots, and several of 
these, for talents, learning, activity and eloquence, have not 
left their superiors to survive them in the American Churches. 
We could give the names of more than thirty clergymen in the 
circle of our acquaintance who did become publicly known as 
drunkards, and of these four were bishops of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church; three of them had been moderators of the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church; and ten were 
distinguished as Doctors of Divinity.” 
Mr. Walker, M. P., the chief proprietor of the London 
“ Times,” said in a public address : 
“ If I were called on to name those within my knowledge 
who have ruined their prospects in life, who have lost good sit- 
uations, and have fallen from comparative ease and compe- 
tence to a state of degradation, they would not be the men be- 
longing to the laboring classes, following agricultural or me- 
chanical pursuits, but they would be men of a superior class, of 
good education; men who have enjoyed comfortable homes, 
and good salaries, and who, in spite of all, have fallen victims 
to that abominable and frightful vice.” 
Individual instances of the intemperance of eminent 
men are all too numerous and sad. Robert Burns, the 
poet of the people, what wretched havoc drunkenness 
made with him, his own words sorrowfully tell. Writing 
to his friend, Robert Ainslie, he said: 
“ My dear Ainslie, can you minister to a mind diseased? 
Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head- 
ache, nausea, and all the rest of the hounds of hell that beset a Educational. 
223 
poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness— 
Can you speak peace to a troubled soul ? Miserable perdu 
that I am ! I have tried everything that used to amuse me, but 
in vain; here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up 
in store for the wicked, slowly counting every click of the 
clock as it slowly, slowly numbers over these lazy scoundrels 
of hours who are ranked up before me, every one following his 
neighbor, and every one with a burden of anguish on his back, 
to pour on my devoted head. And there is none to pity me. My 
wife scolds me, my business deserts me, and my sins come star- 
ing me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his 
fellow.” 
Poor Burns ! returning home one night at a late hour, 
from a jovial party in the Globe tavern, he remained for a 
long time in the open air, and overcome by the liquor he 
had drank, fell asleep. He woke with a fatal chill pene- 
trating to his bones, reached home with a rheumatic fever, 
and died shortly after. 
How significant his epitaph, written by himself : 
“ The poor inhabitant below 
Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the kindly glow, 
And softer flame; 
But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
And stain’d his name. 
Reader, attend ! Whether thy soul 
Soar fancy’s heights beyond the pole, 
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, 
In low pursuit; 
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control 
Is wisdom’s root.” 
Genial Charles Lamb, as he was known by his cotem- 
poraries, and lovingly called by a host of friends, writes in 
his second series of “ Essays of Elia,” the “ Confessions of 
a Drunkard,” from which we make the following extract: 
“Abstain? Alas! when a man has commenced to he a sot! 
O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and 
strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, and, ere the 224 
Alcohol in Society. 
gorge rises at the name of drunkard, learn what the thing is. 
Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not under so terrible 
a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death almost 
as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a miracle. 
What if the beginning of reformation be dreadful; the first 
steps, not like climbing a mountain, but going through fire? 
What if the whole system must undergo a change as violent as 
that which we conceive of the mutation of form in some insects ? 
What if a process comparable to flaying alive have to be gone 
through ? Is the weakness that sinks under such struggles to 
be confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices 
which have induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement 
of the whole victim, body and soul ? I have known one in that 
state when he has tried to abstain but for one evening—though 
the poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back its first en- 
chantments—though he was sure it would rather deepen his 
gloom than brighten it—in the violence of the struggle and the 
necessity he had felt of getting rid of the present sensation at 
any rate—I have known him to scream out, to cry aloud, for 
the anguish and pain of the strife within him. Why should I 
hesitate to declare that the man of whom I speak is myself? I 
have no puling apologies to make to mankind. I see them all 
m one way or another deviating from pure reason. It is to 
my own nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have 
brought upon it. There is no hope of change. The waters 
have gone over me. But out of the black depths could I be 
heard, I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in 
the perilous flood. Could the youth, to whom the flavor of his 
first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the enter- 
ing upon some newly discovered paradise, look into my desola- 
tion and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when 
a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes 
and a passive will—to see his destruction and have no power to 
stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself— 
to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not to be 
able to forget a time when it was otherwise—to bear about the 
piteous spectacle of his own self-ruin—could he see my fevered 
eye, feverish from last night’s drinking, and feverishly looking 
for this night’s repetition of the folly—could he feel the body of 
the death out of which I cry hourly with a feebler and feebler 
outcry to be delivered—it were enough to make him dash the 
sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling 
temptation.” Educational. 
225 
Lamb seems to be speaking of himself here, out it is 
possible that he speaks with somewhat of exaggeration of 
his own condition. His biographer says of this essay : 
“ It had been originally written by Lamb, at the request of a 
friend, as one of a series of Temperance Tracts. In this ca- 
pacity it had been quoted in an article in the ‘ Quarterly/ for 
April, 1822, as “ a fearful picture of the consequences of intem- 
perance/ which the reviewer went on to say ‘ we have reason 
to know is a true tale.’ 
“In order to give the author the opportunity of contradicting 
this statement, the tract was reprinted in the ‘London’ in the 
following August, under the signature of Elia. To it were 
appended a few words of remonstrance with the ‘ Quarterly’ 
reviewer for assuming the literal truthfulness of these confes- 
sions, but accompanied with certain significant admissions that 
showed Lamb had no right to be seriously indignant. 
“ 1 It is indeed/ he writes, ‘ a compound extracted out of his 
long observation of the effects of drinking upon all the world 
around him ; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath 
centered (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single 
figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may 
have passed into the picture (as who, that is not a washy fel- 
low, but must at some time have felt the after-operation of a too 
liberal cup?); but then how heightened! how exaggerated! 
how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their 
slanderous usage, must be understood for the whole.’ The 
truth is that Lamb in writing this tract had been playing with 
edge-tools, and could hardly have complained if they turned 
against himself. It would be those who knew Lamb, or at 
least the circumstances of his life, best, who would be most 
likely to accept these confessions as true. For in the course of 
them he gives with curious fidelity the outline of an experience 
that was certainly not imaginary. 
“ The ‘ friendly harpies/ who came about him for his gin- 
and-water, and made its consumption more and more a habit; 
the exchange of these in due course for companions of a better 
type, ‘ of intrinsic and felt worth/ the substitution for a while, 
under the influence of two of these, of the ‘sweet enemy’to- 
bacco, and the new slavery to this counter-attraction ; the in- 
creasing need of stimulant to set his wits to work, and the 
buffoonery indulged under its effects ; all this is told in a way 
that no friend of Lamb could affect to mistake. No doubt the 226 
Alcohol in Society. 
exaggeration which Lamb pleads is there also, and the drunk- 
ard’s utter collapse and misery are described in a style which, 
as applied to himself, was absurd. But to call the insinuation 
that the tract had its biographic truth, ‘ malignant,’ as some 
of Lamb’s apologists have done, is not less absurd. The essay 
had enough reality in it to live as a very powerful plea for the 
virtue of self-restraint, and it may continue to do good service 
in the cause.”* 
Mr. Parton says (“ Smoking and Drinking,” p. 60): 
“ We laugh when we read Lamb’s funny description of his 
waking up in the morning, and learning in what condition he 
had come home the night before, by seeing all his clothes care- 
fully folded. But his sister Mary did not laugh at it. He was 
all she had ; it was tragedy to her, this self-destruction of her 
sole stay and consolation.” 
Lord Byron is a prominent example of drunkenness 
among the intellectually great. Leigh Hunt says that 
“Don Juan” was written under the influence of gin and 
water. Nor was this an unusual accompaniment of his 
writings. Mr. Galt, in his Life of Byron, in speaking of 
him while at Milan, says that he “ often sat up all night in 
the ardor of composition, and drank a sort of grog made of 
Hollands and water—a beverage in which he indulged 
rather copiously, when his muse was dry.” The effect of 
such drinking on himself, Byron thus describes : 
“ The effect of all wines and spirits upon me is, however, 
strange. It settles, hut it makes me gloomy—gloomy at the 
very moment of their effect, and not giddy, hardly ever. But it 
composes for a time, though suddenly. But as Squire Sul len 
says, ‘ My head aches consumedly : Scrub, bring me a dram! ’ 
Drank some Imola wine, and some punch.” 
Prevailed on once to eat a late supper, lie swallowed, lie 
says: 
“ A quantity of boiled crackers and diluted them, not reluc- 
tantly, with some Imola wine. When I came home, apprehen- 
* “ English Men of Letters,” edited by John Morley. Charles 
Lamb, by Alfred Aniger, New York, 1882, pp. 118, 119. Educational. 
227 
sive of the consequences, I swallowed three or four glasses of 
spirits, which men (the venders) call brandy, rum, or Hollands, 
hut which God would entitle spirits of wine, colored or sugared. 
All was pretty well till I got into bed, when 1 became some- 
what swollen, and considerably vertiguous. I got up, and mix- 
ing some soda powders, drank them oif. This brought on tem- 
porary relief. I returned to bed, but grew sick and sore again. 
Took more soda water. At last I fell into a dreary sleep. Woke 
and was ill all day till I had galloped a few miles. Query, was 
it the crackers, or what I took to correct them, that caused the 
commotion ? I think both. I remarked in my illness, the com- 
plete inertion, inaction and destruction of my chief mental fac- 
ulties. I tried to rouse them, and yet could not—and this is the 
soul.” 
Macaulay’s criticism on Byron, though severe, is doubt 
less most just. He says of him : 
“ An imagination polluted hy vice, a temper embittered by 
misfortune, and a frame habituated to the fatal excitement of in- 
toxication, prevented him from fully enjoying the happiness 
which he might have derived from the purest and most tranquil 
of his many attachments. Midnight draughts of ardent spirits 
and Rhenish wines had begun to work the ruin of his fine intel- 
lect. His verse lost much of the energy and condensation which 
had distinguished it.” 
Hartley Coleridge, of whom it has "been finely said: 
“The son of Coleridge, the nephew of Southey, the favorite 
of Wordsworth, the friend of Professor Wilson—dear not only 
to these, hut to a yet wider circle of influential connexions— 
gifted hy nature with the finest mind and the tenderest heart— 
endowed hy education with the learning that ripens genius— 
deeply imbued with religious feeling and elevated spirituality 
—what might not Hartley Coleridge have been ? Certainly a 
light to guide. What was he ? A beacon to warn! ” 
The Rev. Alexander Dyce says of him in his college 
days: 
“ His extraordinary powers as a converser, (or rather declaim- 
er) procured for him numerous invitations to what are called 
Oxford wine parties. He knew that he was expected to talk, 
and talking was his delight. Leaning his head on one shoulder, 228 
Alcohol in Society. 
turning up his dark bright eyes, and swinging backward and 
forward in his chair, he would hold forth by the hour (for no 
one wished to interrupt him) on whatever subject might have 
been started, either of literature, politics, or religion, with an 
originality of thought, a force of illustration, and a facility and 
beauty of expression, which I question if any man living, ex- 
cept his father, could have surpassed.” 
“ Is it wonderful that this excitable temperament, heated by 
wine, should sometimes, nay, often, have expressed itself in 
ebullitions and eccentricities that excited the anxious fears of 
friends, not one of whom, wise and learned as they were, once 
thought of applying or devising a practical remedy for this 
practical evil ? Meanwhile the fatal habit became fixed and 
rooted in the depths of the young student’s nature, twining and 
linking itself with every fibre of his generous heart, poisoning 
the very springs of action, unnerving the will, and smiting him 
with a moral paralysis. After an erratic, yet on the whole, 
brilliant course at Oxford, Hartley Coleridge succeeded in ob- 
taining a fellowship at Oriel College, and entered on his proba- 
tionary year; at the end of which, he was deprived of his fel- 
lowship, according to his brother’s account, ‘ on the ground, 
mainly, of intemperance.’ This was a root, out of which his 
other faults, of procrastination, irregularity, and eccentricity, 
grew. Toward the end of his career, his purposes of amend- 
ment became stronger; but it was then too late; shattered 
nerves, and a premature old age, were great impediments.” * 
“At the opening of this century the first scholar in Europe, 
Richard Porson, Greek Professor at the Cambridge University, 
was also one of the greatest drunkards of his time, and would 
and did drink clear alcohol and liniments containing the poi- 
son, when he could not get more agreeable drinks to satisfy his 
raging thirst. What was all his wonderful scholarship worth 
to him, when he was the helpless victim of an appetite that 
degraded him below the level of an ignorant but sober coal 
heaver, and made him disgusting to himself, a shame to his 
friends and a disgrace to his alma mater” 
A very marked illustration of the inability of education, 
and the possession of great abilities to shield one from in- 
temperance, is found in the career of Rev. C. 0. Colton, 
the author of “ Lacon, ” a work known in the whole world 
* Reid’s “ Temperance Cyclopaedia,” pp. 193-4, Educational. 
229 
of literature as extraordinary in its presentation of a great 
variety of moral, political, and religious themes, sentcn- 
tiously treated in the most felicitous manner imaginable. 
The author, a clergyman of the Church of England, be- 
came dissipated, licentious, a gambler, and passed from 
life a suicide. Draining the cup of sensuality to its dregs, 
in England, he abandoned his native land, in the hope 
that among strangers he could better his condition. Paris 
seemed to offer to him a grand chance for a new trial, and 
thither he wTent, only to find himself bound hand and foot 
by his love of drink, an inmate of the lowest and most de- 
graded hells of that city. The desire to reform grew more 
and more faint, and in sheer desperation, from disgust of 
life, he ended his mortal existence. 
Kirkham, the distinguished American grammarian, be- 
came a sot, and died of delirium tremens, in an old distil- 
lery, in Kentucky. George Lippard, the prolific author, 
was brought to ruin and premature death by drinking. 
To one who visited him a few days before his death, he 
said : 
“ My memory is fast leaving me ; I am becoming an idiot. I 
wrote some yesterday, and then, O horrors! the pains near my 
heart! For two hours I suffered all the agonies of death, and 
yet I was alive! If I was only prepared it would please me 
well to have this thin veil between myself and eternity drawn 
aside: and yet I dread that future. There is no return. O 
death! can I meet you like a man—like a Christian ? ’Tis fear- 
ful, dreadful, and yet I wish it was over; I care not to live; 
mine has ever been a life of bitterness.” 
J. J. Talbot, formerly a preacher, then a lawyer, and an 
eloquent temperance lecturer, yielding again to his old 
habit, died of delirium tremens. A short time before his 
last fall, he said in a lecture: 
“ I had a position high and holy. The demon tore from 
around me the rohes of my sacred office and sent me forth 
churchless and godless, a very hissing and byword among men. 230 
Alcohol in Society. 
Afterward my voice was heard in the court. But the dusk 
gathered on my open books and no footfall crossed the thresh- 
old of the drunkard’s office. I had money ample for all neces- 
sities, but it went to feed the coffers of the devils which pos- 
sessed me. I had a home adorned with all that wealth and the 
most exquisite taste could suggest. The devil crossed its thresh- 
old and the light faded from its chambers. And thus I stand, 
a clergyman without a church, a barrister without a brief, a 
man with scarcely a friend, a soul without a hope, all swallowed 
up in the maelstrom of drink.” 
Robert Treat Paine, now almost wholly forgotten, but 
once ranking among the great masters of English verse, 
graduated from Harvard University with its highest hon- 
ors. 
“ For his poems and other productions, he obtained prices un- 
paralleled in this country, and rarely equalled by the reward 
of the most popular European authors. For the ‘ Invention of 
Letters,’ written at the request of the President of Harvard Uni- 
versity, he received fifteen hundred dollars, or more than five 
dollars a line. ‘ The Ruling Passion,’ a poem recited before the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, was little less profitable ; and he was 
paid seven hundred and fifty dollars for a song of half-a-dozen 
stanzas, entitled 1 Adams and Liberty.’ Becoming intemperate, 
he abandoned himself to indolence; from which he was tempora- 
rily reclaimed, and fitting himself for the practice of law, was 
admitted to the bar, and became a popular advocate; but his in 
temperance, indolence and recklessness returning, he was, in his 
last days, ‘ without a library, wandering from place to place, 
frequently uncertain whence or whether he could procure a 
meal At the early age of thirty-eight, he died wretchedly, in 
‘ an attic chamber of his father’s house.’ ” * 
Edgar Allen Poe, another brilliant American genius, and 
poet, was so fatally the victim of periodical drunkenness, as 
to break his power, and render all his purposes and prom- 
ises fatally uncertain. In the intervals of sobriety, he was 
often a man of intense activity, and most brilliant achieve- 
ment. His wife died broken-hearted, and his faithful moth- 
* “ Poets and Poetry of America,” p. 37. Educational. 
231 
er passed years of torturing sorrow in trying to keep him 
from temptation. Occasionally, temporary reformations 
would cheer her, but they were succeeded by wild dissipa- 
tions, till finally, after days of drunken revelling and mad- 
ness, he died in the public hospital of Baltimore, aged only 
thirty-eight years. 
James Parton concludes a suggestive article upon the hab- 
its and death of Bayard Taylor, (whom he had, as an in- 
timate personal friend, warned against the danger of wine 
and beer drinking and smoking,) as follows : 
“ Mental labor is not hostile to health and life. But I am 
more than ever convinced that a man who lives by his brain is 
of all men bound to avoid stimulating his brain. In this cli- 
mate, to stimulate the brain by alcohol and tobacco is only a 
slow kind of suicide. Even the most moderate use of the mild- 
est wine is not without danger, because the peculiar exhaustion 
caused by severe mental labor is a constant and urgent tempta- 
tion to increase the quantity and strength of the potation. 
“ I would say to every young man in the United States, if I 
could reach him: If you mean to obtain one of the prizes of 
your profession and live a cheerful life to the age of eighty, 
throw away your dirty old pipe, put your cigars in the stove, 
never buy any more, become an absolute tetotaller ; take your 
dinner in the middle of the day, and rest one day in seven.” 
III. The sad examples in the most enlightened districts 
of countries of the highest civilization, showing that the 
greatest number of drink places co-exist with their superior 
schools, and produce the greatest number of drunkards and 
criminals, also disclose the fallacy of relying on general 
education to prevent or overcome intemperance and the 
crimes which attend and flow from it. A few of these ex- 
amples are the following : 
Scotland is the best educated portion of the United 
Kingdom, but its long history of intemperance places it in 
the front rank of dissipation. David Lewis, a magistrate 
of Edinburgh, says that: 232 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ Of 20,303 criminals received into the prisons of Scotland 
during the year ending 30th June, 1850, who were examined 
a3 to the education they had received, it was found there were 
4,341 who could not read; 8,907 who could read with difficulty ; 
aud 7,055 who could read well. In speaking upon this subject, 
Mr. Cumming Bruce, M. P., stated in the House of Commons, 
that in one year the number of educated criminals committed 
for serious crimes, was 2,834, while the number of those who 
were uneducated only amounted to 696.” 
He further says, after showing that in the city of Edin- 
burgh, the increase of commitments for crime was twenty- 
six per cent, from 1871 to 1876, while the population in- 
creased only seven per cent., that : 
“ It would appear as if in the providence of God, Edinburgh 
had been selected as the field for a great social experiment as 
to whether drunkenness can be eradicated while the drink traf- 
fic remains. It would appear as if during the last few years 
human ingenuity had exhausted itself in Edinburgh towards 
that end. Let us look at what had been done. By the admin- 
istrators of the poor-law during the last five years £265,000 
have been expended in support of pauperism, four-fifths of 
which were the direct result of the public-house. 
“ Sanitary reformers expended half a million sterling in erect- 
ing improved dwellings and promoting sanitary reform. Educa- 
tionists also occupied the field. During the last five years one in- 
stitution alone has expended £40,000 in free education among the 
children of the citizens, and there was the Education Act, with 
its compulsory clause and expensive machinery. The Chris- 
tians, too, had been active in the divine work of seeking the 
reclamation of the lost, and a tide of revival had flowed upon 
the city without a parallel in modern times. Most churches 
had been galvanized into spiritual activity, and much good 
had been accomplished; but I am free to say that the revival 
movement never penetrated the heart of the drink—the cursed 
slums. 
“ Temperance reformers had also been specially active. Tem- 
plar lodges had been formed by the score, and temperance 
societies in the church and out of the church had been estab- 
lished throughout the city. In promoting bands of hope, one 
gentleman had, during the last five years, expended £11,000. 
The magistrates had been aiming at the reduction of licenses, Educational. 
233 
and during the reign of the present Lord Provost, the licensed, 
houses had been considerably reduced, notwithstanding an 
increase of population of nearly 9,000 during that period. We 
have thus seen somewhat of the combined efforts of moral, 
social, religious, and temperance reformers, and the question 
arises, what has been the effect of all these in suppressing 
drinking and drunkenness ? Mark, I do not say those move- 
ments have not accomplished much. God only knows what 
would have been the state of the city had not these agencies 
been at work. What I affirm is that they have not been able 
to check or keep abreast of the tide of drink demoralization.” 
Judge Pitman, in his “ Alcohol and the State” (p. 138), 
quotes from the “ Correspondence of the State Board of 
Health of Massachusetts,” (Report, 1871, p. 297,) extracts 
from a table of Professor Levi, giving the consumption per 
head of proof spirit in 1866, in the different countries of 
the United Kingdom. Scotland and Ireland stand thus : 
Scotland. 
Ireland. 
Gin and Whiskey 
800 
Brandy, Bum, etc 
188 “ 
57 
Beer and Ale 
710 
Wine. 
64 
Total 
1,631 
Or nearly three gallons in one, and a little more than a 
gallon and a half in the other. The superior prosperity 
and education of Scotland, it will be seen, is unable to 
keep down drinking to the Irish standard. 
“In regard to Ireland itself, some curious and instructive 
statistics may be found in a paper read before the British Asso- 
ciation at Dublin, in 1857, by James Moncrieff Wilson, the Act- 
uary. Dr. Lees, in his ‘ Condensed Argument/ summarizes and 
classes together the statistical elements for several provinces, 
of (i) education, (2) occupation, (3) house accommodation, (4) 
drunkeries, (5) drunkenness, and (6) crime. The ‘ clear deduc- 
tions ’ from the table exhibited, I give in his own words: 
“ 1. That education combined with occupation tends power- 
fully towards the diminution of crime, more especially towards 
the decrease of offences against property, without violence. 234 
Alcohol in Society. 
“2. That low-class dwelling-house accommodation tends 
towards the increase of crime. 
“3. That the sale of intoxicating liquors has, perhaps, as 
powerful an effect upon crime in increasing it, as education and 
occupation combined have in lessening it. ‘ rl bus Connaught 
is by far the worst educated Province in Ireland, with the larg- 
est unoccupied population, yet the tendency to crime is less 
than in any other Province except Ulster. This can only be 
accounted for by the considerations, that in Connaught there 
are forty-two drink-houses fewer to every 100,000 of the popu- 
lation than in any other Province ; and that the percentage of 
committals for drunkenness does not amount in Connaught to 
one-half the like percentage for the average of Ireland.’ 
“ 4. That were intoxicating drinks less freely used, education 
as a means of producing crime, would become most powerful.” 
Sweden furnishes another illustration. Judge Pitman 
(p. 150) says of it: 
“ In no country has the experiment of universal education 
conjoined with free trade in liquors, heen more amply tried 
than in Sweden. The results are striking. Without taking 
time to go into details of their public educational system, it is 
sufficient to notice the actual condition in this respect, of her 
people. And the testimony as to this is concurrent and empha- 
tic. Thus Mr. Laing, who wrote in 1838 his ‘ Tour in Sweden,’ 
and with a special eye to ‘the moral, political, and economical 
state of the inhabitants,’ tells us that ‘ in the province of 
Wexio-lan, in 40,000 people, only one person was found unable 
to read,’ and that ‘ of the whole population, including even 
Laplanders, it is reckoned that the proportion of grown persons 
in Sweden unable to read is less than one in a thousand.’ ‘ Ele- 
mentary education is universal in Sweden,’ says ‘Appleton’s 
American Cyclopaedia ’ ; and a curious illustration of it is given 
in the letter from Mr. Andrews, the resident minister of the 
United States at Stockholm, on crime in Sweden, which may he 
found in the ‘ Foreign Relations of the United States—1875.’ 
“ Of those convicted of the more serious offences in 1872, all 
hut three per cent, could read. Yet such a country in 1854, 
through a special committee of its Diet, had to confess that 
‘ seldom, if ever, has a conviction so generally and unequivo- 
cally been pronounced as in later years in Sweden, with regard 
to the necessity of rigorous measures against the physical, eco- 
nomical and moral ruin with which the immoderate use of Educational. 
235 
strong liquors threatens the nation The comfort of 
the Swedish people—even their existence as an enlightened, 
industrious, and loyal people, is at stake, unless means can bo 
found to check the evil.’ And ‘ Appleton’s American Cyclo- 
pedia,’ summed up the common judgment when it said : 
‘ Drunkenness from immoderate potations of their fiery corn 
brandy has been more common than in any other country in 
Europe.’ ” 
Gothenburg, the second city in Sweden, with a popula- 
tion, in 1874, of 58,307, a seaport and a commercial town 
of some importance, has been largely under the blight and 
curse of the drink traffic. 
“In 1864,” as stated by Judge Pitman, (p. 221) “ a committee 
of its Town Council was appointed to inquire into tbe causes 
of its increasing pauperism and degradation. And here let it 
be noted that if education were the panacea for social misery, 
which some philosophers maintain, Gothenburg should have 
been a Paradise. With a system of compulsory education by 
the State, of children between the ages of seven and fourteen, 
With supplemental schools for the children of the poor under 
seven, supported by private philanthropy, with excellent pri- 
vate schools for the prosperous classes, all taught with the 
thoroughness of European drill, and with technical schools for 
the practical training of lads in the various branches of skilled 
industry, so that the total attendance upon her various schools 
is more than a sixth of her whole population ; the verdict of an 
intelligent observer is justified, that ‘ Gothenburg is one of the 
best educated towns in the world.’ ” 
And yet the testimony of Mr. Balfour, in a letter to Mr. 
Gladstone, is to the effect, that until the license laws were 
repealed, “ in no community were brutish coarseness or 
deep poverty more common than in Gothenburg.” And 
he adds : “ Neither the spread of education, nor the influ- 
ence of religious observances, which are so much relied 
upon in England for the cure of our intemperance, were 
found to have that effect in Sweden, and that, while these 
were, doubtless, important and indispensable, yet other 
means were absolutely essential for bringing about this 
reformation.” 236 
Alcohol in Society. 
Prussia boasts of lier educational advantages, and in 
many respects they are unparalleled; but education does 
not prevent intemperance among her citizens, as is abun- 
dantly proven by the testimony of her own people. At 
the Bremen Conference, in 1852, Dr. Wald, of Konigs- 
berg, stated the following facts : 
“ The Zollverein consumed 122 millions of dollars’ worth of 
alcoholic liquors. Berlin, in 1844, compared with 1745, had one 
church less, and 1,500 taverns more. Out of 60 children under 
6, m the Orphan Asylum, 40 had been taught to sip drams, and 
9 had a depraved desire for them. In the vale of Barmen, re- 
nowned for its religious character or profession, with a popula- 
tion of 80,000, not less than 13,000 were habitual drinkers. In 
the conscription of that year (1852,) for a district of Western 
Prussia, out of 174 young men, only 4 were admissible, the rest 
being physically incapacitated by dram-drinking. From year 
to year, prisons and lunatic asylums became more crowded, 
while thousands became permanently mad through delirium 
tremens (of which disease about 100 persons die annually in 
the hospitals of Berlin alone). Drinking, by promoting domes- 
tic misery and discord, occasions nine-tenths of the increasing 
divorces of the country. Finally, one-half of the entire corn 
and potatoes grown in the north of Germany are converted into 
spirits, the use of which had increased ninefold since 1817.” * 
France shows an array of facts in proof that culture 
and refinement are no cure for drunkenness. Dr. Lees 
quotes the philosopher and statistician, Quetelet, in his 
great work on human development, as saying that, “ Of 
1,129 murders committed during the space of four years, 
446 have been in consequence of quarrels and contentions 
in taverns.” 
“It is true,” says Dr. Lees, “that in large districts, and 
chiefly the most ignorant, there is little drunkenness and crime 
(a fact to which Quetelet refers), but that is owing to the fact 
of the extreme rarity of wine-shops, and to the extreme pov- 
erty of the people. In the rich and manufacturing parts, in- 
temperance and its resulting evils abound. Dr. Morel, of the 
* Dr. Lees’ “Text Book of Temperance, ” pp. 151-2. Educational. 
237 
St. Yon Asylum, says in his work ‘On the Degeneracy of the 
Human Race,’ that ‘ there is always a hopeless number of para- 
lytic and other insane persons, in our hospitals, whose disease 
is due to no other cause than the abuse of alcoholic liquors. 
In 1,000 patients, of whom I have made special note, at least 
200 of them owed their mental disorder to no other cause.’ (P. 
109.) Many more, therefore, would be indirectly affected or 
aggravated by drink. M. Behic, in his ‘ Report on Insanity,’ 
says, ‘ Of 8,797 male, and 7,069 female lunatics, 34 per cent, of 
the men, and 6 of the women, were made insane by intemper- 
ance. This is the most potent and frequent cause.’ 
“ French journals note that years of plenty in the wine-dis- 
tricts are years of disorder and crime for the country at large. 
The ‘ Annals of Hygienne,’ for 1863, observe, that * in wine- 
growing countries, delirium tremens and alcoholism are most 
frequent.’ The plain fact is, that though partly owing to the 
temperament of the people, and partly to the better arrange- 
ments of the police, outrageous and besotted drunkenness may 
be less frequent, or less apparent, yet the serious and essential 
evils are as great there as in any country. Sensuality per- 
vades their life, crime is very prevalent, suicides are in excess, 
population is arrested, and extreme longevity is rarer than in 
almost any other land. 
“In France, everybody drinks, young and old, male and fe- 
male, and we find one centenarian amongst 360,000 persons; m 
the United States of America, one in every 9,000. Sixteen years 
ago, Dr. Bell estimated the whole of the alcohol drank in France, 
in the shape of spirit, wine, and cider, as equal to four gallons 
of proof spirit per head annually, for all ages, men, women, and 
infants. It is certainly not less now In France, 
in 1856, there were 360,000 drink-shops, besides inns, cafes, etc. 
Over all France, one drinkery to 100 persons of all ages. De 
Watteville, the economist, puts drinking third in order among 
fifteen direct causes of pauperism With such 
habits and temptations and examples, can we wonder that every 
third birth in Paris is illegitimate, and that there are 60,000 
criminals, permanently residing in the prisons of the Seine ? Mr. 
Dickens’ ‘ Household Words,’while defending the beer-shop at 
home, thus discourses of its counterpart abroad: ‘ The wine- 
shops are the colleges and chapels of the poor in France. His- 
tory, morals, politics, jurisprudence, and literature, in iniquitous 
forms, are all taught in these colleges and chapels, where pro- 
fessors of evil continually deliver these lessons, and where hymns 238 
Alcohol in Society. 
are sung nightly to the demon of demoralization. In these 
haunts of the poor, theft is taught as the morality of property; 
falsehood as the morality of speech ; and assassination as the 
justice of the people, It is m the wine-shops, the cabman is 
taught to think it heroic to shoot the middle-class man who dis- 
putes his fare. It is in the wine-shop that the workman is 
taught to admire the man who stabs his faithless mistress. It is 
in the wine-shop, the doom is pronounced of the employer who 
lowers the pay of the employed. The wine-shops breed—in a 
physical atmosphere of malaria, and a moral pestilence of envy 
and vengeance—the men of crime and revolution, Hunger is 
proverbially a bad counsellor, but drink is a worse.' ” * 
In Massachusetts, whose educational advantages are at 
least equal to those of any other State, and where it is 
demonstrated that a very large percentage of crime is 
caused by intemperance, only eleven per cent, of convicted 
criminals are illiterates, i. e., not able to read and write; 
and of 220 sent to the State Prison in 1876, only 21 were 
such illiterates.! 
The lesson taught by these facts, is the significant and 
all-important one that General Education does not prevent 
intemperance, and also the positive assurance that the drink 
custom is not an evil peculiar to the ignorant and illiterate. 
Drunkenness finds its victims in all classes of society, and 
in all grades and ranks of life. David Lewis, to whose 
writings we have made frequent reference, says that ‘‘ Pro- 
fessor Leone Levi, who is an undoubted authority upon the 
consumption of alcoholic liquors in this country, [Scotland] 
states that upwards of thirty per cent, of the money expend- 
ed upon intoxicating drinks is spent by the 1 educated 
classes.’ ” 
When we consider wliat has already been shown in re- 
gard to the drinking habits of eminent literary men every- 
where, the estimate will not seem to be an exaggerated one 
* Ibid, pp. 153-5. 
t “ Eeport of the Bureau of the Statistics of Labor/' 1877, p. 
220. Educational. 
239 
for the civilized world at large. When we add to this, the 
fact that in numbers, the saloons and other drinking-places 
far exceed the schools of every grade, that they are made 
attractive in order that they may overcome the good influ- 
ences from all other sources; and are antagonistic to all en- 
lightenment on the evils of traffic, we may cease to wonder, 
if it has ever been a surprise to us, that an education which 
does nothing towards disclosing the evils of intemperance, 
should be powerless to eradicate it. 
What an outrage, therefore, was suggested by the late 
Senator Logan, in the bill which he introduced in the U. 
S. Senate, proposing to appropriate and expend the revenue 
derived from the manufacture and sale of distilled spirits, 
for the education of the children of the United States. 
Concerning it, the Chicago “Advance ” pertinently asked: 
“ Why should the American people want to take this par- 
ticular 1 mighty stream of liquid sin ' to run the mill of its 
educational system ! ” Sure enough, why ? especially when 
we consider what all must, on reflection see, that the liquor 
traffic so completely antagonizes education, and that between 
the two there is a conflict as irrepressible and unreconcilable 
as between slavery and freedom, light and darkness. 
As these pages are going through the press, the follow- 
ing table comes under ournotice, appearing in “ The Voice,” 
(N. Y.) for March 15, 1888, presenting in detail for the 
year 1886, the distribution throughout the nation, of the ef 
forts in behalf of public education compared with the extent 
of the liquor traffic. There are one-half as many more 
teachers in the United States as liquor-dealers, but the 
amount spent for intoxicants at the lowest estimate is more 
than six times as much as the sum expended for public ed- 
ucation. The figures for education are taken from the re- 
port of the United States Commissioner of Education, for 
1885-6, while the amount spent for intoxicants in each 
State is based on the $700,000,000 estimated by Mr. F, N. 
Barret, of “ The American Grocer,” and published by the 240 
Alcohol in Society. 
United States Bureau of Statistics, to "be spent annually in 
the nation for intoxicating drinks. This amount is distrib- 
uted throughout the States in proportion to the number of 
their liquor dealers as given in the Internal Revenue reports. 
Six states spend less than $1 per capita for education, while 
twelve spend over $15 per capita for intoxicants; two, Cali- 
fornia and Montana, spending over $40. Table II. is 
a similar comparison for the nation from 1876 to 1886. 
“Liquor dealer/7 in all cases, means a person having a 
United States permit to deal in intoxicants. 
States. 
Population, 
1886. 
Expenditures 
for schools. 
Expenditures 
for liquors. 
Av'r’ge 1 
school 
expen- 
diture 
per 
capita. 
tv'r'ge 
exp’di- 
urept r 
capita 
for 
iquors. 
Alabama 
1,467,384 
$ 741,244 
$3,819,100l 
$ .55 1 
$2.74 
Arkansas 
935,058 
866,892 
2,399,050| 
.92 
2.56 
California 
1,001,293 
3,505,931 
40,215,800' 
3.50 
40.16 
(a) Colorado... 
275,301 
934,127 
8,366,6001 
3.39 
39.90 
Connecticut... 
670,807 
1,791,666 
10,652,060 
2.67 
15.88 
Delaware 
• 158,768 
215,161 
2,295,470 
1.35 
14.46 
Florida 
338,406 
385,800 
1,266.350 
1.14 
3.74 
Georgia 
1,694,809 
711,990 
8,286,400 
.42 
4.89 
Illinois 
3,280,204 
10,136,058 
40,730,400 
3.09 
12.41 
Indiana 
2,061,008 
5,214,198 
21,728,400 
2.53 
10.54 
Iowa 
1,766,239 
4,660,000 
* 
2.63 
* 
Kansas 
1,284,809 
3,849,017 
* 
2.99 
* 
Kentucky 
1,801,831 
700,790 
13,772,800 
.39 
7.64 
Louisiana 
1,008,951 
450,030 
19,165,700 
.44 
18.99 
Maine 
647,319 
1,099,352 
* 
1.69 
* 
Maryland 
1,009,798 
1,832,383 
21,360,900 
1.81 
21.15 
Massachusetts. 
1,942,141 
7,151,075 
28,634,900 
3.68 
14.74 
Michigan 
1,912,181 
4,332,968 
21,825,300 
2.26 
11.41 
Minnesota 
1,117,798 
2,371,990 
14,571,400 
2.12 
13.03 
Mississippi ... 
1,237,453 
840,776 
4,313,600| .67 
3.48 
Missouri 
2,433,747 
4,328,596 
23,108,400 1.78 
9.49 
(&) Nebraska... 
1,156,255 
4,268,128 
10,825,800 3.69 
9.36 
(c) Nevada 
238,626 
346,224 
2,786,606 
1.45 
11.68 
N. Hampshire. 
362,292 
601,403 
* 
1.66 
* 
New Jersey— 
1,278,033 
2,422,299 
27,442,106 
1.89 
21.47 
New York 
5,330,491 
13,284,886 
121,466,306 
2.49 
22.78 
North Carolina 
1,525,341 
671,116 
6,685,906 
.44 
4.38 
Ohio 
3,348,589 
9,327,549 
59,652,206 
2.78 
17.81 
(d) Oregon 
374,314 
1,929,686 
6,642,506 
5.16 
17.75 
Pennsylvania.. 
4,722,954 
10,031,937 
69,799,706 
2.12 
14.78 
Rhode Island.. 
304,284 
782,967 
* 
2.57 
♦ 
TABLE I. Educational. 
241 
States. 
Population, 
1886. 
Expenditures 
for schools. 
Expenditures 
for liquors. 
Av’r’ge 
school 
expen- 
diture. 
per 
capita. 
Av’r’ge 
ext>'di- 
tureper 
capita 
for 
liquors. 
$3.06 
4.00 
6.64 
* 
5.54 
4.26 
14.47 
South Carolina 
Tennessee 
Texas 
1,085,789 
1,723,996 
2,027,895 
333,155 
1,660,783 
692,726 
1,563,423 
203,459 
148,124 
208,877 
$ 425,903 
1,047,223 
2,166,633 
599,515 
1,453,103 
1,036,874 
3,645,160 
565,377 
395,243 
173,660 
$ 3,321,300 $ .39 
6,906,400 . 61 
13,465,400 1.06 
*| 1.79 
9.208.600 .87 
West Virginia. 
Wisconsin 
Dist. Columbia 
(e) Montana. . 
(/) NewMexico 
For the U. S. 
2,950,300 
22,630,624 
1.41 
2.33 
2.78 
2.67 
.83 
6.401.900 
6.117.900 
49.97 
29.29 
56,334,711 
$111,304,927 
$1.97 
$12.42 
(a) Including the Territory of Wyoming. (6) Including the Territory of Dakota. 
(?) Including the Territory of Utah. (d) Including Washington Territory and 
Alaska. (?) Including the Territ’y of Idaho. (/) Including the Territ’y of Arizona. 
* As “liquor dealer” in the United States Internal Revenue Reports means in 
Prohibition States simply those who hold United States tax receipts, which include 
town agents, druggists and those who attempt to violate the prohibitory law, it is 
impossible to give estimates for these States. 
TABLE II. 
Year. 
No. teachers. 
School ex- 
penses per 
pupil. 
Number liquor 
dealers. 
Gallons liquor 
consumed per 
capita of popu- 
lation. 
1876 
249,283 
$10.04 
175,994 
8.60 
1877 
259,296 
8.96 
169,159 
8.34 
1878 
271,174 
8.59 
172,797 
8.24 
1879 
272,691 
8.20 
173,457 
8.66 
1880 
282,644 
8.18 
181,996 
10.08 
1881 
289,150 
8.63 
10.47 
1882 
293,294 
9.10 
185,574 
11.84 
1883 
298,552 
9.44 
205,476 
12 11 
1884 
307,804 
9.68 
198,930 
12.45 
1885 
319,549 
9.88 
201,435 
12.06 
1886 
323,066 
9.72 
209,500 
12.62 
IV. Where shall we find a remedy ? Clearly, in this 
only, in making onr education embrace specific instruction 
in regard to the Drink System. Nothing less than this will 
enable the rising generation to stem the tide of foolish cus- 
tom, and to resist temptation to drink. While we cannot 
turn away from the philanthropic appeal to aid the inebri- 
ate to rise, even though it be but for temporary reformation, 242 
Alcohol in Society. 
we should be forewarned by the now historic movements in 
this direction, to avoid, as far as possible, a repetition of 
what were too often barren experiments, by educating the 
entire community to comprehend and apply, in their social, 
religious, and citizen relations, the philosophy of the Tem- 
perance movement. This we can do to some extent, by 
books, lectures, and other general efforts to reach and en- 
lighten the public; but most effectively and thoroughly by 
specific instruction in our schools and colleges. 
The reform which we seek, and failing in which we fail 
in attaining what is best for the individual life and for the 
home, what is all-important for the State and the Nation, 
is not based on mere expediency or sentiment, but upon 
reason, science and religion. 
Founded on Chemistry, Physiology, and Christian Ethics, 
the Temperance cause is elevated to the dignity of a great 
intellectual, political, moral and philanthropic science, 
affording scope for the highest type of scholarship, and 
presenting a wide field for the exercise of Christian phil- 
anthrophy. Thus based, and calling attention by demon- 
strations which all can understand, to God’s revelations of 
natural law in our bodies, and the antagonism of alcohol 
with that law; to political economy, and the great fact of 
waste and loss occasioned by the use of intoxicants ; to 
the highest Christian duty and expediency towards our- 
selves and towards others, as ignored and violated by 
intemperance; the question of temperance in some or all 
of its phases, should be in the curriculum of our instruction 
in all grades of our institutions of learning. 
When the famous Dr. Arnold, whose school at Rugby 
has become noted for the eminent men whose. foundations 
in excellence it so thoroughly laid, said that he never ex- 
pected much of a pupil so long as he merely loved good, 
but that he always had great hopes of those whom he 
could induce to hate evil; he announced a distinction that 
is most vitally important in its bearing on this theme of 
specific education in relation to temperance. General edu- Educational. 
243 
cation may not be defective in begetting that love of good 
which is too often but a passive virtue, enabling one to 
sit down to the enjoyment of his good ; but specific instruc- 
tion in the greatness and enormity of an evil is necessary 
to rouse one to activity in hating the evil as an enemy to 
his good, and doing all that he can to overcome it. 
The truth and necessity of this are not alone apprehend- 
ed and urged by men who have made themselves conspicu- 
ous in the temperance reform, but they have the most clear 
recognition and hearty endorsement of those eminent as 
scholars, and as philanthropists, in other departments of 
human need. 
“ Twenty years ago,” says Rev. William M. Thayer, “ being 
engaged in a temperance movement for the young of Massachu- 
setts, we secured the name of Henry Wilson to the prospectus, 
and then passed it to Charles Sumner, who was not a total- 
abstainer. He carefully read the document, and remarked in 
his frank and kindly way, ‘That is just the thing to be done. 
Educate the young in the principles of temperance, and you 
have created a public sentiment for the future that will make 
the temperance cause triumphant. Pledge them to total absti- 
nence, and follow up the act with proper and persistent in- 
struction, and the men and women of the future will be total 
abstainers.’ ” 
In relation to introducing Dr. Richardson’s u Temper<■ 
ance Lesson Book ” into our Public Schools, Dr. Willard 
Parker, of New York, says : 
“ The character of alcohol, in its fatal influence upon body, 
mind, and morals, is still little understood. Many believe, if it 
he pure only, it will impart vigor to the whole person; while 
the truth is, it is a poison, not a food, shortens the life of the 
user about fifty per cent., and entails upon the children a dis- 
eased system, manifested both in the body and mind. I hope 
the book will find its way into families and schools. The chil- 
dren must know that fire will burn them, and they will then 
keep out, if they have any sense. We are now making war 
upon alcohol in an effective manner. We are imparting relia- 
ble knowledge to those who do not use it, and many of whom 
are now, or will soon become our legislators." 244 
Alcohol in Society. 
Tlie late Dr. Holland, in 11 Scribner’s Monthly,” for 
February, 1880, furnished an able article on “ Temperance 
Education,” from which we quote as follows : 
u By the vote of our city Board of Education, on the sixth of 
November last, the English school-book, prepared by Benjamin 
Ward Eichardson, called ‘The Temperance Lesson-Book,’was 
adopted among the text-books which our city teachers are at 
liberty to use. We hope there are a good many teachers in the 
city who are willing to take up this book and teach it to their 
classes, for there is no doubt that boys go out into the dangers 
of the world lamentably ignorant of those that await them 
among the drinking-shops. We are sorry that this instruction 
must come into the schools through special text-books, though 
it is better that it come in this way than not at all. It must 
come at last into all competent schools, but when that point 
shall be reached it will come in books on physiology and politi- 
cal economy, in a natural and perfectly legitimate way. A 
special text-book on temperance may be well enough in the ab- 
sence of the general books in which the topic has its appropriate 
place and space ; but it is like a text-book on opium-eating. In 
short, the incompetence of the books on physiology and politi- 
cal economy has forced the friends of temperance into the use 
of this make-shift, which is surely a great deal better than 
nothing. 
“ There is, probably, no ballucination so obstinate as that 
which attributes to alcoholic drink a certain virtue which it 
never possessed, After all the influences of the pulpit and the 
press, after all the warning examples of drunkenness and conse- 
quent destruction, after all the testimony of science and experi- 
ence, there lingers in the average mind an impression that there 
is something good in alcohol, even for the healthy man. Boys 
and young men do not shun the wine-cup as a poisoner of blood 
and thought, and the most dangerous drug that they can possi- 
bly handle; hut they have an idea that the temperance man is 
a fogy or foe to a free social life, whose practices are ascetic, and 
whose warnings are to he laughed at and disregarded. Now in 
alcohol, in its various forms, we have a foe to the human race 
so subtle and so powerful that it destroys human beings by the 
million, vitiates all the mental processes of those who indulge 
in it, degrades morals, induces pauperism and crime in the 
superlative degree, when compared with all other causes, cor- 
rupts the homes of millions and makes hells of them, and wastes Educational. 
245 
the national resources more certainly and severely than war; 
yet so little have the writers upon physiology and political 
economy regarded this vital and economical factor in human 
affairs that the friends of temperance have been obliged to get 
up and push a special text-book upon it ! Verily, they must be 
a brilliant set of men! Hereafter no text-book on either physi - 
ology or political economy should be adopted in any school in 
the country that does not competently treat of the alcohol 
question.” 
The article concludes by saying: 
“ The more thoroughly we can instruct the young concerning 
this dominating evil of our time, the better will it be for them 
and for the world. Let us use the ‘ Temperance Lesson Book ’ 
wherever we may. Let parents demand that it shall be used, 
and particularly let all writers upon physiology and political 
economy for schools take up the subject of alcohol, and treat it 
so candidly, fully, and ably, that their books shall no longer 
be commentaries on their own incompetency to fill the places 
whose functions they have assumed.” 
The u New England Journal of Education ” says on 
the same subject: 
“We should commence with the young; and to reach them 
most thoroughly and combat most successfully the national 
peril, let us start in the public schools. I would make the 
study of alcoholic poisoning as thorough and scientific as possi- 
ble. In the text-books on hygiene generally used I think it 
will be found that this subject is gingerly noticed In one I 
noticed that a part of the antidote for alcohol was the pouring 
of water on the head. I wish it had said more about putting 
it into the stomach in the first place. Investigation should go 
right down to the bottom of the evil, and then reach out as far 
as it extends. Under this head of poison, notice could be fit- 
tingly taken of various intoxicating substances. Let one read 
an article, by Dr. Richardson, in the * Contemporary Review ’ on 
‘ Chloral and the Narcotics.’ That gives a broad, comprehen- 
sive survey of the whole subject of toxical poisons, shows us 
what powder magazines are all about us, and suggests to us our 
duty of enlightening the minds of all. It is Dr. Richardson 
who has prepared a text-book—what he terms a ‘ Temperance 
Lesson-book ’—that has been introduced into schools in London, 
Edinburgh, Leeds, Brighton, and adopted, indeed, by all the 246 
Alcohol in Society. 
large school hoards in England, and most of the smaller ones. 
What a gain must come to England from this ! 
“ The young will appreciate such study. The hoy who sees a 
young man tossing off a glass of liquor, may not see any appre- 
ciable ill-effect at first, and wonder where the harm is. But 
the study would show that Nemesis sits hy the side of the first 
glass, and retribution begins at once. It begins unseen in the 
body, that is only a veil to-day, hiding the sad results of 
wrong, hut soon becomes the white shroud covering a 60ul’s 
dead hopes. 
“ But one may ask, How shall we secure the introduction of 
this text-hook ? Let any one that reads this start a petition, 
to he signed and then handed to their school committee. Are 
the readers philanthropic, patriotic women ? let them not for- 
get their influence; and let them remember with what new 
power in school matters the laws of various States invest 
them.” 
State legislatures are also waking to the importance of 
this subject, though greatly to the disturbance of the liquor 
interests. Thus the “ Western Brewer announces recent 
legislation : 
“ About the meanest move ever made by the fanatics, has 
just been consummated in Connecticut, where the Legislature 
has passed the following bill by a large majority: 
“ * Section 1. That if in any town twelve persons of adult 
years, shall petition the Board of School Visitors to order in. 
struction in the public schools concerning the effect of intoxicat- 
ing beverages on individuals and on the community, the Board 
of School Visitors shall consider this petition, and, by a formal 
vote, decide whether or not to grant its request. 
“ ‘ Sec. 2. If any persons feel aggrieved by the decision thus 
made by the Board of School Visitors, then, upon the petition 
of twenty legal voters of the town, the question shall be sub- 
mitted to the next annual town meeting, which shall have 
power to finally decide it for one year.’ 
“Teaching temperance in the public schools is a new deal. 
Verily, there are Jesuits among the fanatics.” 
Why should the Brewers object? Have they not boasted 
that what the people needed was enlightenment on this sub- 
ject, to keep them from “ temperance fanaticism ? ” Have Educational. 
247 
they not printed and circulated more than a million copies 
of Dr. Crosby’s “ Calm View of Temperance ? ” Have 
they not voted thousands of dollars into the hands of their 
11 Literature Committee,” for the purpose of flooding the 
country with information in regard to their trade ? Why 
do they not welcome, therefore, an attempt at enlightenment 
made by others ? 
A most significant and interesting fact in regard to Tem- 
perance education, is brought to light at Cambridge. Dr. 
William James, who gave the students of Harvard Uni- 
versity a course of lectures, or weekly practical talks, on 
physiology and hygiene during the school year, 1880-1, 
brought his series to a close by a lecture upon the use of 
stimulants, in which, according to the reports in the Boston 
papers: 
“ He gave a comprehensive statement of the arguments for 
and against the practice of moderate drinking, and concluded 
that, aside from the moral aspect of the question, the balance of 
the evidence is in favor of tetotalism. The evidence is of two 
sorts: first, the observation by physiologists of the immediate 
effects of pure alcohol upon men and animals ; second, the gen- 
eralizations from experience ; e. g., statistics. The first kind is 
clear and unequivocal, but not conclusive, because the second- 
ary and more remote effects are sometimes the reverse of the im- 
mediate results, and are not clearly measurable. To test them 
the second sort of evidence is better.” 
The report concludes thus : 
“Whole nations that use alcohol for many years seem more 
healthy than could he the case if alcohol were a poison. On 
the other hand, evidence collected from within one of these na- 
tions, shows that tetotalers are more healthy than moderate 
drinkers, as appears by experience in hospitals, and by the 
statistics of insurance companies. These companies divide all 
the insured into two classes, tetotalers, and non-tetotalers 
(drunkards never being insured) ; and according to accurate 
statistics where, computing from the mortality tables, 1,110 
tetotalers ought to have died, only 801 did die; but where 
2,010 ordinary people should have been visited by death, 248 
Alcohol in Society. 
1,997 actually were victimized. One may well ask, therefore, in 
this struggle of modern American life, with its too rapid success- 
ion of burdens, Is it well to start handicapped by the use of a 
beverage the effects of which are, on the whole, likely to be in- 
jurious? The young man of average physical health will do 
well to consider whether he can safely adopt such a course.” 
Evidently, Dr. James, if he is correctly reported, had not 
made himself familiar with the latest researches of physi- 
ology, which are in perfect harmony with the statistics 
based on general experience; but as a commencement in 
the work of specific instruction his labor is significant, and 
in its conclusions against the harmlessness and safety of 
the moderate use of intoxicants, it is true and valuable. 
What seems to be needed in order that education may be 
complete and salutary, is, specific instruction: 
I. In regard to the composition and nature of alcoholic 
drinks. Much has been written and published on this sub- 
ject, and it is available to all who have the will to give or 
receive the instruction which it contains. Dr. Wm. B. 
Carpenter’s “Essays on Alcohol;” Dr. F. R. Lee’s, 
“Lectures and Text Book;” Prof. Miller’s “Treatise on 
Alcohol, its Place and Power; ” Dr. B. W. Richardson’s 
“ Cantor Lectures,” and “ Temperance Lesson Book; ” and 
the first essay of this series, Dr. Hargreaves’ “ Alcohol 
and Science,” all treat the matter on the basis of facts es- 
tablished by actual experiments, so often repeated, and 
with such unvarying results as to leave no room to doubt 
the validity of the demonstrations which they establish. 
Alcohol, according to these authorities, is never a pro- 
duct of nature, but always the work of art. Chemists of the 
highest authority agree in teaching this. “ Nature,” says 
Count Chaptal, “ never forms spirituous liquors ; she rots 
the grape on the branch, but it is art which converts the 
juice into wine.” “ Alcohol,” says Dr. Turner, “is the in- 
toxicating ingredient of all spirituous and vinous liquors. Educational. 
249 
It does not exist ready formed in plants, but is a product 
of the vinous fermentation.” 
11 Alcohol,” says Dr. Niel Carmichael, u is a purely arti- 
ficial product, obtained only by carefully carried out 
chemical methods. It exists nowhere in nature.” 
There are many alcohols; their peculiar properties be- 
ing determined by the character of the decomposed material 
out of which they spring; but the alcohol used as a bev- 
erage, is the result of the decomposition of grape sugar, into 
which form all sugars must be changed before they can 
yield this peculiar substance. The necessary conditions 
are, the presence of a rotting or putrefying substance called 
a ferment, and a temperature of uniform heat, with an ar- 
rest of the chemical action at a given point; or vinegar, an- 
other and different product, is created. So that man’s active 
presence is necessary in order to the creation of alcohol. 
It comes from the destruction of sugar, and has no other 
source. Until fermented and put in a state of decay, no 
drink-making property is ever developed from fruit or 
grain. 
A marked peculiarity of alcohol is, that to all forms 
of animal life it is equally a poison. On this point, Dr. 
Richardson says, as the result of experiment: 
“ There is no animal that may not he affected by alcohol. At 
all events, I know of none. Some animals will swallow with- 
out injury substances that would be poisonous to man. A 
pigeon will take, without showing the slightest symptom, as 
much opium as would kill several men. A goat will swallow, 
without injury, a quantity of tobacco which would kill several 
men. A rabbit will swallow, without injury, a dose of bella- 
donna that would kill several men. But neither the pigeon, nor 
the goat, nor the rabbit can swallow alcohol without being in- 
fluenced by it in much the same manner as a man would be.” * 
Another peculiarity is, that to reproduce a certain effect, 
there must he an increase of the amount of alcohol over 
*11 Temperance Lesson-Book,” p. 112. 250 
Alcohol in Society. 
that which at first caused the effect. On this point Dr. 
Richardson is as emphatic as on the foregoing. 
“Alcohol taken into the body,” he says, “ causes sensations 
and effects that soon seem to become a necessary part of life, but 
which can rarely be sustained, from day to day, in any person, 
without leading to an increase of the dose which first caused 
the sensations or effects. A man takes other foods and drinks 
without experiencing this change. If he takes a pint of milk, 
or a pint of water, or half a pound of meat to-day, he does not 
find a desire to go on day after day increasing those quantities 
of milk, water, or meat, indefinitely, until one of them takes 
the place of almost everything else, becomes the one thing 
really cared for, and at last produces symptoms of the most terri- 
ble disease. The taking of alcohol does, however, lead to this 
habit in respect to itself; it excites a constant craving for more 
of itself, more and yet more, day after day, until at last the 
deluded man or woman that is used to it, may increase the 
quantity until, caring for nothing else whatever, he or she 
becomes the victim of the most terrible and fatal of bodily and 
mental diseases.” * 
"Why this is so is because alcohol is a narcotic poison, 
and this law governing the effects produced by narcotics 
cannot be evaded by it. 
The above-mentioned peculiarities are noticeable in the 
whole class of intoxicating liquors used by man as a bev- 
erage. The alcohol in the distilled drinks differs in noth- 
ing from the alcohol in the fermented drinks. Distillation 
does not create alcohol, but simply extracts it from the 
fermented liquors which are subjected to a sufficient degree 
of heat to make distillation possible. Nothing is created 
by the heat, the alcohol is simply liberated by it from the 
mass in which it was diffused before. 
So that it may truly be said that all the difference there 
is in intoxicating drinks is simply in their proportions 
of alcohol, water, coloring matter, and flavors. The 
portions of alcohol in each are of one and the same alcohol. 
* Ibid, p. 113. Educational. 
251 
Nothing is more common to-day than is the pretence put 
forth by ignorance, that distillation has added a quality to 
the intoxicating property of its product that was unknown to 
the beer or wine while they were simply fermented. This 
is a mistake. Nothing, whatever, has been added, all the 
alcohol distilled was already in the beer or wine, and dis- 
tillation has in no respect changed it. It has only separ- 
ated it from the other ingredients that were mixed with it; 
so that, as a distilled spirit, there is less water and other 
matter heavier than alcohol itself, than there was in the 
beer or wine. 
It is conceded by those engaged in the manufacture of 
malt liquors, that “ the percentage of alcohol in lager 
beer, ale and porter, varies from four to seven per cent.” 
The average is therefore 5.5 per cent, of alcohol, in malt 
liquors, as against 40 to 50 per cent, in whiskey. A pint 
of lager beer, which is a small indulgence for those accus- 
tomed to that drink, contains as much alcohol as a gill—a 
very moderate dram—of whiskey does. Many a man, there- 
fore, who prides himself that because he drinks no distilled 
liquors, he is not using intoxicants, is, in many instances, 
in the great quantity of beer which he consumes, drinking 
more alcohol than is the man who drinks distilled spirits 
only, but in smaller quantities. A knowledge of the compo- 
sition and nature of alcohol will enable any one to see, 
who is intelligent enough to receive any education, that the 
thing which intoxicates is the same, let it be found where 
it will, and that its properties are not guessed at, but are 
as well known as any other facts that are demonstrated by 
chemistry. 
II. The education that will save from intemperance, 
must also convey a knowledge of the physiological effect 
of alcoholic drinks on the mind and body of man. Scien- 
tific investigators have so extensively demonstrated these 
effects that the physiological argument for total abstinence 252 
Alcohol in Society. 
is urgent and unanswerable. What we have said in the 
preceding chapter, on the physical and mental effects of the 
Drink System, is all based on these well ascertained effects. 
Long before the physician was able to say why disease and 
insanity were accompaniments of the use of intoxicants, he 
was compelled to testify to the fact that alcohol was the 
cause of mental and physical infirmity. 
“Now,” in the language of Dr. Richardson, “ dispute has 
given way to accepted fact. That the ultimate action of alco- 
hol in the animal temperature, is to reduce the temperature; that 
alcohol relaxes organic muscular fibre ; that alcohol produces 
four destructive physiological states of the body ; that alcohol 
reduces oxidation ; that alcohol interferes with natural dialysis ; 
that alcohol induces, even taken in small quantities, a series 
of morbid changes and diseases that were not formally attributed 
to it; that alcohol prepares the body for destruction by external 
shocks and depressions which are thus made more fatal; that al- 
cohol belongs to the same class of chemical substances as chloro- 
form, ether, and the anaesthetic family ; all this is practically 
now on the accepted record.” * 
“ I have found,” says Dr. Day, who has had great experience 
in treating the diseases of inebriates, “ I have found it to be 
true from my own observation, that the imbibing of even small 
quantities of alcohol, or what is deemed a small quantity by the 
user, will degenerate the nerve and muscular tissues by hard- 
ening them, and thus interfering with their functions, devel- 
oping disease, or rendering accidental or zymotic disease less 
likely to be cured. Of course, with such interference with 
nerve structures, the mental manifestations must be changed. 
The effect of this agent is always to strike at the higher facul- 
ties of the mind. It batters the keen edge of high sensibility, 
and the man is shorn of those high qualities which make him 
sensible to the duties he owes to his family, his country, and 
his God.” 
And Sir W. Gull, of England, says, as quoted by 
Canon Farrar, who, introducing the statement declares 
that: 
* “ The Medical Profession and Alcohol,” p. 10, 11. Educational. 
253 
“ Coming from such a man is of the most immense general 
and scientific importance, that the constant use of alcohol, even 
in moderation, injures the nervous tissue, and is deleterious to 
health : that a man may very materially injure his constitu- 
tion short of drunkenness ; and that a great deal of injury is 
done to health by the habitual use of wines in their various 
kinds, and alcohol in its various shapes, even in so-called mod- 
erate quantities, by people of both sexes who are supposed to 
be fairly well, and who are not in the least intemperate.” 
And Dr. James Edmunds, another distinguished English 
physician, said in a lecture in New York, in 1874: 
It is admitted by every one that alcohol is the cause of 
more than half the insanity we have. I am not so familiar 
with the facts on this subject here as I should naturally be at 
the other side of the Atlantic. ... I know this : that Lord 
Shaftesbury, the chairman of our commission on lunacy in 
England, has said in a parliamentary report on the subject, 
that six out of ten lunatics in our asylums are made lunatics by 
the use of alcohol. It is a fact which cannot be disputed, that 
diseases of the liver, diseases of the lungs, diseases of the tissues 
of the body, are induced directly by the use of alcohol, and that 
as a general rule you may say that where you have alcohol 
used most largely and most frequently, there these diseases and 
degenerations in the tissues of the body become most marked. 
I could give you very authoritative facts bearing upon this mat- 
ter from sources which are not open to the imputation of any 
kind of moral bias, as the utterances of some of our temperance 
friends may be open to. 
“ Now recollect that food is that which puts strength into a 
man, and stimulant is that which gets strength out of a man; 
so that when you want to use stimulant, recollect that you are 
using that which will exhaust the last particles of strength, 
with a facility with which your body would not otherwise part 
with them. If a man takes a pint of brandy, what do we see ? 
It intoxicates, it poisons him. Of course you know intoxicant 
is a modification of the Greek word toxicon. The man who is 
intoxicated is poisoned; we simply use a Greek instead of a 
Saxon word for it. We see a man intoxicated. What are the 
phenomena we see then ? A man lies on his back snoring, help- 
less, senseless. If you set him up, he falls down again like a 
sack of potatoes. If you try to rouse him, you get nothing out 254 
Alcohol in Society. 
of him but a grunt. Is that the effect of a stimulant, do you 
think ? I should think it is the effect of a paralyzer that you 
have—mind, and body, and nerve, and muscle all equally and 
uniformly paralyzed right through. . . . Alcohol in a large 
dose is a narcotic poison, which paralyzes the body and stupe- 
fies the mind. If a man takes a somewhat larger dose, what do 
you see then? You see that snoring and breathing come to an 
end.—You see that tho soft, flabby pulsation of the heart 
ceases; that the spark of life goes out, and the man can- 
not be resuscitated. In fact, there are more men killed, so far 
as I know English statistics, more men poisoned in that way 
by alcohol than are poisoned by all other poisons put together. 
We have a great horror of arsenic and fifty other things ; the 
fact is, that all these other things are a mere bagatelle in rela- 
tion to the most direct, absolute, immediate, and certain poison- 
ings which are caused by alcohol.” 
The Board of State Charities of Massachusetts, in their 
Report for 1866, after calling attention to the causes of 
the vitiation of the human stock, bring forward the chief 
cause thus: 
u That prolific cause is the common habit of taking alcohol 
into the system, usually as the basis of spirits, wine, or beer. 
. . . , The basis being the same in all, the constitutional 
effects are about the same. The use of alcohol materially mod- 
ifies a man’s bodily condition ; and so far as it affects him indi- 
vidually, it is his own affair ; but if it affects also the number 
and condition of his offspring, that affects society. If its general 
use does materially influence the number and condition of the 
dependent and criminal classes, it is the duty of all who have 
thought and care about social improvement to consider the 
matter carefully, and it is the special duty of those having official 
relations with those classes to furnish facts and materials for 
public consideration. It is well known that alcohol acts un- 
equally upon man’s nature; that it stimulates the lower 
propensities and weakens the higher faculties, . . . and 
represses the functions which manifest themselves in the higher 
or human sentiments which result in will. If the blood, highly 
alcoholized, goes to the brain, its functions become subverted ; 
the man does not know, and does not care what he says or 
does. If this process is often repeated . . . the man is no 
longer under control of his voluntary power, but has come Educational. 
255 
under the dominion of automatic functions, which are almost 
as much beyond his control as the beating of his heart. Any 
morbid condition of body frequently repeated becomes estab- 
lished by habit . . . and makes him more liable to certain 
diseases, as gout, scrofula, insanity, and the like. This liability 
or tendency he transmits to his children just as surely as he 
transmits likeness in form or feature. . . . Now the use of 
alcohol certainly does induce a morbid condition of body. It is 
morally certain that the frequent or the habitual overthrow of 
the conscience and will, or the habitual weakening of them, 
soon establishes a morbid condition, with morbid appetites and 
tendencies, and that those appetites and tendencies are surely 
transmitted to the offspring.” 
The “ Scientific American ” thus presents the testimony 
of one of the most competent witnesses to the work of alco- 
hol on the brain, the seat of the mind of man : 
“ Hyrti, by far the greatest anatomist of the age, used to say 
that he could distinguish in the darkest room, hy one stroke of 
the scalpel, the brain of the inebriate from that of a person who 
lived soberly. 
“ Now and then he could congratulate his class upon the pos- 
session of a drunkard’s brain, admirably fitted from its hardness 
and more complete preservation, for the purposes of demonstra- 
tion. 
“When the anatomist wishes to preserve a human brain for 
any length of time, he effects that object by keeping that organ 
in a vessel of alcohol. 
“ From a soft, pulpy substance, it then becomes comparative- 
ly hard ; but the inebriate, anticipating the anatomist, begins 
the indurating process before death—begins it while the brain 
remains the consecrated temple of the soul—while its delicate 
and gossamer-like tissues still throb with the pulse of heaven- 
born life. 
“ Strange infatuation thus to desecrate the God-like! Terri- 
ble enchantment that dries up all the fountains of generous 
feelings, petrifies all the tender humanities and sweet charities 
of life, leaving only a brain of lead, and a heart of stone! ” 
From these facts, we must concede not only that alcohol 
has a decided and unmistakable physiological effect in all 
who drink it, but that the injury inflicted by it must be 256 
Alcohol in Society. 
greater than is generally supposed ; that it is not possible 
for us to trace out all its mischief; and that under no cir- 
cumstances can it be true that the healthy body can inno- 
cently receive it. 
Yet how many plead for the use of what are called the 
lighter intoxicants, as not only innocent but beneficial, 
and as providing those who drink with a beverage which 
will advance the cause of temperance by superseding the 
use of distilled liquors; wholly forgetful of the fact, so far 
as the latter claim is concerned, that the fermented drinks 
were the cause of all the physically debasing results men- 
tioned with such loathing in ancient records, especially in 
the Scriptures, and that for centuries, they had the whole 
field of experiment to themselves, and with but one result, 
intemperance. And also forgetful of the fact that in no re- 
spect does the drunkenness from beer and wine differ in its 
effects from the drunkenness produced by the alcohol that 
has passed through the still. 
There is but one testimony borne to us by those who 
have taken note of facts in wine countries. The late Hor- 
ace Greeley wrote from Paris: 
“Wine will intoxicate—does intoxicate; and that there are 
confirmed drunkards in Paris, and throughout France, is noto- 
rious and undeniable. You can hardly open a French newspa- 
per that does not contain some account of a robbery perpetrated 
upon some person stupefied by over-drinking; a police case 
growing out of a quarrel over the wine cup ; or a culprit, when 
asked to say why the sentence of law should not be pronounced 
upon him, replying, “I was drunk when this happened, and 
know nothing of the matter.” That journeymen are commonly 
less fitted for, and less inclined to work on Monday, than on 
other days of the week, is as notorious there, as it ever was in 
any rum-drinking city.” 
The late Dr. Kirk, of Boston, also said : u I never saw 
such systematic drunkenness as I saw in France during a 
residence of sixteen months. I never saw so many women 
drunk.” Educational. 
257 
So also J. Fennimore Cooper wrote: “ I came to Europe 
under the impression that there was more drunkenness 
among us [Americans] than in any other country. A resi- 
dence in Paris has changed my views entirely.” 
Louis Philippe assured Mr. Delevan, in 1838, “The 
drunkenness of France is on wine.” 
Dr. Holland found tlie same true in Switzerland. He 
says: 
“ The people drink their cheap white wine here (in Switzer- 
land,) to drunkenness. A boozier set than hang around the 
multitudinous eaf6s here it would he hard to find in any Ameri- 
can city. If you could find a cauliflower of the color of the 
ordinary red cabbage, you can achieve a very adequate concep- 
tion of the faces that are not uncommon in this wine growing 
region. So this question is settled in my mind. Cheap wine 
is not the cure for intemperance. The people here are just as 
intemperate as they are in America, and what is more, there is 
no public sentiment that checks intemperance in the least. 
The wine is fed freely to the children, and by all classes is 
regarded as a perfectly legitimate drink. Failing to find the 
solution of the Temperance question in the Maine law, failing to 
perceive it in various modes and movements of reform, I, with 
many others, have looked to find it in a cheap and comparatively 
harmless wine; but for one, I can look in this direction hope- 
fully no longer. I firmly believe the wines of Switzerland are 
of no use except to keep out whiskey, and that the advantages 
of the wine over the whiskey are not very obvious. It is the 
testimony of the best men in Switzerland—those who have the 
highest good of the people at heart, that the increased growth 
of the grape has been steadily and correspondingly attended by 
the increase of drunkenness. They lament the planting of a 
new vineyard as we at home regret the opening of a new grog 
shop. They expect no good of it to anybody. They know, 
and deeply feel, that the whole wine-producing enterprise is 
charged with degradation for their country.” 
Similar testimony is given us from California. Rev. 
Dr. Stone, who has long resided in that State of vine- 
yards, says: 
“I had entertained tlie hope that the manufacture of pure 
wines and their introduction into general use, would crowd out 258 
Alcohol in Society. 
the gross strong liquors, and diminish intemperance. I am 
now fully convinced that this hope was groundless and delu- 
sive. In wine-growing districts intemperance is on the in- 
crease, extending to the youth of both sexes.” 
More recently the editor of the u Pacific ” has said : 
“ Already wine has become as cheap as milk, and as freely 
drunk, till many once sober men are now habitually intoxicat- 
ed. In one wine-growing neighborhood we are told that young 
girls 17 years of age reeled in the streets under the intoxication 
of pure California wine. Men once of worth are now, through 
wine, lost to society, and becoming a fear and disgrace to their 
families. The production of this article, now fearfully on the 
increase, must prove a curse to the whole land if persevered in.” 
Equally delusive is the claim that beer is an innocent 
beverage. A number of authorities have already been 
cited on this subject, in the preceding chapter. A few 
are here added. Dr. Montross Palen, prominent in the 
recent International Convention of Physicians in London, 
in answer to the question whether he u thought there was 
any connection between lager beer and Bright’s disease,-’ 
replied: 
“ The man who habitually drinks beer is sure to have Bright’s 
disease. Beer in large quantities is one of the worst things a 
man can ruin his stomach and organs with. In Germany, 
where the students drink a great deal of beer, their kidneys 
and bladders are always affected.” 
Dr. Smith, of Boston, bears the same testimony as to 
the peculiar danger in using beer. In a lecture on the 
u Circulation of the Blood,” he is reported to have said 
“ that beer-drinking, especially lager beer, which has 
become so common, is the occasion of a very large increase 
of kidney disease, and that in this respect it cannot but be 
regarded with the gravest apprehensions.” 
The statements of Dr. Arnott, quoted in reference to 
suicide, in preceding pages, are more than borne out by 
recent high authority. Dr. Morselli, in a recent work on 
u Suicide,” published in Italy, and republished in this Educational. 
259 
country, gives, as the result of statistical information rang- 
ing over long periods of time, and many countries, these 
statements concerning suicide: 
“ Tlie highest numbers are given by countries of the Germanic 
race, and the two stocks, German and Scandinavian, divide 
this supremacy. The centre of the purest German stocks is 
Saxony, the old and powerful land of the Teutons, and it pre- 
sents a very high average. Equally great is the proportion in 
Lower Austria and Salisbury, which are almost pure German, 
in the Saxon circles and in those of Liegnitz, Potsdam, Merse- 
burg, and Magdeburg of Prussia, in the German Cantons of 
Switzerland, and every place in which the German element 
prevails.” “ The provinces which give the lowest averages are 
the most distant from the pure German centre ; and on the con- 
trary, those provinces give the highest which are entirely Ger- 
manized, and which approach gradually that great point of 
irradiation of suicide, namely Saxony.” “ The low position in 
point of numbers held by the English people, with regard to 
suicide, in comparison with the Germanic, whilst the first place 
in the civilized world, as regards power and riches, belongs to 
them without dispute, is astonishing ; it is not modern Kome, 
it is not England, which gives the greater number of suicides. 
Admitting that in statistics, we have to deal with deficiencies 
and want of exactness, it is not possible that, although correct, 
we should never have the German averages lower if it were so.” 
il The stronger the Germanism of a country, the more it 
reveals in its physical character an extraordinary propensity to 
Belf-destruction.” “ The minimum is found where the Ger- 
manic element has never penetrated.” 
The tables furnished by Dr. Morselli show that while 
in wine-drinking1 Italy the annual average of suicide is 
88.8 to the million of inhabitants, it is 311. in Germany.* 
These statements of the tendency of the Germans to 
self-destruction, are confirmed by the statistics collected in 
the United States Census for 1870, where of a total of 
492 suicides enumerated, 246, one-half of the whole num- 
ber, were committed by Germans. 
* “ Suicide : An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics.” By 
Henry Morselli, M. D., New York, 1882. Pp. 49, 81, 85, 91, 98. Alcohol in Society. 
Dr. Morselli incidentally alludes to insanity, and says : 
“There are calculated to be annually about 300,000 mad in 
the whole of the Old World, and the greater number are found 
in France, Germany and England. According to the works of 
Legoyt, Osiander, Hausner, and Guttstadt, the scale for mental 
diseases in the various states is not very different from that of 
the suicides. At their head stand the countries of Germanic 
stock, with about 2 mad people in 1,000 inhabitants, then the 
Celto-Romans, with 1 per 1,000, and lastly, The Slavo-Tartars, 
with 0.6 per 1,000.” (P. 284.) 
In the “ Quarterly Journal of Inebriety,” for March, 
1880, is an article on “Beer-drinking in the United 
States,” written by the editor, Dr. T. D. Crotliers, of Hart- 
ford. The following extract from it is worthy the atten- 
tion of the thoughtful: 
“ For some years past a decided inclination lias been appar- 
ent all over the country to give up the use of whiskey and 
other strong alcohols, using as a substitute beer and bitters, 
and other compounds. This is evidently founded on the idea 
that beer is harmless and contains a large amount of nutri- 
ment ; also that bitters may have some medicinal quality, 
which will neutralize the alcohol they conceal, etc. These theo- 
ries are without confirmation in the observation of physicians 
and chemists where either has been used for any length of time. 
The constant use of beer is found to produce a species of degen- 
eration of all the organism, profound and deep-seated. Fatty 
deposits, diminished circulation, conditions of congestion, and 
perversion of functional activities, local inflammation of both 
the liver and the kidneys, are constantly present. Intellectu- 
ally a stupor amounting almost to paralysis arrests the reason, 
precipitating all the higher faculties into a mere animalism, 
sensual, selfish, sluggish, varied only with paroxysms of anger 
that are senseless and brutal. In appearance the beer-drinker 
may be the picture of health, but in reality he is most incapa- 
ble of resisting disease. A slight injury, severe cold, or shock 
to the body or mind will commonly provoke acute disease, 
ending fatally. Compared with inebriates who use different 
forms of alcohol, he is more incurable, and more generally dis- 
eased. The constant use of beer every day gives the system no 
time for recuperation, but steadily lowers the vital forces ; it is 
our observation that beer-drinking in this country produces Educational. 
261 
the very lowest forms of inebriety, closely allied to criminal 
insanity. The most dangerous class of tramps and ruffians in. 
our large cities are beer-drinkers. It is asserted by competent 
authority that the evils of heredity are more positive in this 
class than from alcoholics. If these facts are well founded, the 
recourse to beer as a substitute for alcohol merely increases the 
danger and fatality following. In hitters we have a drink 
which can never become general; but its chief danger will be 
in strengthening the disorded cravings, which later will develop 
a positive disease. Public sentiment and legislation should 
comprehend that all forms of alcohol are more or less danger- 
ous when used steadily, and all persons who use them in this 
Way should come under sanitary and legislative control.” 
The u hitters ” alluded to, sold often as innocent bever- 
ages, and often as panaceas, are heavily charged with alco- 
hol, as witness the following recently published analysis 
of the State Assayer of Rhode Island : 
“Christopher Holden, Sheriff: 
“ Dear Sir : I herewith submit to you my report on the 
various bitters sold in this market, giving, as you desired, their 
percentage of alcohol, and forming of them three classes : 
“ Class first—Those apparently manufactured for a beverage. 
“ Class second—Those occupying a middle place between a 
medicine and a beverage. These are not as palatable as No. 1, 
though they may be drunk as a beverage, and like No. 1, are 
intoxicating. 
“ Class third—Those whose medicinal properties or bitter 
taste render them unfit for a beverage. 
FIRST CLASS. 
P. c. 
Hostetter’s Stomach Bit- 
ters 43 20 
Baker’s Stomach Bitters. 40 57 
Drake’s Plantation Bit- 
ters 38 24 
Sol. Frank’s Panacea Bit- 
ters 37 20 
Mishler’s Herb Bitters... 36 80 
Dr. R. F. Hibbaw’s Wild 
Cherry Bitters 35 89 
Rush’s Bitters for the 
Stomach’s “Sake” 34 601 
Contains alcohol as follows: 
p. c. 
Dr. Fisch’s Bitters 32 16 
Baker’s Orange Grove 
Bitters 25 70 
Speer’s Standard Wine 
Bitters 25 49 
Traveller’s Peruvian Bit- 
ters 22 40 
Dr. Clarke’s Sherry Wine 
Bitters 22 40 
California Wine Bitters. 18 20 
Dr. Wheeler’s Tonic 
I Sherry Wine Bitters. . 14 66 262 
Alcohol in Society. 
SECOND CLASS. 
Contains alcohol as follows: 
P. c. 
Atwood’s Quinine Tonic 
Bitters 40 10 
Dr. Holmer’s Golden Seal 
Bitters 32 24 
Dr. Job Sweet’s Strength- 
ening Bitters 31 41| 
P. c. 
Webber’s Strengthening 
Bitters 26 87 
Flint’s Quaker Bitters... 22 99 
Restorative Bitters 20 51 
Luther’s Temperance Bi t- 
ters ... 16 68 
THIRD CLASS. 
Contains alcohol as follows: 
p. c.i 
Richardson’s Bitters 59 14 
Armington’s Bitters 33 26, 
Davis’s Bitters 3(5 50j 
Colton’s Nervine Bitters. 20 73 
Dr. Warren’s Bilious Bit- 
ters 29 60 
Hartshorn’s Bitters 27 35 
Atwood’s Jaundice Bit- 
ters 25 60 
P. C. 
Puritan Bitters 25 60 
Dr. Langley’s Bitters.... 24 41 
Dr. Hoffland’s German 
Bitters. 20 85 
Oxygenated Bitters 19 23 
Walker’s Vinegar Bitters 7 50 
Dr. Pierce’s Bitters 6 36 
Planett’s Bitters (sample 
sour) 
(Signed) 
H. W. Vaughan, State Assayer. 
III. Again, the education that is needed, must also be a 
demonstration of the fact that alcoholic drinks are neither 
food nor fuel to the human body. No phase of the scien- 
tific aspect of this question lias been more thoroughly de- 
bated than this. A full presentation of the various theo- 
ries that have been advocated in regard to it, is given in 
Dr. Hargreave’s Essay, “ Alcohol and Science.” A mere 
hint at what the discussion has settled will be offered in 
these pages. Many volumes have been written on the 
subject, and no education of man in the knowledge of 
himself, and of the operation in his body of tlie so-fre- 
quently offered alcoholic beverages, can be complete which 
fails to include a knowledge of the results obtained by 
this investigation. 
Dr. Richardson’s latest utterance on this point, in his 
Lecture on “ Twenty-one Historic Landmarks/’ or facts 
scientifically established in regard to Alcohol, is clear and 
unmistakable: Educational. 
263 
“ I do think we have fairly brought out what is the positive 
effect of this particular alcohol we take iu this sense—that it 
can in no way be considered a food. We have shown that 
foods are substances that either make up the great mass of the 
body, like water, which exists to about seventy-five per cent., 
or substances which build up the tissues, like albumen, eggs, 
cheese, meats, etc. They are substances that burn iu the body 
like fat, and oil, and starch, and sugar, which go to produce 
animal warmth, and keep up the vital fire, or substances which 
go to make up the bony structure. We have shown that alco- 
hol does not belong to water, and there is nothing in alcohol 
chemically which it can represent in regard to meat substances, 
and the same with the structures which fill up the skeleton of 
the body. 
“Thus, when we ask whether this agent can be classed with 
the foods which keep up the animal warmth, we find that its 
inhibition reduces the animal temperature, and prevents the 
creation of those products which come from the burning of the 
body. Therefore, so far as alcohol is concerned, we can posi- 
tively affirm that it is no food at all; that it produces except- 
ional effects upon the body, but it is no more a food than chlo- 
roform and ether, or anything of the kind are foods.” (Pp. 4, 
5.) 
So in his 11 Temperance Lesson Book/7 he says of those 
who declare that alcohol is food: 
“ Such persons do not think, when they make the statement, 
what food is. We know from the best of teachers, from Nature 
herself, what a true food is. We know that milk is a true 
standard food. Milk gives us water for the purposes it fulfils 
in the body ; it gives us caseine to supply new structures, mus- 
cles, and other active organs ; it gives us salts for building up 
the skeleton and other uses ; it gives us fat (butter) and sugar 
to produce animal warmth and power. Everything is clear 
enough about milk as a food; we can drink milk without being 
burned, and we can see where all its parts go to, and what they 
do in our bodies. But when we come to look at alcohol, we 
can see no such qualities or uses for the purpose of food of any 
kind. It does not supply water ; therefore it is not a water- 
food. It does not supply salts, therefore it is not a saline food, 
and would never help to make the bony skeleton. It does not 
supply casein, albumen, fibrine, or any other of those sub- 264 
Alcohol in Society. 
stances which go to build up the muscles, nerves, and other 
active organs. The foods which supply these parts contain 
nitrogen and phosphorus and sulphur as necessary elements, 
and we are sure that alcohol does not contain those elements ; 
it is not, therefore, an active structure-building food, and 
unless it be taken in combination with sugar, it does not even 
make fat. A substance that neither gives water nor any sub- 
stance for building up the body, cannot be a nourishing food. 
“ Some, however, will urge that it gives warmth and strength, 
and is in that sense a food. We shall see, step by step, that 
this, too, is a delusion ; we shall see that alcohol makes the 
body cold and the muscles weak. Milk is a drink, and milk is 
a standard food sent by nature. Compared with milk, alcohol 
shows no trace of being a food in any particular. We want no 
better evidence, and we could have no better proof, that alco- 
hol is not a food.” (Pp. 116-118.) 
Dr. Willard Parker’s testimony is to the same effect: 
“ Alcohol has been regarded as a kind of food by some chem- 
ists and practitioners, but their opinions have been theoretical 
and not borne out by facts. It was claimed to be a kind of 
respiratory food, and that its use was to develop more animal 
heat, consequently eliminating more carbonic acid. This con- 
clusion is not sustained by observation and experiment. Food 
is that which repairs some waste of the system. Now in the 
human system there are water, fat, starch and sugar, nitrogen- 
ous substances, iron, sulphur, phosphorus, animal quinine, as 
claimed by Bence Jones, sodium, potassium, chlorine, etc. ; 
but no alcohol is found. It has no analogue in the system, 
hence there is nothing which it can repair, and it cannot there- 
fore be ranked as food of any kind, but is out and out a foreign 
substance.”* 
From still another standpoint, the late Professor Miller, 
of Edinburgh, reached the same conclusion. 
“ Food, properly so called,” he said, in his work on ‘ Alcohol, 
its Place and Power,’ “ is that which enters the stomach, and is 
thence absorbed into the general circulation, with the double 
object of nourishing the body and maintaining its due 
temperature. Such food meets with a solvent in the natural 
* “ Proceedings of the American Association for the Cure of 
Inebriates,” 1871, p. 77. Educational. 
265 
secretions of the stomach, and of other organs connected with 
chyle-making apparatus—such as the salivary glands, the 
liver, the pancreas; and, besides, a solvent is needful also 
from without—holding the food in solution at the time of being 
taken, or swallowed along with it, or after it, in sips or 
draughts. 
“Now, can alcohol he duly entered here as food, or solvent 
for food? Not as the latter, certainly. It refuses to act along 
with the gastric juice. ‘ It is a remarkable fact,’ says Dr. 
Dundas Thomson, ‘ that alcohol, when added to the digestive 
fluid, produces a white precipitate, so that the fluid is no 
longer capable of digesting animal or vegetable matter.’ ‘ The 
use of alcoholic stimulants,’say Todd and Bowman, ‘retards 
digestion by coagulating the pepsin (an essential element of 
tfce gastric juice), and thereby interfering with its action. 
Were it not that wine and spirits are rapidly absorbed, the in- 
troduction of these into the stomach in any quantity would be 
a complete bar to the digestion of the food, as the pepsin would 
he precipitated from solution as quickly as it was formed by 
the stomach.’ ‘ And, moreover, it is well known,’ says Dr. 
Basham, ‘ that spirits completely suspend the secretion of the 
gastric fluid.’ 
“ But if alcohol be no solvent of food, is it food itself? Let 
us see. Can it nourish or repair the waste of tissue ? Not at all. 
It contains no sufficient chemical constitution for that end; 
and besides, as we have seen, it is conveyed unchanged into the 
blood, and so circulates there until removed by the organs of 
excretion. Does it help to maintain due temperature ? Here 
we come into debatable ground. Liebig says that it does, by 
oxidation, or burning, in the lungs. Lallemand, Perrin, and 
Duroy, more recent, and apparently more accurate observers 
on this point, say, ‘No; it passes from the body as it entered, 
unchanged.’ ” (Pp. 68-71.) 
Dr. Lionel Beale, the eminent microscopist, says : “ Al- 
cohol does not act as food, it does not nourish the tissues ; 
it may diminish waste by altering the consistence and 
chemical properties of the fluids and solids. It cuts short 
the life of rapid growing cells, or causes them to live more 
slowly.” 
The British “Medical Journal,” after lending its col- 
umns to the discussion of the question, “ Is alcohol food or 266 
Alcohol in Society. 
physic ? ” reaches several conclusions, the first of which is: 
“ That alcohol is not food, and that, being simply a stim- 
ulant of the nervous system, its use is hurtful to the body 
of a healthy man.” 
In the number issued in 1865, the same 
journal said : 
“ We feel bound to say that on the face of it, the tetotalers 
have, from a scientific point of view, the best of the argument. 
It is certain that our greatest and most esteemed authorities 
have come to the conclusion that alcohol is not assimilated, 
that it does not undergo decomposition in the body, but on the 
contrary is eliminated as alcohol from the body.” 
The International Medical Congress, the highest medi- 
cal body in the world, at its session in Philadelphia, in 
1876, declared that “Alcohol is not shown to have a defi- 
nite food value by any of the usual methods of chemical 
analysis or physiological investigation.” 
As to the fact that alcohol does not act as a fuel, and 
cannot generate heat, we refer to the many statements of 
actual experiment, noted in “Alcohol and Science,” and 
also in “ Alcohol in History; ” adding here, only the fol- 
lowing : 
“ In preparing for all the recent overland Arctic expeditions, 
fermented liquors, formally taken in large quantities, have 
been excluded. The Hudson’s Bay Company, also, whose oper- 
ations in collecting furs in the north cover a wide territory, em- 
bracing the most rigorous climate that men inhabit, have for 
many years excluded spirits from their jurisdiction, to manifest 
advantage. 
“ In 1819 the crew of a Danish ship, of sixty men, well sup- 
plied with provisions and spirits, attempted to pass the winter 
at Hudson’s Bay. Forty-eight of the sixty died before spring; 
while of a crew of twenty-two persons in an English ship in the 
same circumstances, except they had no spirits, only two died. 
“ In the Russian army, in a severe climate, when a regiment 
is to march on the morrow, spirits are rigidly excluded from its 
rations, on account of the danger of the men being frost-bit- 
ten.” Educational. 
IY. And finally, on this point, and as necessitated by 
the foregoing facts, thorough education will teach that all 
intoxicating beverages are poison. There is no room for 
doubtful speculation in regard to this. It is justly infer- 
red from preceding considerations; it is manifest in what 
we see and know of those who indulge in its use; it is 
demonstrated by those who have handled and analyzed the 
contents of the drinking cup. Dr. Willard Parker thus 
asks and answers the question : 
“ What is alcohol ? The answer is, a poison. It is so re- 
garded by the best writers and teachers on toxicology. I refer 
to Orfila, Christison, and the like, who class it with arsenic, 
corrosive sublimate, and prussic acid. Like these poisons, when 
introduced into the system, it is capable of destroying life with- 
out acting mechanically. Introduced into the system it induces 
a general disease, as well marked as intermittent fever, small- 
pox, or lead poison.” 
In another address, he says : 
“ One-third of all the deaths in the city of New York are the 
result, directly or indirectly, of the use of alcohol; and that 
within the last thirty-eight years 100,000 persons in that city 
have died of its use, either by themselves or their parents.” 
In a letter to Rev. Dr. Patton, he thus emphasizes his 
convictions : 
“Alcohol is the one evil genius, whether in wine, or ale, or 
whiskey, and is killing the race of men. Stay the ravages of 
this one poison, alcohol, that king of poisons, the mightiest wea- 
pon of the devil, and the millennium will soon dawn.” 
Christison, the authority cited by Dr, Parker—and no 
one is acknowledged to stand higher as authority, either as 
regards poison or the articles of the materia medica, says: 
“The sedative action of alcohol on the brain, constitutes it a 
powerful narcotic poison. For its effects as such, if rapidly 
brought on by a large dose, there is no antidote known; the 
only efficacious treatment consisting of speedy evacuation of 
the stomach, and the employment of brisk external stimuli.” 268 
Alcohol in Society. 
All standard works on chemistry classify alcohol among 
the poisons. The French, English, and American Phar- 
macopoeias—high authorities everywhere in such matters— 
describe alcohol as a u powerful, irritant poison, rapidly 
causing intoxication, and (in large doses) death.” 
Dr. William B. Carpenter, an authority of high rank, 
says in his work “ On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic 
Liquors, in Health and Disease: ” 
“ The term intoxication is sometimes employed in this coun- 
try to designate that series of phenomena which results from 
the action of all such poisons as first produce stimulation, and 
then narcotism : of these, however, alcohol is the type; and the 
term is commonly applied to alcoholic intoxication alone. It is 
worthy of notice, however, that the designation is now given 
by French writers to the series of remote or constitutional ef- 
fects consequent upon the introduction of any poisouous agent 
into the blood : thus we meet with the terms ‘ arsenical intox- 
ication,’ * iodine intoxication,’and even ‘purulent intoxication.' 
In fact, it is there considered an equivalent (as its etymology 
denotes) of our word poisoning; and the fact that such a term 
should be in common use in this country, to designate the or- 
diuary results of the ingestion of alcoholic liquors, is not without 
its significance; for if the classical term ‘ intoxication ’ be hab- 
itually employed as the equivalent of the Saxon ‘ drunkenness/ 
we are justified in turning that classical term into English 
again, and in asserting that the condition of drunkenness, in 
all its stages, is one of poisoning. That such is indeed the case 
will become obvious from an examination of its symptoms, and 
from a comparison of them with those of the cases in which a 
fatal result has supervened upon excessive indulgence in alco- 
holic liquors.”—(Boston edition, p. 9.) 
Dr. Mussey, whose authority is also acknowledged, says : 
“ What is a poison ? It is that substance, in whatever form 
it may be, which, when applied to a living surface, disconcerts 
and disturbs life’s healthy movements. It is altogether distinct 
from substances which are in their nature nutritious. It is not 
capable of being converted into food and of becoming part of 
the living organs. We all know that proper food is wrought 
into our bodies. The action of animal life occasions a constant Educational. 
269 
waste, and new matter has to be taken in, which, after diges- 
tion, is carried into the blood and then changed ; but poison is 
incapable of this. It may, indeed, be mixed with nutritious 
substances, but if it goes into the blood, it is thrown off as soon 
as the system can accomplish its deliverance, if it has not been 
too far enfeebled by the influence of the poison. Such a poison 
is alcohol, such in all its forms, mix it with what you may.” 
That alcohol is justly called by the chemists a narcotic 
poison, is evident when we test it by the well-known 
physiological laws of narcotics. Dr. McCulloch has thus 
plainly stated the four principal marks which accompany 
and prove all narcotics : 
“1st. That after using them for some time, the quantity of 
the dose must be increased iu order to produce the same effect: 
“ 2nd, That the time between the doses must also be dimin- 
ished, for the same reason . 
“ 3rd, That the depression and exhaustion which follow, are 
exactly equivalent to the amount of excitement or exhilaration 
caused by the quantity used ; 
“ 4th, That they—many of them—tend to create an artificial 
appetite or craving, which renders the person so using them a 
slave to the habit.” 
How exceedingly difficult it is to bring tlie people to a 
recognition of this fact; and yet, where is there more 
abundant proof of anything that we have observed or ex- 
perienced than there is of this, that just this law follows 
the use of alcoholic beverages; and that, say what apolo- 
gists for drinking may, of the folly of claiming that mod- 
erate drinking, so-called, leads to intemperance, we are 
confronted with the fact that all whom we call drunkards 
have come along the moderation path, slaves to the crav- 
ing which the narcotizing power of these beverages cre- 
ates, and to that natural and necessary tendency to in- 
crease the quantity of the beverage, and to seek it oftener 
than before, so long as the habit is indulged in at all ? 
How can we make this felt as a reality that shall lead to a 
total abstinence from the fascinating poison ? Not simply 270 
Alcohol in Society. 
by persuading men that their highest good demands such 
abstinence, for many with whom we use such persuasions, 
and who see and acknowledge their danger and their only 
way of deliverance from it, are bound hand and foot by 
this narcotic tyrant, and often, after desperate, prayerful, 
and most earnest efforts to reform, find their wills weak, 
their habits overpowering, and they sink back into hopeless 
drunkenness. 
It must be by early education, thorough instruction in 
the inevitable workings, and the certain mischief and 
wrong, which can by no possibility be evaded, of this 
deadly habit. Only as our boasted popular education 
embraces and provides for this instruction, can we rely on 
the culture of the people as an assurance that they will 
not become the victims of strong drink. In the fact that 
up to a very recent date our text books used in schools and 
colleges have ignored this subject, and teachers and pro- 
fessors have failed to call attention to it, we have the ex- 
planation of the indifference of educated men to the evils 
of intemperance, and the reason why so many eminent 
scholars become its victims. 
A movement in the right direction is now successfully 
inaugurated. From the last report of Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, 
11 Superintendent of Scientific Temperance Instruction in 
Schools and Colleges,” made to the “National Women’s 
Christian Temperance Union,” in November, 1887, we 
obtain the following account of the present state of Tem- 
perance Education in the United States: 
“The star (*) indicates that a penalty is attached to the en- 
forcing clause of this statute in the State or Territory to which 
it is affixed. 
“ Those marked with a dagger (f) require the study of all 
pupils in all schools. 
“ Those marked with the double dagger (f) require the study 
of all pupils in all schools pursued with text-books in the hands 
of the pupils. Educational. 
271 
u Those marked with a parallel (||) that it shall he taught in 
the same manner and as thoroughly as other required branches. 
“ The section mark (§) indicates that text-hooks on this topic 
used in Primary and Intermediate Schools in those States must 
give one-fourth of their space to temperance; and not less than 
twenty pages to this same subject in the High School physi- 
ologies. 
“ Thus at a glance the reader can see the present situation of 
this legislation in our land. 
23 States. 
Nov., 1882, Vermont, amended 1886, 
adding £ || § * 
1883, Michigan, amended 1886, 
adding £ || § 
1883, New Hampshire. 
1884, New York t 
1884, Khode Island. 
1885, Alabama. 
1885, Maine f 
1885, Oregon. 
1885, Nebraska £ 
1885, Wisconsin t 
1885, Nevada. 
1885, Kansas t 
1885, Pennsylvania t || * 
1885, Massachusetts t II 
1885, Missouri. 
1886, Iowa f || * 
1886, Maryland f || 
1886, Connecticut. 
1887, California t * 
1887, Delaware f 
1887, Minnesota f 
1887, West Virginia t H * 
1887, Colorado * || £ 
10 Territories. 
By act of Congress, 1886. 
Idaho * t || 
Washington * £ || 
Arizona, * £ || 
Montana * J || 
Wyoming * £ || 
Dakota * £ || 
New Mexico * £ || 
District of Columbia * £ || 
Utah * £ || 
Alaska * £ || ” 
Since this Keport was made, Ohio and Louisiana are to he 
added to the list, as having passed the most full laws ; making 
in all to August, 1888, thirty-five states and territories, embrac- 
ing over three-fourths of the entire school population of the 
United States now under Temperance Education Laws. 
Abroad, similar laws have been enacted at the Sandwich Is- 
lands, and this system of education is being introduced into 
Japan. 
Y. Equally significant is the fact that while the question 
of the manufacture, sale, and use of intoxicants enters more 
immediately into the enrichment or the impoverishment of 
national resources than does any question of tariff or cur- 
rency, it is ignored or only superficially hinted at in our 272 
Alcohol in Society. 
text books on Political Economy. Let any one consult the 
facts and figures which have been collected and published 
on this subject by such men as Dr. Lees, and Mr. Hoyle, 
of England and Dr. Hargreaves, in America, in his work 
on “Our Wasted Resources,” and he cannot fail to see 
that more money is touched by the drink traffic, and its 
effects, than by any other business known among men; 
that the great majority of the poor of any land must remain 
poor, or continue to sink into a condition of dependence, 
while such an enormous waste of the earnings of industry 
is permitted; and that no taxes levied on towns, cities, the 
state, and the nation, for all possible objects that consult 
the well-being of the citizen, can equal the taxes caused by 
the drink system. 
Let the reader examine the authorities just cited, or even 
turn to the hints given in u Alcohol in History,” and in 
the preceding pages of this work, and it will be impossible 
to resist the conviction that it is not in human power to 
exaggerate the folly of the traffic in intoxicants as a politi- 
cal evil. We have nothing with which to compare it. It 
stands absolutely alone in the amount and direction of the 
waste which it causes. Mr. Nordhoff, in his small work on 
11 Political Economy,” while making objections to general 
prohibitory legislation on the liquor traffic, which would 
equally apply to all laws for the suppression of any vice, 
nevertheless says: 
“ The intemperate use of spirituous liquors is one of the 
greatest curses to which moderate society is exposed ; it is the 
cause of at least three-quarters of the vice, crime, poverty, pau- 
perism, and misery to he found in the country. If you were to 
cut from the newspapers all the reports of murders and attempts 
to murder during the year, you would find that at least three 
out of four arose out of the misuse of spirituous liquors. If you 
trace to its source any case of crime, poverty, or extreme misery 
you may meet, the chances are at least four to one that you 
will find, ‘ Rum did it.’ If we could prevent the misuse of spir- 
ituous liquors, we should save at least one-half of the taxes col- Educational. 
273 
lected by states, cities, and counties, and very appreciably 
raise the average of comfort and prosperity among the people.” 
But this hint, suggestive as it is, leaves wholly out of the 
account several important items which represent the loss 
and waste entailed on community by intemperate habits, 
and the provisions made for their indulgence. The con- 
sumption of Strong Drinks involves all the losses repre- 
sented by the disastrous effects sure to be displayed, as, 
e. g., in the decrease of productive power, owing to sickness 
and death 5 to strikes and idleness; in the damage thus 
done to business contracts and credit; in the waste and 
destruction of property; in the increase of crime, viewed 
as an economical evil, aside from its moral and civil results, 
involving loss of property, loss of industry, costs of police, 
judicial, and prison arrangements, and in the loss of time 
to jurors, witnesses, and others who of necessity, or 
through curiosity are drawn to the courts. Add to all this, 
exclusive of the direct cost to the State for pauperism, im- 
becility, insanity, the public charities, and the private 
benevolence in these directions, and we have data for 
results most appalling, and for costs that can hardly be 
computed. Even this does not represent the waste and 
loss. We must also take into account what is included in 
the manufacture and sale of these intoxicants, involving the 
grain and other useful material grown, or the value of other 
useful products which the land otherwise used would yield ; 
the waste of capital and labor in the various processes of 
manufacture ; and the waste of capital, labor, and time 
employed in carrying on the sale. How much all these 
represent we have endeavored to hint in some of the pre- 
ceding pages, but no one can fully compute. 
In view of this fact, and of the still further proof that 
all which has been attempted by our laws for the so-called 
regulation of the liquor traffic has proceeded on the ac- 
knowledgment that the business is ruinous in its results; 274 
Alcohol in Society. 
that the public good is endangered in proportion as the 
traffic is free and unrestricted ; that it never thrives but at 
the expense of public thrift and security; and that just in 
proportion as the manufacturers and dealers become rich, the 
people become poorer and more heavily burdened; how 
surprising it is that our text-books on Political Dconomy 
are substantially silent on this most important element and 
branch of the subject. There is most imperative need of 
their revision, and that they be prepared in full view of all 
the unmistakable facts. 
So far as we know, only one college has made provision 
for the necessary instruction in this direction. In October, 
1887— 
“ The trustees of Grant Memorial University at Athens, Tenn., 
established a chair of ‘ Political Science and Temperance,’ 
and elected W. W. Satterly, of Minneapolis, to fill the position. 
At the Methodist State Conference of Minnesota, the Bishop 
confirmed the appointment of Mr. Satterly for the Professor- 
ship.” 
YI. Unfortunately, and also to our shame, must it he 
said that our text-books of Moral Philosophy are quite as 
defective. With the Drink System as the acknowledged 
promoter of every crime; leading to vulgarity, profaneness, 
and all that is low and debasing in speechj making so 
many wretched homes the training schools of vice; feeding 
the fires of lust, and creating and continuing houses of in- 
famy, and disturbing every existing moral relation ; the 
moral science taught in our higher institutions of learning 
seldom touches this momentous question of drinking, and 
never puts forth its true relations as the underlying cause 
of our low state of political and social morals. 
If we seek a remedy for all this, we need not go far. 
It lies at our hand, and so openly and without disguise, 
that we cannot mistake it. Our system of education must 
"be greatly changed and improved. If, as another has said, Educational. 
275 
u Education is the training of the mind to the observance 
of causes and effects, with the view of choosing the best 
causes in order to secure the best effects,” then it is certain 
that our text-books and our instructions by lectures, must 
be greatly changed before we can expect that those who 
are being educated will be able to receive clear demonstra- 
tion that the Drink System is the great cause of the physi- 
cal, political and moral degeneration which so terribly 
afflict the present generation, and that these results are 
inevitable so long as the cause is allowed to remain. 
Reason and science thus uniting with religion and experi- 
ence in teaching that the use of intoxicants is ruinous to 
man and to all that is of interest to him, he will be enabled 
to see, and we may trust will be wise to act on the apprehen- 
sion, that Total Abstinence is the law of God and of Nature. 
At present, the conservatism of education makes it so 
difficult to introduce new subjects of study, we must proba- 
bly be content to pursue the course already so well begun, 
and rely on introducing into our public schools and higher 
institutions of learning, the special text-books prepared by 
Miss Coleman, Dr. Richardson, and Dr. Lees; but the 
persistent efforts of parents and philanthropists should be 
to so set forth the importance of Temperance education as 
to create a demand which the compilers of text-books can- 
not resist, but will lead them to the treatment of the seve- 
ral phases of this subject in their works on Chemistry, 
Physiology, Political Economy, and Moral Science. When 
this is accomplished, and all instructors see and feel it to 
be their duty to place before their pupils Total Abstinence 
from Alcoholic Drinks as the only Rule for Personal 
Safety, Health, or Happiness ; and the Prohibition of the 
Manufacture, Importation, and Sale of such Drinks, as the 
true Rule and Policy for the Government concerning them, 
we shall have much to hope for in Education as a Preven- 
tive of Intemperance. Less than this will leave us as in- 
secure as we are now. IV. 
THE WINE QUESTION. 
The Theory of Two Wines Mentioned in the Bible, Questioned 
and Ridiculed—The Objections Considered—The Ancients 
had, and Used the Knowledge of Preserving Unfermented 
Wines—Unfermented Grape Juice is called Wine in Foreign 
and English Lexicons, and by Ancient and Modern Travel- 
lers—Unfermented Wine a fact well Known in History—Un- 
fermented Wine Preferred by the Ancients and by someMod- 
erns—Both Fermented and Unfermented Wines Mentioned in 
the Bible—Jesus and the Early Christians Used and Ap- 
proved Unfermented Wines—Jesus not a Wine-bibber—The 
Wine Made at Cana—Proofs that the wine Used at the 
Lord’s Supper, was not Intoxicating—Nor was that Used 
by the Early Christians—Unfcrmented Wine a True Sym- 
bol of Blood—The Danger of Using Fermented Wine where 
Reformed Men are Communicants — Possible Danger to 
Others. 
IN vindicating the Holy Scriptures from the charge of 
inconsistency and contradiction, in extolling the bless- 
ings, and encouraging the use of wine, and in warning 
against it as a mocker and a poison, it has been customary 
to say that two distinct beverages are mentioned under one 
name ; that which is blessed and encouraged being an un- 
fermented and consequently an unintoxicating wine, and 
that which is denounced being a fermented and intoxi- 
cating wine. But this position is now violently assailed, 
Says one writer: The Wine Question. 
277 
“ In nothing do the advocates of Universal Tetotalism dis- 
play their indifference to truth, when it is opposed to their own 
pet theory, more than when they attempt to show that the wine 
approved of in the Bible was unfermented grape juice! There 
is no reason to believe that the ancients possessed the means of 
preserving grape juice from fermentation It 
is a grossly unwarranted assumption that the wine referred to 
in the Bible was not, in every instance, alcoholic. The ancients 
had neither acquired that chemical knowledge of the nature of 
air, or that physiological knowledge of fermentation, which 
might have induced them to seek to discover appliances suited 
to the preservation of unfermented grape juice—even supposing, 
what is very improbable, that any considerable number of per- 
sons were so infatuated as to feel interested in the discovery 
of the means of preventing the insipid liquor being converted 
into something so much more delectable.” * 
And another writer says : 
“ It must have been simply impossible for the ancients to 
have preserved their juice liquid and unfermented unless they 
had boiled it in air-tight flasks, or had expressed it in an at- 
mosphere of hydrogen and carbonic acid, or had subjected it to 
a steaming process, and preserved it in vacuo. But they trode 
the grapes in an open wine-press, and pressed out the juice in 
an open vat, in the open air, so that fermentation was inevita- 
ble.” t 
Dr. Moore, in an article in the “ Presbyterian Review,” 
January, 1881, says, (p. 115): 
“The history of the doctrine of unfermented Bible wine 
cannot be carried back beyond a few decades; and this fact 
furnishes a prejugtf legitime against it.” 
Prof. Bumstead, in an article in the “Bibliotheca Sacra,” 
January, 1881, declares that the theory “ of an unfermented 
wine has failed to commend itself to the scholarship of the 
world.” 
* “ The Fallacies of Tetotalism,” etc. By Robert Ward. 
London, 1874, pp. 141, 142. 
t “ Wines of the Bible,” By Rev. A. M. Wilson. London. 
P. 88. 278 
Alcohol in Society. 
Another, says of u Our tetotal friends,” that: 
“ Instead of insulting the public intelligence by asserting that 
the wines mentioned in the Bible were some kind of unintoxi- 
cating slop, .... they had better expend their strength 
upon the science of the matter, and prove to mankind, if they 
can, that these agreeable drinks which they denounce, are really 
hurtful. We all know that excess is hurtful. We also know 
that adulterated liquors may be. But is the thing in itself per- 
nicious ? pure wine taken in moderation ? good beer ? genuine 
old Bourbon f ” * 
Dr. Crosby, Chancellor of the University of New York, 
has also arrayed himself against the theory, treating it 
with contempt. Speaking of the deceptions practiced by 
Total Abstinence Advocates, he says : 
“Another of these deceptions is the circulated theory of an 
unfermented, unintoxicating wine. There is not a chemist nor 
a classical scholar in the world who would dare risk his reputa- 
tion on the assertion that there was ever an unfermented wine 
in common use, knowing well that must preserved from fermen- 
tation is called wine only by a kind of courtesy (as the lump 
of unbaked dough might be called ‘ bread,’) and this could in 
the nature of things never be a common drink. Cato (‘DeEe 
Rustiest,’ 120,) shows how by a very careful method must could 
be kept for a whole year ; and other Roman writers show the 
same ; but who can pretend that these writers ever looked up- 
on such preserved juice as wine, when their whole object is to 
show how it can be kept from becoming wine ? 
“ Yet, with no other foundation than this, the leaders of the 
total abstinence cause have published their bull affirming that 
the good wines of antiquity were unfermented, in utter defiance 
ot chemistry, history, and common sense. Because the grape 
juice could, by means of hermetically sealed vessels under 
water, be kept grape juice, therefore the common wines of an- 
tiquity, the wine of which writers speak when they use no 
qualifying phrase, must have been unfermented. This is the 
logic used by these infatuated defenders of the total abstinence 
principle. 
“A third deception in this cause is the twisting of Scripture 
to its advocacy. No unbiased reader can for a moment doubt 
“ Smoking and Drinking,” by James Parton. P. 59. The Wine Question. 
279 
that wine, as referred to in the Bible,passim, is an intoxicating 
drink, and that such wine was drunk by our Saviour, and the 
early Christians. To meet this fatal blow to the total absti- 
nence system in the minds of those who take the Bible as their 
guide, the advocates of the cause have invented a theory that 
is magnificent in its daring. It is no less than the division of 
the word “ wine” by a Solomonian sword, so that the good and 
the bad shall each have a piece of it. Whenever wine is spoken 
of severely in Scripture, then it is fermented wine, and when- 
ever it is spoken of in praise, or used by our Lord and his Apos- 
tles, then it is unfermented wine. And if you ask these sages 
why they so divide wine, on what ground they base this the- 
oxy, they bravely answer that our Saviour could not have 
cLrank intoxicating wine, and God’s Son never could have 
praised such, and, therefore, their theory. They start with the 
begging of the whole question, and then on this thin air they 
build their castle. 
“ It is not now my purpose to argue with these strange logi- 
cians. I only wish to put this Scripture twisting in the list of 
deceptive methods used by the representative total abstinence 
reformers, to promote their cause. I could add, in this item, 
the false use of texts, and the suppression of parts of texts, but 
I leave the matter here. 
“ The three elements of deception entering into their cause, 
are, as we have seen, the use of the word temperance for a to- 
tally different thing, the fable about unfermented wine, and 
the violent wresting of the Scriptures. Now, I unhesitatingly 
affirm that a cause having such falsehoods as its main support, 
can never be accepted by the public. Simple-minded people 
may be gained to it, but the thinking people will be repelled. 
It is true that some may adhere to it, in spite of its falsehood, 
for other reasons, but the three great untruths that are flaunted 
on its banners, will disgust most men who have brains, and use 
them.” * 
This last quotation has thus been given in extenso, be- 
cause it is regarded by those interested in the Drink Sys- 
tem as wholly unanswerable; one million copies of the 
address from which it is taken, having been printed by the 
organ of the Brewers of the United States, and distributed 
* “ A Calm View of Temperance.” New York, 1881; pp. 8-11. 280 
Alcohol in Society. 
broadcast over the land. It has also received special com- 
mendation in the Brewers’ Congress session of 1881, and 
is believed by the liquor trade, generally, to be a great 
help in staying the progress of what they style u fanati- 
cism.” Had it emanated from one making no pretension to 
scholarship, it might be safely pronounced ridiculous and 
stupid; but coming from a professed Christian scholar, it 
must be regarded as inexcusable pretension and insolence ; 
an attempt to belittle and to brand either with ignorance 
or with a bias that made them false to the truth, some of 
the most learned and honest Christian scholars of the pres- 
ent time, and of past ages. 
The foregoing attacks on the theory of Unfermented 
Wine, may be summed up in the following statements, 
which we will now consider. 
1. Tlie ancients had no means of preserving grape juice 
from fermentation ; and it is impossible, from the manner 
of their treatment of grapes, that they should have suc- 
ceeded in producing an unintoxicating wine. 
2. Unfermented grape juice is never called wine except 
by a kind of courtesy. 
3. The doctrine of unfermented wine is too recent to be 
trustworthy, and is in utter defiance of chemistry, history, 
and common sense. 
4. It is improbable that any considerable number of 
persons ever could have preferred unfermented wine to 
that which has the power of intoxicating. 
5. All wines referred to in the Bible, and used by our 
Saviour and the early Christians, were intoxicating drinks, 
and all who deny this are guilty of violent wresting of the 
Scriptures. 
I. That the ancients had no means of preventing fer- 
mentation, is as wide of the truth as any statement well 
can he. They had many successful methods. The Wine Question. 
281 
(a). They excluded the air from the sweet wine. Cato 
(B. C. 200), describes the process thus : “ If you wish to 
have must all the year, put the grape juice in an amphora, 
seal over the cork with pitch, and lower it into a cistern. 
After thirty days take it out; it will be must all the 
year.” * 
To the same effect, but more fully, Columella, A. D. 55: 
“ That must may remain always sweet, as if it were fresh, 
thus do : before the grape-skins have been put under the 
press, put must, the freshest possible from the wine-vat, 
into a new flask, and seal and pitch it over carefully, so 
that no water can get in. Then sink the flask in cold, 
sweet water, so that no part of it shall be uncovered. Then 
again, after the fortieth day, take it out; and thus prepared 
it will remain sweet throughout the year.” f Pliny and 
Plutarch also describe this process. 
(b). They boiled down the grape juice to the consistency 
of syrup. This was probably the most common mode. All 
the authorities cited above, as alsoYarro, and Virgil, speak 
of this process. Archbishop Potter, in his Grecian antiqui- 
ties, cites Democritus, a Greek philosopher, and Palladius, 
a Greek physician, as authority for the statement that 
“ The Lacedaemonians used to boil their wines upon the 
fire, till the fifth part was consumed ; then after four years 
were expired, began to drink them.” Pliny says, “ Some 
Roman wines were thick as honey. Albanian wine was 
very sweet or luscious, and to it the third rank was assigned 
among the Latin wines.” He also tells of a Spanish wine 
that was called u a wine which would not intoxicate, with- 
out spirit, and which of itself would not inebriate.” (Bk. 
xiv. chap. 2.) 
Columella, (Bk. iii. chap. 2,) says that “the Greek 
called it Amethvston, a wine which would not intoxicate.” 
Different names were given to it, according to the extent to 
* “ De Re Rustica,” chap. 120. t Book xii. chap. 29. 282 
Alcohol in Society. 
which evaporation was carried on. When used it was 
diluted with water, at the rate of from two to twenty cups 
of water to one cup of wine. Athenaeus, in his “ Banquet 
of the Learned,” says of a wine of this kind, that “ it had 
such a degree of richness that it is dissolved little by little 
when it is mixed with water, just as the Attic honey is dis- 
solved by the same process.” Aristotle says that “the 
wine of Arcadia was so thick that it was necessary to 
scrape it from the skin bottles in which it was contained, 
and dissolve the scrapings in water.” 
(c). They filtered it, and so broke its power to ferment, 
by removing its gluten. Pliny says (xxiii. 24): “ The 
most useful wine for everybody is that whose strength is 
destroyed by the filter. We must bear in mind that there 
is a sulcus, which, by fermenting, would make to itself a 
vires out of the must.” The Delphian Notes on Horace, 
i. xi., where the expression u filter your vanes,” occurs, say : 
“ For of a truth the ancients were in the habit of straining 
the must through a filter before it had fermented.” 
Plutarch says, in his “ Symposium,” “ Wine is rendered 
old or feeble in strength when it is frequently filtered. 
The strength or spirit being thus excluded, the wine neither 
inflames the brain nor infests the mind and the passions, 
and is much more pleasant to drink.” 
The ancient Egyptians also treated their wines in the 
same way. Wilkinson, in his work on the u Ancient Egyp- 
tians,” gives a description of the sculptures in relief, richly 
painted, found on the walls of tombs at Benni Hassan, in 
Upper Egypt. The straining or filtering of the grape juice 
is conspicuously marked. 
(d). They kept it cool and excluded from the air till the 
gluten subsided, then drew off the wine, which was safe 
from fermentation. 
“ Gather the grapes,” says Columella, “and expose them for 
three days to the sun; on the fourth day, at mid-day, tread them ; 
take the mustern lixivium ; that is, the juice which flows into the The Wine Question. 
283 
lake before you use the press, and, when it has settled, add one 
ounce of powdered iris; strain the wine from its foeces, and 
pour into a vessel. This wine will he sweet, firm or durable, 
and healthy to the body.” 
Again, he says, after directing that the must shall be 
that which has exuded from the grapes before they are 
pressed : “ Throw into four gallons of this must ten pounds 
of the best honey, and after it has been well mixed, pour it 
into a stone jar, and immediately plaster the vessel with 
gypsum, and order it to be placed in the store-room. After 
thirty-one days it will be necessary to open the jar, to 
strain the must and pour it into another vessel, closed her- 
metically, and then place it in an oven.” (Book xii. chap. 
41.) 
(e). They also used sulphur to neutralize the yeast or 
gluten. Adams, in his “ Koman Antiquities,” on the 
authority of Pliny and others, says, “That the Homans 
fumigated their wines with the fumes of sulphur ; that they 
also mixed with the mustum, newly pressed juice, yolks of 
eggs, and other articles containing sulphur.” 
So we read in Horace (Book iii. Ode 8) : 
“This day, sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the 
cork fastened with pitch from that jar which was set to 
fumigate in the consulship of Tullus. Take, my Maecenas, an 
hundred glasses, on account of the safety of your friend, and 
continue the wakeful lamps even to daylight; all clamor and 
passion he far away.” 
(f). Another method was that of the use of oil covering 
the wine, and so excluding air. In the illustrations as 
given by Wilkinson, as before referred to, this mode is 
described. A man is seen pouring the grape juice into jars, 
and is followed by a youth bearing an oil scoop, like those 
now found in ancient tombs in Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece, 
and pouring from it a coating of olive oil on the top of the 
grape juice. The jars are then set away, with or without 
stopples or covers. Pliny and Columella both allude to 284 
Alcohol in Society. 
this custom, the latter saying (xii. 19) that “before the 
must is poured into the jars, they should be saturated with 
good oil.” 
Here are six ways known and practised by the ancients 
for the purpose of preventing fermentation, and making 
unintoxicating wines. 
II. Equally reckless and unfounded is the assertion that 
“ unfermented grape juice is never called wine except by a 
kind of courtesy.” Dr. Kerr, in his “ Wines : Scriptural 
and Ecclesiastical,” has collected the following definitions 
of Must, from different modem dictionaries, cyclopaedias, 
lexicons, etc. 
“ Lyttleton.—New wine close shut up and not suffered to 
work. (Lat. Die. Lond. 1678.) 
“ Worcesier.—The sweet or unfermented juice of the grape. 
New Wine. (Die. p. 945. Bost. 1860.) 
“ Webster.—New wine unfermented. (Die.) 
“ Wright.—Wine pressed from the grape, hut not fermented. 
(T. Wright, F. S. A., Roy. Die. Cyc. Lond.) 
“ Hilpert.—Wine pressed from the grape, hut not fermented. 
(Dr. J. L. Hilpert, Die., German. London, 1846.) 
“ Littre.—Yin nouveau, non-ferment6. “ New wine not fer- 
mented.” (Die de la langue Frangais. Paris, 1863.) 
“ Descherell.—Yin qui vient d’etre fait et qui n’a point en- 
core ferment6, “ Wine which has just been made, and which 
has not yet fermented.” (Paris, 1861.) 
“ Scheller.—Wine just pressed and not yet strained. (‘ Lex.’ 
1835.) 
“ Flugel.—Unfermented wine. (Die. Germ. Eng. 1853.) 
“Freund.—New or unfermented wine. (Worterbuch, Leips. 
1845.) 
“Longmuir.—New wine unfermented. (Die., 1877.) 
“ Nuttall.—Wine from the grape, not fermented. (Die.,1878.) 
“ Collins.—Wine pressed from the grape, hut not fermented. 
(Hons. Die. Lang., 1871.) 
“Cyclopedias,—London, American, and Popular. Juice, 
when newly expressed, and before it has time to ferment, is 
called must, and in common language, sweet wine. The Wine Question. 
285 
“ Donnegan.—‘ Glenkosnew unfermented wine, must. (Lex. 
1826.) 
“Dict de l’Academie Fran^aise.—‘Yin doux, vin qui n’a 
point encore cuv6.’ ‘ Sweet wine which has not yet fermented.’ 
(Art. Vin.) 
“ Ainsworth.—Wine coming from the grape before pressing— 
vinum lexivium.—(Lat. Die.) 
“ Haigh.—Yinum—wine, drink.—(Lat. Die., 1861.) 
“Robertson.—New wine—mustum. Wine yet on the tree— 
vinum pendens.—(Wm. Robertson, M. A., Phras. Gen., Cantab., 
1693.) 
“ Stephanus.—Yinum pendens—hanging wine. (‘ Thesaurus,’ 
Lond., 1734.) 
“ Du Fresne.—Mustum, vinum pede pressum—1 Must, wine 
pressed by the foot.’ (Glossar, Paris, 1736.) 
“Boag.—Must—New wine pressed from the grape, but not 
fermented. (Imper. Die. Ed.) 
To these may be added: 
“Johnson, Samuel.—New wine. New Wort. (Die., 1773.) 
“ Young, Robt., LL.D.—Sweet or new wine, gleukos. (Analy- 
tical Concordance, 1881.) 
“Heinsius.—Must, the sweet juice pressed out of various 
fruits; as wine, fruit juice, before ferment. (Worterbuch, Han- 
over, 1820.) ” * 
III. Nor is the statement any more reliable that the 
doctrine of unfermented wine is too recent to be trustworthy, 
and is in utter defiance of chemistry, history and common 
sense. 
The beverages which Aristotle and Pliny said do not 
intoxicate were respectively designated as oinos. (“ Metero- 
logica” iv. 9) and vinum (“ Natural History,” xiv. 2.) 
Gleukos and mustum were wine, and were so named. 
Aristotle, speaking in the terms of the most exact science 
of his age, says (“ Meterologica” iv. 7): “ For some wine, 
such as gleukos, is both congealed and evaporated.” This 
* “ The Divine Law as to Wines,” by G. W. Samson, D.D., 
1881, p. 360. 286 
Alcohol in Society, 
is decisive of the fact that gleukos was wfine, and was rec- 
ognized scientifically as such. (350 B. C.) 
Cato, in giving instructions for making hellebore wine, 
says (“ De lie Rustica,” 115): u Throw a handful of black 
hellebore into must wine in an amphora.’’ This settles the 
significance of mustum. It first appears in the age of 
Cato (200 B. C.) as an adjective signifying u fresh,” u new,” 
“ sweet,” or “ young,” and is applied to agna, ewe lamb, 
(Cato, ap. Prise., 711,) and to media, apples, (Cato, “ he 
Re Rustica,” 73,) as well as to vinum. But in the latter 
case it became so identified with its noun that the latter 
was gradually dropped, or absorbed, and the adjective be- 
came substantive in use and force. Mustum, therefore, 
always implies vinum, and means unfermented wine. * 
This is the explanation of other forms, such as de/rutum, 
equivalent to defrutum vinum, boiled wine; passum, equiva- 
lent to passum vinum, raisin wine ; and so mulsum vinum, 
honey wine ; protropum vinum, untrodden wine, etc., etc. 
This is so plain a truth that any one acquainted with the 
usages of the language, will immediately recognize it. 
The lexicons, for example, Harpers’ u Latin Dictionary,” 
(1880), corroborate this statement by supplying vinum after 
each of these forms. To say that they were not wines, 
simply because in common usage vinum was omitted, is 
illogical and absurd. On exactly the same grounds one 
might deny that claret (French, clairet, dim. of clair, 
clear) is wine, or that hock and sherry are. The usage in 
both cases is precisely similar. 
“In Greek, likewise, yXsvxoS, yXTtp68popo%, etfjp/ua, 
dipoaov h. r. X., were originally adjectives used with oiroS, 
but having incorporated into themselves the signification of the 
noun, they were generally used substantively. Yet occasionally 
* Varro (113) expressly ranks mustum as vinum. “ Often when 
new wine is put up, the casks in Spain are hurst by the ferment- 
ing of the must.” The Wine Question. 
287 
we find the noun expressed as in Hippocrates, oivoZ dipaiov. 
Wo think this a sufficient answer to Professor Bumstead, who 
‘ has yet to learn that the name oivoS or vinum, was ever applied 
to any of these products, (eipqjua yXv 'qii, carenum, defrutum, and 
sapa,) unless, perhaps, by some figure of speech.’ * By the side 
of Professor Ramsey’s assertion f that these were ‘ grape jellies 
and nothing else,’ we place the testimony of Parkinson, t who 
calls them vina, and that of Dr. Richardson, $ who classes them 
among ‘ wines.’” 
“ From the fact that Pliny (xiv. 9) speaks of certain dulcia, 
among which defrutum, carenuvi, etc., are enumerated, it has 
been claimed that they were something distinct from vina. 
This classification includes muslum, passurn, protropum, mul- 
sum, etc., and would indicate that all if any were not wines. 
But it is by no means an exclusive category. It does not fol- 
low, because an article is ranked among the dulcia, that it does 
not also belong among the vina. Dulcia is an adjective with 
substantive force, and the word, in this instance, to be under- 
stood is vina. The chapter (9) which treats of these dulcia 
opens with a statement concerning vinum omne dulce, and the 
whole book (xiv.) is devoted to the consideration of vina as the 
next book (xv.) is of olea, duo liquores humanis corporibus 
grati88imi, (xiv. 22): ‘ The two liquors most grateful to the 
human body.’ Pliny confirms his interpretation when, after 
quoting several authorities concerning a certain wine called 
Myrrhina, he says, (xiv. 14,) ‘ Quibus apparet non inter vina 
modo murrinam, sed inter dulcia quoque nominatum,’ ‘From 
which it is evident that Myrrhina was classed, not only among 
wines, but also among sweets, or sweet wines ” || 
To the same effect, Dr. Samson, and the authorities cited 
by him. (“ Divine Law as to Wine/7 p. 385.) 
“The adjective dulcia, as all authorities agree, has the word 
“ vina ” understood; De Sivrey calling attention to the heading 
* “ Bibliotheca Sacra,” Jan. 1881, p. 63. 
t Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,” art. 
t “ Theatrum Botanicum,” 1640, p. 1557. 
§ “ Cantor Lectures,” p. 22. 
It “The Wines of the Bible,” by Rev. Leon C. Field. Metho- 
dist Quarterly Review. April, 1882, pp. 299-301. 288 
Alcohol in Society. 
preceding, ‘ De dulcium genera xiv.’ which he renders, ‘ Of four- 
teen kinds of sweet wines.’ De Sivrey thus paraphrases the 
text: ‘ The wine which the Greeks call aigleucos, that is to say, 
always in the state of must, holds the middle place between 
sweet wines and common wines. It is preserved in that state 
by preventing it from effervescing {de bouillir), and consequent- 
ly from becoming changed into veritablo wine (veritable tin). 
Hardouin has this note : ‘ Vinum quod est semper dulce, site mus- 
tumquia fervere prohibetur; ’ winewhich is always sweet or must, 
because it is prevented from effervescing. The Italian of Do- 
menicho is in accord. As to the method of manufacture, De Siv- 
rey states, ‘ Cette manipulation est confirmee par Caton; c. 120,’ this 
mode of manufacture is confirmed by Cato, chap. 120.” 
Travellers show us that unfermented wine is not a 
newly discovered beverage. Marco Polo records an im- 
portant fact in 1299. u Some may imagine that the Sara- 
cens do not drink wine, as being forbidden by their law; 
but they quiet their consciences by thinking that if boiled 
over the fire, which makes it milder and sweet, it may be 
drunk. Changing its taste, they change its name, and no 
longer call it wine, though it really is so.” 
Fabroni, in his treatise “ On the Art of Making Wine,” 
quotes from Mutardi-ben Gasif, an Arab author, A. D. 
1310: 
“Noah being come out of the ark, ordered each of his sons to 
build a house. Afterwards they were occupied in sowing, and 
in planting trees, the pippins and fruits of which they had 
found in the ark. The vine alone was wanting, and they 
could not discover it. Gabriel then informed them that the 
Devil had desired it, and indeed had some right to it. Here- 
upon Noah summoned him to appear in the field, and said to 
him, ‘Oh, cursed! why hast thou carried away the vine from 
me V ‘ Because,’ replied the devil, ‘ it belonged to me.’ ‘ Shall 
I part it for you ? ’ said Gabriel. ‘ I consent,’ answered Noah, 
‘ and will leave him a fourth.’ ‘ That is not sufficient for him,’ 
said Gabriel. ‘Well, I will take half,’ replied Noah, ‘and he 
shall take the other.’ ‘ That is not sufficient yet,’ responded Ga- 
briel, ‘ he must have two-thirds, and thou one ; and when 
thy wine shall have boiled upon the fire until two-thirds are 
gone, the remainder shall be assigned for your use.’ The Wine Question. 
289 
“ It follows from this account that it was the usage to re- 
duce the must two-thirds by the action of fire; and that this 
custom is very ancient, is evident. They did not diminish one 
part of must to perfect the rest, but the whole was subjected 
to the action of fire, until it was reduced two-thirds. Every one 
knows that the must destined to be diminished by fire ought 
not to have been subject to the slightest movement of fermen- 
tation ; but I must not forget to repeat here, and to recommend, 
that it is necessary to pour it into the cauldron immediately 
that it shall have been expressed from the grape ; without 
which, in place of having a syrup, sweet, and strong of sugar, 
you will have only an acid juice, forming bad wine.” 
Dr. Lees (“ Historical Induction ”), from wliom the 
above is quoted, presents other proofs, some of which are 
the following : 
“ In the 16th century, Andreas Baccius, M. D., published at 
Rome his ‘ Natural History of Wines.’ In this work, Baccius, in 
remarking on the wide difference between the qualities of cer- 
tain ancient and modern wines, has these words: ‘ For our 
sweet wines, and white as well as black, inebriate.’” 
Dr. Spratt, F.R.S., Bishop of Rochester (1702), says 
in his 11 History of the Royal Society ” : u The juice of 
wine (grapes) when dried does always granulate into sugar, 
as appears in raisins, and also in those vessels in which 
cute or unfermented wine is put.” 
“Caspar Newman, M. D., Professor of Chemistry (1743), 
speaking, in his Her Chemie, of boiled must, says: ‘ Several of the 
Italian wines are of this sort, and are called by the general 
name of vino cotto, or boiled wine. What is called stum is no 
other than must, whose fermontation has been prevented by 
fumigation with sulphur.” 
“ Phillip Miller, F. E. S., Gardener to the Company of Apothe- 
caries, in his ‘ Gardener’s Dictionary,’ (3d Ed. 1748) translates from 
a French Cyclopaedia as follows: ‘ They keep the Clareto grape 
during the whole winter, and part of the spring, hanging upon 
abeam in a room.’ Speaking of Orleans, he says: ‘They carry 
the grapes directly to the press, when they would make a wine 
for present drinking, and not at all fermented in the vat.’ ‘ To 
preserve new wine in the state of must, put it up in very strong 290 
Alcohol in Society. 
but small casks, firmly closed, and then it goes by the name of 
stum,.’ He then proceeds to describe six unfermented states of 
the juice of the grapes. He says, ‘ Stum is nothing else but 
Pure Wine, of which many are fond.’ ” 
Baron Liebig (1844) This great chemist, in his 
11 Chemical Letters,” says : 
“ If a flask he filled with grape juice and made air tight, and 
then kept a few hours in boiling water, the cause of further 
perturbation (foaming) is removed. The wine does not now fer- 
ment, hut remains perfectly sweet until the flask is again 
opened.” 
Dr. Kerr, in his work on u Wines,” previously quoted, 
says (p. 51), “ Many Eastern travellers have spoken of 
unfermented grape juice as ‘ wine.’” 
EfFendi, 1G30 ; Thevenot, 1687; Gobat, 1834 ; Ains- 
worth, 1842 ; Macgregor, 1866. 
“ Efff.ndi.—It (i. e., unfermented grape juice boiled down to 
a third) is called triple Wine. (‘Travels,’ i. 247. Lond. 1846 ) 
“ Thevenot.—‘ Their Wine of Dry Grapes,’ prepared by the 
Sabseans, 1 by steeping dried grapes in water, which they 
press.’ (‘ War Levant,’ part ii. p. 164. Lond. 1687,) 
“The Bishop of Jerusalem.—‘The wine is the juice of 
dried grapes with water.’ (Jour, in Abyss.,’ p. 345. Lond. 1834.) 
“ Ainsworth.—The consecrated wine just described as being 
raisin water (‘ Trav. and Res ,’ ii. 210. Lond. 1842 ) 
“MacGregor.—‘ New wine made only the day before. Very 
luscious and sweet.’ ” 
On page 33, Dr. Kerr says : 
“ I have examined specimens of unfermented wine, delicious 
and refreshing, which (apart altogether from the temperance 
movement and the Scripture wine question) have for years been 
made by a wine-growing firm, in the heart of a wine-growing 
district in Germany, and sold by them as an ordinary article of 
commerce, with their other wines, under the name of ‘ Pure Un- 
fermented Wine.’ 
“ I have also a specimen of a genuine unintoxicating wine, 
prepared from inspissated grape juice, and approaching 
the taste and flavor of Tent (minus the spirit), which I found ab- The Wine Question. 
291 
solutely free from alcohol. It was made by an English wine 
merchant some years ago, and samples were sent out prepara- 
tory to throwing it on the market, but the sudden death of the 
manufacturer prevented the development of the enterprise, 
“ I have myself imported unfermented grape juice from the 
East for the use of my family. This keeps without any difficul- 
ty, and improves with age. The names by which I ordered it, 
and by which it is commonly known in many Oriental districts, 
is in two Eastern languages. One of the names for 4 wine,’4 Bak- 
metz,’ was the name of the liquid unfermented grape juice re- 
ferred to. This stands for wine in Persian and Turkish. (Meis- 
gnien Meniniski, 4 Lex. Arab. Pers. Turc.’ Vien. 1780. Francis 
Johnson, 4 Pers. Arab, and Eng. Die.’ Lond. 1852. 4 Bigmaz, 
wine.’) The liquid preparation has been kept in an ordinary 
bottle sealed in the manner spirit and wine bottles usually are. 
I have examined both kinds repeatedly, and have discovered no 
trace of alcohol in either.” 
Joseph Cook, in a sermon delivered while in England, 
said: 
“ Your own Dr. Norman Kerr tells you that he drinks unfer- 
mented wine brought from the East. I know where in Loudon 
to buy that kind of wine. What is more, I know from some ob- 
servation in the East, and from reading testimonies from there, 
that many Syrian Churches to-day use that kind of wine in their 
religious feasts. I have witnessed in London the process by 
which unfermented wine is manufactured for the fifteen hundred 
congregations in the United Kingdom, which now use only such 
wine in their administration of the Lord’s Supper. The man- 
ufacturing chemist cited Columella’s and Pliny’s receipts for 
preventing fermentation, and assured me that he could not im- 
prove on them in point of efficacy.” 
Dr. Samson says, (“Divine Law as to Wines,” p. 
221-2): 
“It is especially to be observed that in all ages, the Arabi- 
ans, as their language attests, have preserved the customs which 
prevailed among all the great nations bordering on the eastern 
shore of the Mediterranean, among whose people they have 
mingled. They have always, like the Egyptians and Hebrews, 
the Greeks and the Romans, prepared two kinds of wine, intoxi- 
cating and unintoxicating. The former class is styled 4 cham- 292 
Alcohol in Society. 
reh' from * chamar,’ to effervesce, or inebriate ; inebriation giv- 
ing effervescence of spirits. The latter class, called 1 sherberts ’ 
from ‘ Sherab,’ to drink, are unfermented. The distinct charac- 
ter of these two wines in Arabian history and literature, can be 
traced by the aid of Freytag’s Arabic Lexicon, in which both 
are rendered by the Latin term ‘ vinum.’ Their modem accepta- 
tion in the spoken language, may be seen in the pocket vocab- 
ularies published at Paris for French settlers in Algiers; in 
which both ‘ chamreh ’ and 4 sherbert ’ are rendered ‘vim’ 
Though the sherberts drank in western Asia, especially at Con- 
stantinople, the Turkish capital, are made of syrups expressed 
and decocted from the juices of various fruits, the original and 
the present rural ‘ sherbert ’ in the vine-growing region of the 
Levant, is the old Latin must and Greek gleuTcos, or unferment- 
ed grape juice.” 
The California u Horticulturist ” mentions a new (1878) 
and very promising industry on the Pacific coast, the man- 
ufacture of unfermented wine, which finds ready market for 
family use at fifty cents per gallon 5 and that the manufac- 
turer can well afford to pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes. 
A volume might readily he made up of extracts from 
lexicons, histories, scientific works, and the relations of 
travellers, exposing the stupidity of the assertion that the 
claim of unfermented wine is too recent to he worthy of 
notice, unknown to history, impossible in chemistry, and 
violates common sense. We give but two more quotations 
here, and refer the reader to the hooks already named, as 
also to Dr. Lees’ i( Temperance Bible Commentary; ” Dr. 
Patton on the 11 Laws of Fermentation; ” Rev. William 
M. Thayer, on “ Communion Wine,” and Dr. Kerr, on 
u Unfermented Wine a Fact,” for cumulative testimony 
on this subject. 
The late E. C. Delavan said, in a letter to General 
Coke: 
“ When I was in Italy, I had one hundred gallons of the pure 
fruit of the vine—wine boiled down—and after keeping some 
of it for years in my cellar, I sent a bottle of it to Professor 
Silliman, of New Haven, who, after subjecting it to chemical The Wine Question. 
293 
test, informed me that he could not find a particle of alcohol in 
it.” 
When Dr. Samson was preparing his work, u The Divine 
Law as to Wines,” he submitted it to Dr. L. D. Gale, Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry at the University of the City of New 
York, for criticism and correction, who gives it the follow- 
ing significant endorsement: 
“ I have examined with care, Dr. Sampson’s ‘ Divine Law as 
to Wines.’ The laws of alcoholic fermentation in wine-making, 
as stated by chemists, are correctly presented. The view that 
the fermenting element is in the pulp, not in the saccharine 
juice of the gTape is accordant with fact; and the conclusion 
that, jf entirely separated, alcoholic ferment would not occur, is 
legitimate. The fact that the Romans, before Christ’s day, and 
that the Egyptians, before Moses wrote, had, by straining the 
juice of the grape, obtained an unfermented wine, seems to be 
established by historic citations.” 
Dr. Samson adds, (pp. 344-5) : 
“ To test both the Egyptian and Roman methods, in October, 
1879, two phials were filled with juice of Catawba grapes, care- 
fully strained from the pulp. One was covered with a film of 
olive-oil, and set away in a closet; and the other was corked 
and sealed, and then kept forty days in cold water. The sealing 
of the latter was left to another hand, and a slight portion of 
air remained between the cork and the juice, as the cork was 
not forced home in the neck of the phial; and thus, fortunately 
for the double test, the demonstration of two principles noted 
by French chemists, followed. Had the isolation from air been 
equally perfect in each case, the result should have been pre- 
cisely the same, since the saccharine juice in both phials was 
from the same cluster, and alike separated from the pulp; 
while, moreover, the second, during the first forty days, was 
kept below the fermenting temperature by cold water. 
u On the 31st of January, 1881, one year and four months 
from the time of preparation, the two bottles were placed in 
the hands of Dr. Charles S. Allen, a graduate, in 1874, from the 
Columbia College School of Mines; afterwards appointed Pro- 
fessor of Chemistry, ai Lewisburg University, Penn., on the 
recommendation of Dr. C. F. Chandler, Dean, and of Prof. C. 
A. Joy, Ph.D., of the School of Mines, and now a medical prac- 294 
Alcohol in Society. 
titioner in New York City. Meanwhile, like that of the ancient 
Romans and modern French, hereafter described, the juice re- 
tained its original clear crystal color and consistency, with a 
slight sediment. The result of analysis is stated in the follow- 
ing note: 
N. W. Cor. 85th St., and 4th Ave., New York. 
February 12, 1881. 
“Dr. G. W. Samson, 
“ Dear Sir :—I wish to certify that I have tested two specimens 
of grape juice, which you left with me, for alcohol. The juice 
in one of the bottles was covered with oil, and the other bottle, 
which contained the same, had been sealed with wax. I wish 
to state, also, that in the wax-sealed bottle, the cork, being too 
large, was but half in the neck of the bottle, and that the seal- 
ing was imperfect; and that there was about half an inch of 
air in this bottle above the juice. 
“ I did not find any alcohol present in the juice which was 
covered with oil, but the juice in the wax-sealed bottle was 
found to contain a little alcohol, the per cent, of which I did 
not determine. The test employed was prepared by E. W. 
Davy, which test detects the presence of one-tenth of one per 
cent, of alcohol. 
“ I am yours truly, 
“ Chas. S. Allen, Ph.B., M.D.” 
IV. The fourth reckless statement is, that it is improba- 
ble that any considerable number of persons ever could 
have preferred unfermented wine to that which has the 
power of intoxicating. 
Professor Moses Stuart, in his Lectures, says : “ Facts 
show that the ancients not only preserved wine unfermented, 
but regarded it as of higher flavor and finer quality than 
fermented wine.” 
President Nott, (“ Fourth Lecture/7) says : 
“That unintoxicating wines existed from remote antiquity, 
and were held in high estimation by the wise and good, there 
can he no reasonable doubt.” 
In the Delphian edition of Horace we are told that 
11 there is no wine sweeter to drink than Lesbian ; that it 
was like nectar, and more resembled ambrosia than wine ; The Wine Question. 
295 
that it was perfectly harmless, and would not intoxicate.” 
Pliny and Varro speak of a non-intoxicating wine, “ very 
sweet and aromatic, much approved of by Roman ladies, 
and conceded to them because it would not inebriate.” 
What the ancients seemed to value most of all things, 
as regarded their use of wines, was their ability to drink 
large quantities of it. The end they sought was not in- 
toxication, but fulness ; and hence the primary meaning of 
methuo, the word rendered drunk, is u to be full,” u satis- 
fied,” u saturated; ” a drunkard was one who was not intox- 
icated, but drenched with liquor. Hence they resorted to 
many devices to enable them to devour large quantities, 
even gallons, at a sitting. 
Pliny says: “ That we may be able to drink more wine, 
we deprive it of all its strength by the filter, and invent 
other incentives to thirst.” After having mentioned seve- 
ral of these “ irritamenta,” he says, in the same chapter, 
that : 
“ The glory of the Tricongius was much renowned. This 
practice consisted in drinking three gallons of wine under the 
following circumstances: the speech was not to falter, nor was 
the stomach to he lightened by vomiting, or in any other way; 
after he had drunk it, he was to be able to perform the duties 
of the morning watch. A large quantity was to be drunk at 
one draught, and a large quantity at several smaller draughts, 
without stopping to take breath between; the drinker was not 
to expectorate once, nor was a single drop of wine to be left, or 
wasted on the floor.” 
Tiberius is said to have been a spectator of this miracle, 
(as they termed it) when he was an old man. Cicero’s son 
is said to have attempted the feat, that he might avenge 
his father’s death, by taking from Mark Antony the honor' 
of being the greatest drinker in the empire. The Emperor, 
Maximum, could drink six gallons without inebriety. Alex- 
ander is known to have been drinking for two days and 
two nights successively; he then called for the cup of 296 
Alcohol in Society. 
Hercules, which held six bottles, and was in the act of 
emptying it a second time, when the angel of death arrest- 
ed him. He was rather drenched with liquor, than drunk, 
in the modem acceptation of the word. 
“ These facts show that to drink an immense quantity with- 
out being intoxicated, rather than to take liquor for the sake 
of inebriation, was the custom of the people of old, and there- 
fore it was as much an object of desire with them to obtain 
a weak wine, ‘omnibus sacco viribus fractis,’ ‘with all its 
strength taken away by the filter,’ as it is with the modems to 
procure drinks highly intoxicating. Consequently, the wines 
were different, and in many instances the end sought by drink- 
ing the very reverse of ours. In the Word of God we read of 
persons who rose early and stayed late at their cups, men 
‘ mighty to drink wine, and persons of strength to mingle 
strong drink.’ In these and similar passages, we have allusions 
to the ancient mode of taking immense quantities of wine, and 
therefore the drinkers, in many instances, were rather drenched 
with liquor than really intoxicated. It is not improbable that 
the term ‘ drunk,’ which evidently refers to the large quantity 
taken, owes its original signification to a similar custom. ‘ To 
be drunk,’ and ‘to be intoxicated,’ were not always the same; 
nor, indeed, could be so, at a time when the liquid in use con- 
tained scarcely any spirit of alcohol. 
“What has been stated above must be sufficient to satisfy 
any candid mind that the tastes and habits of the ancients re- 
specting drinks were very different from those of our own day. 
Not only were their wines weaker than ours, but beverages des- 
titute of all strength were deemed the best; and therefore noth- 
ing can be more fallacious than to conclude that the term ‘ wine ’ 
has always designated a drink containing a large per centage 
of alcohol. In 1838 port, with twenty-four per cent, of spirit, 
may be deemed the best wine ; but in the days of Pliny, who 
was contemporary with the Apostle Paul, ‘ utillissimum vinum,’ 
1 the most useful wine ’ was that which was deprived of all spir- 
it ; and the topers of that day used as many arts to render their 
wines weak as tipplers of our times do to make them strong.”* 
In 1845, Captain Treatt wrote: 
11 When on the south coast of Italy, last Christmas, I in- 
quired particularly about the wines in common use, and found 
* “ Anti-Bacchus,” By Rev. B. Parsons, 1840, pp. 228, 229. The Wine Question. 
297 
that those esteemed the best, were sweet and unintoxicat- 
ing The boiled juice of the grape is in common use in Sicily. 
The Calabrians keep their intoxicating and unintoxicating 
wines in separate apartments. The bottles were generally 
marked. From inquiries I found that unfermented wines were 
esteemed the most. It was drank mixed with water. Great 
pains were taken, in the vintage season, to have a good stock 
of it laid by. The grape-juice was filtered two or three times, 
and then bottled, and some put in casks and buried in the 
earth. Some kept it in water (to prevent fermentation).” 
(“Dr, Lees’ Works,” ii. 144.) 
Dr. Duffield (“ Bible Rule of Temperance,” p. 180), says: 
“ The modem Turks, whose religion forbids the use of fer- 
mented wine, make use of the inspissated juice of the grape, 
or ‘ must,’ and carry it with them in their journeys. In India, 
Persia, and Palestine, all over the East, the unfermented juice 
of the grape and sap of the palm-tree, according to Charles 
Stuart, are common and delightful beverages. The Landers 
testify the same of Africa.” 
Dr. Lees says (“ Historical Induction,” appended to 
u The Bible Wine Question ”): 
*‘In Holland, at the present day, it is the custom of the 
Spanish wine merchants, immediately after the vintage, to pre- 
sent to each of their customers one, two, or more bottles of this 
game stum. It is there commonly called nieuwe wyn, ‘ new wine,’ 
and sometimes most, i.e., must. It is of a pale amber color, 
and of a syrupy consistence. The Dutch consider it as a great 
treat; and it is customary to hear the host say to a female who 
may have declined a second or third glass, ‘ Don’t be afraid; 
it will not hurt, it is nieuwe wyn.’” 
V. We come, finally, to consider this assertion: All 
wines referred to in the Bible, and used by our Saviour and 
the early Christians, were intoxicating drinks, and all who 
deny this are guilty of violent wresting of the Scriptures. 
When Dr. Crosby says thatu No unbiassed reader can for 
a moment doubt that wine, as referred to in the Bible 
passim, is an intoxicating drink, and that such wine was 
drunk by our Saviour and the early Christians,” he reflects 298 
Alcohol in Society. 
severely on the honesty and ability of some of the best and 
most learned men who have written on the subject, and 
against their reasonings he puts forth simply his flippant 
assertion. Let us note a few of those whose honesty and 
ability he thus slurringly impugns. 
Professor Moses Stuart, in his u Scripture View of the 
Wine Question,” a work of great candor, learning, and 
hitherto unanswered argument, says: 
“ Wherever I find declarations in the Scriptures respecting 
any matters which appear to he at variance with each other, I 
commence the process of inquiry by asking whether these de- 
clarations respect the same object in the same circumstances ? 
Wine and strong drink are a good, a blessing, a token of divine 
favor, and are to be ranked with corn and oil. The same sub- 
stances are also an evil. Their use is prohibited, and woe is 
denounced to all who seek for them. Is there a contradiction 
here, a parodox incapable of any satisfactory solution f Not at 
all. In the light of what has already been said, we may con- 
fidently say,—not at all. We have seen that these two sub- 
stances were employed by the Hebrews in two different states: 
the one was a fermented state, the other an unfermented one. 
The fermented liquor was pregnant with alcohol, and would 
occasion inebriation, in a greater or less degree, in all ordinary 
circumstances ; and even where not enough of it was drunk to 
make this effect perceptible, it would tend to create a fictitious 
appetite for alcohol, or to injure the delicate tissues of the hu- 
man body. The unfermented liquor was a delicious, nutritive, 
healthful beverage, well and properly ranked with corn and oil. 
It might be kept in that state, by due pains, for a long time, 
and even go on improving by age. 
“ Is there any serious difficulty now in acquitting the Scrip- 
tures of contradiction in respect to this subject? I do not find 
any. I claim no right to interfere with the judgment of others, 
but, for myself, I would say, that I can find no other solution 
of the seeming paradox before us. I cannot regard the appli- 
cation of the distinction in question, between the fermented 
and unfermented liquors of the Hebrews, to the solution of de- 
clarations, seemingly of an opposite tenor, as any forced or 
unnatural means of interpretation. It simply follows suit with 
many other cases, where the same principle is concerned. 
Wine is a blessing, a comfort, a desirable good. When and in The Wine Question. 
299 
what state ? Wine is a mocker, a curse, a thing to he shunned. 
When and in what state? Why, now, is not the answer plain 
and open before us, after we have taken a deliberate survey of 
such facts as have been presented ? I can only say, that to me 
it seems plain, so plain that no wayfaring man need mistake it. 
“My final conclusion is this: viz., that wherever the Scrip- 
tures speak of wine as a comfort, a blessing, or a libation to God, 
and rank it witb such articles as corn and oil, they mean, they 
can mean only such wine as contained no alcohol that could 
have a mischievous tendency; that wherever they denounce 
it, prohibit it, and connect it with drunkenness and revelling, 
they can only mean alcoholic or intoxicating wine. 
“ I need not go into any minuteness of specification or exem- 
plification, for the understanding of my readers will at once 
make the necessary discrimination and application. If I take 
the position that God’s word and works harmonize, I must take 
the position that the case before us is such as I have represent- 
ed it to be. Facts show that the ancients not only preserved 
wine unfermented, but regarded it as of a higher flavor, and 
finer quality, than fermented wine. Facts show that it was 
and might be drunk at pleasure, without any inebriation what- 
ever. On the other hand, facts show that any considerable 
quantity of fermented wine, did and would produce inebria- 
tion ; and, also, that a tendency towards it, or a disturbance 
of the fine tissues of the physical system, was and would be pro- 
duced by even a small quantity of it, full surely, if this was 
often drunk. 
What, then, is the difficulty in taking the position that good 
and innocent wine is meant in all cases where it is commended 
and allowed, or that alcoholic or intoxicating wine is meant in 
all cases of prohibition and denunciation ? I cannot refuse to 
take this position, without virtually impeaching the Scriptures 
of contradiction or inconsistency. I cannot admit that God has 
given liberty to persons in health to drink alcoholic wine, with- 
out admitting that his word and his works are at variance. 
The law against such drinking, which he has enstamped on our 
nature, stands out prominently, read and assented to by all 
sober and thinking men. Is his word now at variance with 
this ? Without reserve, I am prepared to answer in the nega- 
tive.” 
Rev. Dr. Nott, President of Union College, says (“ Lec- 
tures on Intoxicating Liquors ”) : 300 
Alcohol in Society. 
“What shall we say to this? Can the same thing in the 
same state be good and bad ; a symbol of wrath, a symbol of 
mercy ; a thing to be sought after, and a thing to be avoided ? 
Certainly not. And is the Bible, then, inconsistent with itself? 
No, it is not, and this seeming inconsistency will vanish; and 
the Bible will be, not only, but will appear to be, in harmony 
with itself, in harmony with history, with science, and with 
the providence of God, if, on examination, it shall be found that 
the kinds or states of vinous beverage referred to, under the 
name of wine, were as unlike in their natures and effects, as 
were those mercies and judgments for which the same were re- 
spectively employed as symbols, or as were those terms of 
praise or dispraise, by which the same were respectively indi- 
cated. No less than nine words are employed in the Hebrew 
Bible to express the different kinds of vinous beverage formerly 
in use, all of which kinds of beverage are expressed in our 
English version by the single term 1 wine,’ or by that term in 
connection with some other term expressive of quality. 
“ The term ‘wine,’ therefore, as used in our English Bible, is 
to be regarded as a generic term, comprehending different kinds 
of beverage, and of very different qualities; some of which 
kinds were good, some bad; some to be used frequently and 
freely; some seldom and sparingly; and some to be utterly and 
at all times avoided. By a mere comparison of the passages in 
which the term ‘ wine ’ occurs, this will be rendered probable. 
For it were difficult to believe that the wine by which Noah was 
dishonored, by which Lot was defiled; the wine which caused 
the prophets to err in judgment and priests to stumble and fall; 
the wine which occasions woe and sorrow, and wounds without 
cause; wine, of which he who is deceived thereby is not wise; 
wine, which Solomon styles a mocker, and which is alluded to 
by One who is greater than Solomon, as a symbol of wrath,—it 
were difficult to believe that this wine, the wine mingled by 
harlots, and sought by libertines, was the very wine, which 
wisdom mingles, to which wisdom invites ; wine which priests 
offered in sacrifices, evangelists dispensed at communion tables, 
and which, making glad the heart of man, was a fit emblem of 
the mercies of God. 
“ There is a wine of some sort spoken of very frequently in 
the Bible with express disapprobation, of in connection with 
drunken feasts, or as an emblem of temporal and eternal judg- 
ment. And there is also a wine spoken of perhaps as frequent- 
ly with express approbation, or in connection with religious fes- The Wine Question. 
301 
tivals, or as an emblem of temporal and eternal blessings. That 
wines of such different qualities, and presented in such different 
aspects, and even in such frequent and frightful contrasts, were 
one and the same article, in one and the same state, would seem, 
even though history, both sacred and profane, had been silent, 
quite incredible. How much more so now that in place of si- 
lence, history, both sacred and profane, hath spoken, and spok- 
en, not of their identity, but known and marked dissimilarity.” 
Professor George Bush held to the same views, after 
a careful reading and critical investigation of the Scrip- 
tures. 
In the “ Enquirer/’ for August, 1869, Mr. Delavan said: 
“About thirty years since, I called at the American Bible 
Society, New York, to see the managers. I wished them to di- 
rect me to some learned Biblical scholar, from whom I might 
gain correct information as to ‘ Bible temperance.’ I was di- 
rected to Professor Bush, as the organ of that society. I visit- 
ed him in his library, the shelves of which appeared to be load- 
ed with Bibles, in all languages. I stated, in brief, my views 
on the wine question, and he received them with a prompt con- 
demnation; took up his English Bible, and read from it a single 
verse, saying, * This verse upsets your theory.’ I replied, ‘ Per- 
haps if you refer to the original, you will find it does not.’ 
He at once did so, and started back in amazement. 
“ * No permission to drink intoxicating wine here. I do not 
care about wine, and it is very seldom that I taste it, but I 
have felt, until now, at liberty to drink in moderation, from 
this verse.’ 
“ I made a strong appeal to the professor to enter thoroughly 
into the examination. He said he would, and he did. On call- 
ing upon him, when I next visited New York, I was greeted 
thus: 
“ ‘ Mr. Delavan, you have the whole ground; and in time, 
the whole Christian world will be obliged to adopt your views.’ 
“ I asked him if he would not prepare an essay on the subject, 
for publication. He said he would, and he did.” 
This essay was published in the New York “ Observer.” 
The learned Tayler Lewis, LL.D., a scholar and critic 
of great eminence, is quoted by Dr. Samson, as saying, 
that u on the subject of Temperance there has been com- 302 
Alcohol in Society. 
mitted tbe same error of interpretation that for so long a 
time confused the slavery question ; ” and tbe “Advance ” 
gives the following from bis pen : 
“Whether among the Jews, and in our Saviour’s day, there 
was a wine that contained no alcohol, is hard to be determined, 
although in regard to the significance of the Hebrew yayin, 
and the Greek oinos, there can be but little doubt. Ab efferves- 
cenclo says Gesenius, but it puts it fortasse, ‘ perhaps,’ and in 
truth he has no authority for it whatever, in any of the Sliem- 
itic tongues. These words simply meant the liquid that came 
from pressing the grape. There is no evidence of any farther 
idea associated with it. It was not fermenting fluid, but grape 
juice. This, it was well known, grew stronger with age. It 
was first pleasant and nourishing, then exhilarating, and at 
last intoxicating. In the Bible the first use is commended; the 
second mentioned without disapprobation or approval; the 
third in all cases condemned.” 
Elsewhere (“ Moderation vs. Total Abstinence ; or, Dr. 
Crosby and bis Reviewers,” p. 122), be says : 
“ Anti-temperance critics are fond of charging the zealous 
temperance advocates with perversions of Scripture and strained 
interpretations. This is, doubtless, true in some cases, but the 
fault is far more apt to be on the other side. The whole scope 
and spirit of a precept is often overlooked by the wine advo- 
cate, and some mere contrast or illustration (belonging not to 
the inspired heart of the passage, but to the necessarily imper- 
fect human language in which it is conveyed, and to the imper- 
fect human knowledge which is an inseparable accompani- 
ment of such language) is elevated into all the dignity and au- 
thority of a precept, commanding us directly to drink wine, as 
though it were good per se—a duty, in fact, the neglect of which 
would be the slighting of the Divine beneficence. The much- 
talked of sin per se of the other side, however strained and harsh 
it may sometimes appear, is far more sound and rational. Thus, 
for example, Proverbs xxxi. 6, 7. [‘Give strong drink unto 
him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of 
heavy hearts. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and re- 
member his misery no more,’] is taken by some as not only a 
perfect justification of wine-drinking as a common practice, but 
even as a command to do so in certain cases. When we look, The Wine Question. 
303 
however, at the whole passage, and study its spirit, we find it 
to be one of the strongest abstinence texts in the whole 
Bible.” 
Adam Clarke, commenting on the words of the Butler, 
in relating his dream to Joseph, u I took the grapes and 
pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup,” Genesis xl. 11, says: 
“ From this we find that wine anciently was the mere express- 
ed juice of the grape, without fermentation. The saky, or 
cup-bearer, took the bunch, pressed the juice into the cup, and 
instantly delivered it into the hands of his master. This was 
anciently, the yayin of the Hebrews, the oinos of the Greeks, and 
the mustum of the ancient Latins.” 
Bishop Lowth (“ Commentary on Isaiah,”) remarking on 
Isaiah v. 2, refers to the case of the Butler, and says: 
“ By which it would seem that the Egyptians drank only the 
fresh juice pressed from the grapes, which was called oinos am~ 
pilinos, i. e., wine of the vineyards.” 
Josephus renders Joseph’s reply : 
“Thou sayest that thou didst squeeze this wine from three 
clusters of grapes with thine hands, and that the king received 
it; know, therefore, that this vision is for thy good, and foretells 
a release from thy present distress, within the same number of 
days as the branches had whence thou gatheredest thy grapes in 
thy sleep.”—(“Antiquities,” Book II. chap, v.) 
Albert Barnes, D. D., says: 
“ The wine of Judea was the pure juice of the grape, without 
any mixture of alcohol, and commonly weak and harmless. It 
was the common drink of the people, and did not tend to pro- 
duce intoxication.”—Commentary on John ii. 10. 
Kev. Dr. Jacobus, on the same passage, thus comments : 
“ This wine was not that fermented liquor which passes now 
under that name. All who know of the wines then used, will 
understand rather the unfermented juice of the grape. The 
present wines of Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we tasted them, 
were commonly boiled and sweet, without intoxicating qualities 
such as we get here in liquors called wines. The boiling pre- 304 
Alcohol in Society. 
vents the fermentation. Those Were esteemed the best wines 
which were least strong.” 
Rev. Dr. William Patton says : 
“ More than thirty-five years since, when reviewing the study 
of Hebrew with Professor Sexias, an eminent Hebrew teacher, 
I submitted to him the collation of texts which I had made, 
with the request that he would give me his deliberate opinion. 
He took the manuscript, and in a few days after returned it 
with the statement, ‘ Your discriminations are just; they de- 
note that there were two kinds of wine, and the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures justify this view.’ Thus fortified, I hesitated no longer, 
but, by sermons and addresses, make known my convictions.” 
The testimony of Dr. F. It. Lees, is: 
“ In the Hebrew and Greek Bible a dozen words, with their 
special meanings, are all hidden under the English terms ‘ w ine ’ 
and ‘strong drink’; and some of these words clearly and unde- 
niably denote unfermented and unintoxicating wine. About 
sixty texts of the authorized version refer to wine (or what is 
supposed to be wine) with approbation, w here the context shows 
or implies it to be a natural and unfermented product. Not 
more than fifty-two texts can be proved, by the context, to refer 
to intoxicating wine, and not one of these is connected with the 
Divine blessing. On the contrary, one-lialf of them describe it 
as evil, as a mocker, and a stupefier, or else prohibit it, either 
in general, or in special cases.” 
Dr. Kerr, speaking of Dr. Lees, bears this testimony to 
the soundness and thoroughness of his learning : 
“My valued friend, one of the most illustrious Hebraists of 
this century, the late Professor Weir, told me, twenty years 
ago, after presiding at a lecture delivered by Dr. Lees to the 
University of which the learned professor was so distinguished 
an ornament, that he was convinced of the soundness of most 
of the doctor’s views on the wines of the Bible ; and these views 
have been, with a few unimportant exceptions, adopted by such 
scholars as Professors Douglass, Eadie, Fairbairn, Tayler Lewis 
and Moses Stuart, such well known writers as Smith, Yalpy, 
French, Mearns, Ritchie, Burns, and the Dean of Capeton, and 
most continental authorities on lexicography. 
“ Few have differed from Dr. Lees more than I have, and with The Wine Question. 
305 
some of his conclusions on the drinks of Scripture I cannot yet 
agree ; but to his extensive research, the accuracy and ripeness 
of his scholarship, and the clearness and cogency of his reason- 
ing, I cannot refrain from paying a willing, though humble 
tribute. To him, beyond all others, is due the credit of haviug 
first formulated and advocated nearly all the propositions with 
regard to the influence of alcoholic beverages on the human 
frame which have found general acceptance in chemical and 
medical circles; all of his positions on the scientific basis of 
abstinence being now adopted by the most learned in the land. 
And, as the longer I study God’s word in the original the nearer 
do I find myself compelled to approximate to his interpretation, 
I am almost forced to conclude that his solution of the Bible 
wine problem may yet meet with as general acquiescence as has 
been accorded to his exposition of the chemistry, physiology, 
and pathology of alcohol.” — (“Unfermented Wine a Fact,” 
pp. 38-9.) 
In his later work (“ Wines, Scriptural and Ecclesiasti- 
cal,” p. 89), he says : 
“ To Dr. Lees, beyond all others, is the Scripture Wine Ques- 
tion indebted for the wonderful advance it has made. His in- 
dustry, scholarship, and acuteness of reasoning merit the warm- 
est thanks of every lover of- truth and of the Bible.” 
And lie adds the following from Professor Douglas : 
“No writer with whom we are acquainted has devoted so 
much time and research to the subject as Dr. F. E. Lees, and we 
believe that his principal positions have not yet been successful- 
ly assailed.” 
So much for modem writers, not one of whom can justly 
be styled a “ Bible twister,” and each one of whom is in 
learning the peer, and many of them the superiors of those 
who charge them with ignorance. 
Let the foregoing, although much more might he added, 
suffice as setting forth the fact that both ancient and mod- 
ern Christian scholars of the greatest eminence in learning, 
have advocated a theory the reverse of that set up by those 
who claim that wherever wine is spoken of in the Bible, a 306 
Alcohol in Society. 
fermented and intoxicating article is referred to. It effect- 
ually disposes of such an unwarranted assumption. 
Another fact also overthrows this assertion, the fact that 
a large number of Hebrew words, each having a meaning 
peculiar to itself, and some in no possible sense synonymous 
of any other, are rendered by the one word “ wine,” in our 
English version. The same is true, too, of the three Greek 
words rendered “wine” in our English New Testament. 
A brief view of these will convince any one that it is folly 
to suppose that each means an intoxicating beverage; 
while a more critical study of them will demonstrate the 
impossibility of their being truly represented by any one 
word. Dr. Lees, in his 11 Text Book of Temperance,” pp. 
119-124), has given in brief, the most comprehensive view 
that we have seen in print. His more elaborate works, 
and especially his 11 Temperance Bible Commentary,” con- 
tain an exhaustive treatment of the subject. We repro- 
duce here, his summary as given in the “ Text Book ” : 
“ (1.) Yayin is the generic term for wine, including the pure 
‘blood of the grape,’ preserved juice, and the juice after being 
fermented and drugged as well. It is applied in all these 
varied ways: ‘ They wash their garments in wine.’ ‘ They 
gathered wine.’ ‘Wine is a mocker,’it ‘bitetb like a serpent.’ 
‘Their wine is the poison of dragons.’ Divine sanction is 
never associated with yayin where the context shows it to 
be intoxicating. 
“ The derivation of the word, like that of the equivalent 
Chaldese term Khamer, probably points to the turbid, foaming 
appearance of fresh expressed juices: for certainly the Jews, in 
much later times, had no idea of the occult process of ‘ fermen- 
tation.’ The Rabbis in fact had a theory that ‘ the juice of 
fruit does not ferment!’ The Targums speak of ‘the wine 
Khamar ( = Ya yin), which the Messiah shall drink, reserved 
in its grapes from the beginning.’ Thomas Aquinas, in the 
13th century, decides, that ‘grape-juice (m-ustum) is of the 
specific nature of wine (vinum), and may be used in the cele- 
bration of the Eucharist.’ 
“ This word being general, necessitated in the later age of 
Jewish literature, the use of two or three specific terms to The Wine Question. 
307 
indicate particular sorts of wine. As for example the follow- 
ing: 
“ (2.) Khamer : fresh or foaming wine in its first sense. But 
since the wine when it ferments becomes red, the idea of red- 
ness got associated with the Chaldee use of the word ; and per- 
haps ‘ thickness' also. It was a word used for the foam of the 
sea, and for the bitumen of pits 
‘ (3.) Ausis, from asas, ' to tread,’ signifies the same as the 
classic protopos, ‘ first trodden/ or ‘running vine.’ ‘ The moun- 
tains shall drop down ausis.’ 
“ (4.) Sobhe is ‘ boiled wines,’ the sapa of the Roman, the 
sabe of the French and Italians. It was the luxurious drink 
of the rich ; of course not intoxicating. 
“ Other Hebrew words translated wine, do not really signify 
wine at all, for example: 
“ (5.) Tirosh is a collective term for ‘ the fruit of the vine’ 
in its natural state, from the early tirosh in the cluster to the 
richer ‘blessing within it’of the full ripe grapes ready for 
grateful consumption. Hence Micah’s phrase,4 thou shalt tread 
vine fruit (tirash), but shall not drink yayin, for the fruit shall 
be withered/ (vi. 15). It is associated as a thing of growth with 
com and orchard fruit (zithar—not oil); dependent upon the 
dew and rain. In the Latin, French, German, Italian and 
Spanish versions, it is generally, but wrongly, translated 
mustum, mosto, etc. It is nowhere implied to be either intoxi- 
cating or liquid. ‘Whoredom, wine, and new wine’ does not 
make sense, but Idolatry, Inebriety, and Luxury does, repre- 
sented by Whoredom, Wine, and Grapes, which ‘ take away 
the heart.’ The words in Prov. iii. 10, and Joel ii. 24, translat- 
ed ‘ bursting ’ and ‘ overflowing/ respectively signify no more 
than ‘ abundance.’ (See ‘ Bible Commentary.’) 
“ (6.) .ZEshisah is the word translated ‘flagons of wine;’ but 
erroneously, as all scholars now conceive. It denotes a fruit- 
cake. 
“(7.) Shemarim, from shamar, ‘to preserve/ means ‘pre- 
serves/ well refined, not ‘ dregs.’ Wine is interpolated ; it only 
occurs once in the supposed sense of wine. The older transla- 
tors regarded it as ‘ sweet and dainty things.’ It corresponds 
in formation with sliemanin (from shemen), oil, ‘fat things.’ 
“(8.) Mesech, ‘mixture’ simply, which might be good or 
bad. The mingled wine of wisdom (boiled grape-juice mixed 
with water), or the wine of sensuality. ‘ Who hath woe ? 308 
Alcohol in Society. 
They that are mighty to mingle sweet drink,’ (shakar,) i.e., with 
inebriating drugs. 
“ (9.) Shakak, * erroneously translated strong drink, comes 
from an Oriental root for ‘ sweet-juice,’ and is the undoubted 
original of the European words (Greek, Latin, Teutonic and 
Spanish) for sugar. It is used to this day in Arabia for palm- 
juice and palm-wine, whether fresh or fermented, 
“In the common version of the Bible there is just one text, 
and only one, that gives apparent sanction to intoxicating 
wine, namely, Deut. xiv. 26, where strong drink is named as a 
permissible element in a sacred feast. The answer is conclusive, 
no word for ‘ strong ’ exists in the Hebrew text. The term 
there used is simply Shakar, the original of saccar, sugar. It 
denoted Palm Wine in various states, unfermented, sweet, and 
syrupy, as well as intoxicating and bitter. Hence, as Bishop 
Lowth observes, the antithesis of Isaiah,—‘ Thy shechar (sweet 
wine) shall become bitter,’ i.e., deteriorated, which it does when 
fermented. 
“ (10.) Oinos is the generic Greek word corresponding with 
the Hebrew Yayin ; and is applicable to all sorts of wine. The 
context alone can determine the specific nature of the wine to 
which the word points. 
“ (11.) Gleukos only occurs once in the New Testament, and 
is not associated with any Divine approval. It is classically 
the name of rich grape-juice, or unfermented wine ; perhaps, in 
some cases, for initially fermented wine, the preservation of 
which had been neglected. 
“(12.) Oxos was ‘sour wine,’ sometimes mingled with drugs. 
“ Though the end of revelation is not to supersede experience 
and science, yet considering how drinking is connected at many 
points with morals and religion, by way of hindrance to the 
purposes of a progressive and Divine revelation, we may fairly 
expect that the subject would come under the observation of 
the inspired writers of the Bible. When we come to examine 
it, impartially, it will be found to have anticipated the ordinary 
wisdom of men, and the developments of modern science. The 
great physicians of Europe express the last verdict of science, 
* “In Notes to Dr. Delitzsh’s ‘Commentary on Isaiah,’ 
(Clarke, Edinburgh), we find a modified explanation :— 
“ The Arabic sakkar, no doubt equivalent to sakchari, ‘ honey 
of canes ’ (Arrian), an Indian word, signifying ‘ forming broken 
pieces,’ i.e., sugar in ‘ grains or small lumps.’ ” The Wine Question. 
309 
when they affirm the old Temperance doctrine, that alcohol is 
simply a narcotic poison, and not food, in any true or ordinary 
sense. The property of such poison is to seduce, mock, deceive; 
to generate an ever-increasing appetite for itself, and to make 
the soul subject to the craving tyranny of the sensual nature. 
Now the express language of Scripture is hut the echo of this 
conclusion : ‘ Wine is a mocker, be not deceived thereby.’ The 
cry of the drunkard is: ‘ They have stricken me, but I felt it 
not. I will seek it yet again.’ The voice of wisdom is: ‘ Look 
not on the wine when it is red; when it giveth its eye in the 
cup ’ (or the marks of fermentation), ‘ for at last it stingeth like 
a serpent.’ 
“Nay, more, in three plain texts, the Hebrew for ‘poison’ 
(Khemah)—the word six times so translated—is applied to this 
very species of drink which ‘stingeth like a serpent.’ The evil 
wine was like ‘ the poison of dragons.’ (Deut. xxxii. 33): The 
princess made the king ‘sick with poison of wine.’ (Hos. vii. 5): 
and a woe is hurled against him who giveth such drink to his 
neighbor, who ‘putteth thy poison to him.’ (Hab. ii. 15): The 
consequence being that God’s poisoned cup of wrath (Khemah) 
shall he turned to him. Is it not pure insanity to suppose that 
such an element is identical with the contents of any ‘cup of 
blessing ? ’ ” 
We have thus attended to, and, as we think, successfully 
combated and repulsed the attacks recently made, and 
some of them with great assurance, on the theory of unin- 
toxicating wines. Let us briefly sum up the results. By 
proofs that cannot be overthrown, we have shown : 
1. That the ancients understood and successfully em- 
ployed several methods of making and preserving unintox- 
icating wines. 
2. That unfermented grape-juice is called wine in the 
lexicons of ancient and modem languages, and by travellers 
in all ages. 
3. That unfermented wine, as prepared to-day, is a bev- 
erage extensively used in several countries. 
4. That it is declared by chemists to have been scientifi- 
cally prepared by the ancients, on whose modes of prepara- 
tion the moderns cannot improve. 310 
Alcohol in Society. 
5. That it was not only extensively used in ancient times 
but was greatly preferred to the wine which intoxicates; 
and is so preferred by those who use it in modern times. 
6. That the term “ wine ” as employed in the Scriptures, 
is a generic term, under which the intoxicating and the un- 
intoxicating beverages are both classed. 
7. That unfermented wine is always mentioned with 
favor in the Scriptures. 
8. That intoxicating wines never are spoken of approv- 
ingly in the Bible. 
9. That the inspired Apostles, and the Christian Fathers, 
condemn the use of intoxicating wines. 
10. That the best and ripest Christian scholarship of to- 
day, discriminates between the intoxicating and the unin- 
toxicating wines mentioned in the Scriptures. 
YI. In establishing these facts we have incidentally 
disposed of several of the popular objections, as supposed 
to be drawn from the Scriptures, against the doctrine of 
total abstinence, and need not, therefore, give them further 
attention. Of this character are the following: 
1. That u wine ” and u strong drink ” are mentioned in 
the Scriptures, or associated therein, with temporal bless- 
ings, or used as symbols of spirttual blessings enjoyed, and 
appointed as drink-offerings and libations. 
2. That neither Christ nor his Apostles forbade the use 
of wine. 
3. That Paul enjoined the use of wine upon Timothy. 
Other objections supposed also to have a Scriptural basis, 
deserve notice under this head, although some of them 
have been alluded to, and perhaps, in the estimation of some 
readers, sufficiently answered in preceding pages. Our aim 
is, however, to meet the objections of those whom it may 
be more difficult to convince. . 
(1.) Jesus alludes to liimself as one who came “ eating 
and drinking/’ and hence it is inferred by some that he The Wine Question. 
311 
must have been a wine-drinker. Why not that he also 
must have been an eater of everything that was set before 
him ? The one inference is certainly as good as the other. 
Look at the circumstances under which our Lord made this 
remark. Jesus was rebuking the unreasonableness of 
those by whom he was surrounded, who were so captious as 
to be determined not to be pleased either with John the 
Baptist or with himself. He said: u Whereunto shall I 
liken this generation ? It is like unto children sitting in 
the markets and calling unto their fellows, and saying, we 
have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have 
mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John 
came neither eating nor drinking, and thej/ say he hath a 
devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and 
they say, Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber, a 
friend of publicans and sinners.” 
Was he a u gluttonous man ? ” If we say no, that was 
calumny, why do we believe the other charge from the same 
source, he was 11 a wine-bibber ” ? Is it meant that John 
did not eat and drink anything ? Of course not, but that 
he sat at no tables, partook of no feasts. Can we say then 
that because Jesus did sit at tables and partake of feasts, 
he ate and drank anything to excess ? No doubt he drank 
wine, for as Albert Barnes says on the passage: “ As wine 
was a common article of beverage among the people, He 
drank it. It was the pure juice of the grape, and, for any- 
thing that can be proved, it was without fermentation.” 
Why shall we assume that he drank that which was least 
esteemed, that which has in it, as Paul says, excess, i. e. 
riot, lawlessness, sensuality, such as is contained in the 
wines in use now, such as characterized the wines producing 
drunkenness in his day, and of the effects of which he said, 
as we have seen, that they disqualified a man for entrance 
into his kingdom ? It is certainly am unwarranted assump- 
tion. 312 
Alcohol in Society. 
(2). He made, gave, and used wine at the Wedding 
Feast at Cana of Galilee. The fact that he made wine 
and gave it to others to drink, on this occasion, is not dis- 
puted j but on what ground can it be claimed that he made 
intoxicating wine ? This is wholly assumed, not proven, 
and cannot possibly be proved. On the contrary, the just 
inference, as based on at least two considerations is, that 
it was unfermented wine, the pure juice of the grape, “ the 
good wine,” the wine most highly esteemed, as we have 
seen, by the people of that day. For, first, the customs of 
the Jews, which change less than those of any other people, 
did notallow the use of intoxicating wines on such occasions. 
Judge Joachimsen, of New York, an eminent Jew in that 
city, certifies in a letter to Rev. Dr. Samson—to be quoted 
in full further on—that at weddings among that people, 
unintoxicating wine is used. 
We have already produced the testimony of Cyril. Dr. 
Kerr (“ Wines, Scriptural and Ecclesiastical,” p. 21,) 
furnishes others : 
“ Chrysostom: 1 Showing that it is He who changes the water 
in the vines, and the rain absorbed through the root into wine, 
who did in an instant, at the marriage, that which takes a long 
time in the plant’ (Horn. xxii. in Joh.). 
“ Augustine: ‘ For He on that nuptial day made wine in the 
six pots which he ordered to be filled with water, who every 
year makes this in the vines .... But we do not wonder 
at this, because it is done every year.’ (‘In Evang. Job.,’ 
Tract viii.)” 
He also cites the following modern writers : 
“The Bishop of Norwich: ‘What doth He in the ordinary 
way of nature, hut turn the watery juice that arises up from 
the root into wine ? He will only do this now suddenly, and 
at once, which He doth usually by sensible degrees.’ (Josh. 
Hall, D.D., 1 Contempl.,’ p. 117. Lond. 1759.) 
“ The Archbishop of Dublin : ‘ He each year prepares the 
wine in the grape, causing it to absorb, and swell with the 
moisture of earth and heaven. To transmute this into nobler The Wine Question. 
313 
juice of its own, concentrating all these slower processes into 
the act of a single moment, and accomplishing in an instant 
what usually He takes many months to accomplish.’ (Trench, 
‘ Notes on Mirac.’ p. 109. London, 1862.) ” 
This view is also put forth by Geikie, in his u Life and 
Words of Christ,” (vol. I. chap, xxix.): 
‘ ‘ The wine which the guests had drunk from the bride- 
groom’s bounty, and possibly from the added gifts of friends, 
had been slowly matured from the vine by mysterious elabora- 
tion, from light, and heat, and moisture, and the salts of the 
earth, none of which had more apparent affinity to it than the 
water which Jesus transformed. The miracle in nature was 
not less real or wonderful than that of the marriage feast, and 
strikes us less, only by its being familiar.” 
(3). But, it is often said, the use of wine at the Lord’s 
Supper has the sanction of Christ, and therefore it cannot 
be such a harmful beverage as total abstinence men sup- 
pose. The frequency with which this is urged, and the 
tenacity with which many churches cling to the use of 
alcoholic wine in this Christian rite, demand that this 
whole subject should receive serious attention, and be 
subjected to the most rigid scrutiny, in order that we may 
arrive at the truth in regard to it. 
It is generally believed that what is called the Lord’s 
Supper, was instituted by our Saviour at the conclusion of 
the Feast of the Passover, and that the materials used in 
it were a portion of the materials prepared for the due ob- 
servance of that feast. It certainly must help us, therefore, 
in our attempts to ascertain what Jesus used, if we can 
be informed as to what was required to be furnished for 
the Passover. Who so competent to furnish us with this 
information as the Jews, for whom the feast was divinely 
instituted, and who continue to this day to celebrate it 
annually. 
The command with reference to the celebration of the 
Passover, is given in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of 314 
Alcohol in Society. 
the book of Exodus. u Seven days,” is the command (xiii. 
6-7), “ thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh 
day shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall 
be eaten seven days, and there shall no leavened bread be 
seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee 
in all thy quarters.” 
“ Mr. Herschel, a converted Jew, says: ‘ The word khomeU 
(ferment) has a wider signification than that which is generally 
attached to leaven, by which it is rendered in the English 
Bible, and applies to the fermentation of corn in any form, to 
beer, and to all fermented liquors.’ 
“Here, then, we have a very strict command, applicable 
alike to liquids and solids, wine and bread. That the Jews so 
understood this command is quite evident from the general cus- 
tom prevalent among them, both anterior and subsequent to, 
the days of our Lord; a custom which even to the present day, 
extensively prevails among them. 
“Says Moses Stuart: ‘Not only leavened bread, but other 
things which have undergone fermentation were excluded from 
the Passover meal. Perhaps this usage, which was carried so 
far by the Jews, arose mainly from a strict regard to the sup- 
posed real meaning of the command in Exodus, chap, xii., 
which is not expressed by declaring that the Hebrews shall not 
eat fermented bread, but by declaring that they should not eat 
anything fermented. Now the word [that has been translated] 
eating, is in cases without number, employed to include a par- 
taking of all refreshments at a meal, drinks as well as food.’ 
“Again he remarks iD the Bibliotheca Sacra (Yol. I.): ‘I can- 
not doubt that khmatz (ferment) in its widest sense, was ex- 
cluded from the Jewish Passover when the Lord’s Supper was 
first instituted, for I am not able to find evidence to make me 
doubt that the custom among the Jews of excluding fermented 
wine as well as fermented bread, is older than the Christian 
era That this custom is very ancient, that it is 
even now almost universal, and that it has been so for time 
whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, I take 
to be facts that cannot be fairly controverted.’ 
“ This custom exclusively obtains among modern Jewish 
communities. Dr. Cunningham, the learned Hebraist, says: 
‘ What is now chiefly used by the Jews at the Passover, for 
wine, is a drink made of an effusion of raisins in water, which The Wine Question. 
315 
is either boiled at once, or simmered during several days. It is 
free from alcohol and acidity. It is quite sweet. I have tast- 
ed it at the paschal table. No Jew with whom I have con- 
versed, of whatever class or nation, ever used any other kind. 
But a Mr. Jonas informed me, that he believed the proper kind 
of wine is that expressed from red grapes at the time.’”—Bac- 
chus Dethroned, pp. 198, 199. 
Dr. Lees (Works, vol. ii. p. 170,) gives the following 
Jewish testimonies: 
“The learned physician, Rabhi Manasseh Ben Israel, (in his 
‘Vindicise Judaeorum,’ printed in 1656,) in refuting the absurd 
calumny so generally entertained in the dark ages, ‘ That the 
Jews are wont to celebrate the feast of Unleavened Bread, fer- 
menting it with the blood of some Christians whom they have for 
that purpose killed,’ after referring to Lev. vii. 25, and Deut. 
xii. 16, ‘Ye shall consume no sort of blood,’ thus further refutes 
the charge : ‘Admit that it were lawful (which God forbid!), why 
should they consume the blood ? And supposing they should 
use the blood, why should they consume it on the Passover ? 
Here, at this feast, every confection ought to be so pure as not 
to admit of any ferment, or anything that may fermentate, 
which certainly blood doth.’ 
“Mr. A. C. Isaacs, says: ‘I spent among my own people six 
and twenty years of my life, and prior to becoming a convert 
from the Jewish to the Christian faith, I sustained among them 
the office of Hebrew Teacher. I can therefore speak confi- 
dently on the subject of your inquiries. All the Jews with 
whom I have ever been acquainted, use unintoxicating wine at 
the Passover, a wine made expressly for the occasion, and gen- 
erally by themselves. If it ever should be fermented, it is cer- 
tainly unknown to them, and against their express intention, 
but I never knew it to exhibit any of the symptoms. The sim- 
ple process of making it is this :—Some raisins or dried grapes, 
are steeped in water for two or three days previous to the Pass- 
over, in a vessel placed near the fire. The juice is then strain- 
ed and bottled off, as ‘ the fruit of the vine.’ Sometimes, if cir- 
cumstances arise to prevent the raisins being regularly steeped, 
they are boiled in the forenoon of the day on which the Passo- 
ver is celebrated, and when the saccharine matter is thought 
to be sufficiently dissolved, the decoction is bottled off and 
cooled. 316 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ ‘Such was our Passover wine, so called, and not merely syrup 
or raisin-water. These are the modes in which the wine was 
prepared by my own mother during the whole period I was un- 
der the parental roof, and when, subsequent to my father’s 
death, it fell to my lot, as the eldest son, to preside at the cele- 
bration of the Passover, I administered the same kind.’ ” 
In 11 The Enquirer,” December, 1841, published by E. 
C. Delavan, are two letters from eminent American Jews. 
Rev. Isaac Leeser, an eminent Jewish Rabbi, of Philadel- 
phia, says (p. 29) : 
“ In places where the vine is cultivated, and where the juice 
is expressed under Jewish superintendence, we use the wine in 
its natural state; and be it understood by the living, that 
strictly speaking, all Gentile wines are interdicted, though Jews 
of modern times, particularly the rich in Europe, and nearly all 
in America, have often broken through this rule, as far as ordi- 
nary drinking is concerned ; but for religious purposes, wfe uni- 
formly exclude Gentile wines from the ceremonies; hence in 
countries where the wine is not cultivated, we resort to artifi- 
cial wines, such as raisin wine, etc., or even cider, lemonade, 
mead made of honey ; but seldom on such occasions do we em- 
ploy spirituously fermented liquors; and never, as far as my 
knowledge goes, on the Passover nights, when uniformly the 
umntoxicating preparations are used, if Jewish wine is not 
readily accessible. This is not, however, on temperance princi- 
ples, but because all fermented liquors, of which grain is the 
basis, are leaven, and therefore strictly prohibited on the Pass- 
over." 
On p. 32, is tlie following, from Judge M. M. Noah: 
“ I have your favor, requesting to know how the wine is pre- 
pared for the Passover. If you wish to make a small quantity 
for the communion table, (for the wine will soon grow sour, 
having no alcohol, i. e. body,) take a gallon demijohn, or stone 
jug, pick three or four pounds of bloom raisins; break off the 
stems; put the raisins into the demijohn, and fill it with wa- 
ter. Tie a rag over the mouth, and place the demijohn near 
the fire, or on one side of the fire-place, to keep it warm. In 
about a week it will be fit for use, making a pure, pleasant and 
sweet wine, free from alcohol. It may last from Sunday to Sun- 
day without getting sour or tart; but it is easy to make a small The Wine Question. 
317 
quantity for each time it is to be used. This is the wine we use 
on the nights of the Passover, because it is free from fermenta- 
tion, as we are strictly prohibited, notonly from eating leavened 
bread, but from drinking fermented liquors.” 
Later testimony, to the same effect, is given by Judge 
Joachimsen, whose letter to Rev. Dr. Samson, we alluded 
to in speaking of the wine used at the Marriage Feast at 
Cana, and which we now quote in full: 
“ In answer to your favor of yesterday’s date, I repeat that 
the great majority of conforming Jews in this city use wine 
made from raisins at the Passover Feast. Of course the raisins 
are fresh. Such raisin-wine is used in all conforming syna- 
gogues for the sanctification of Shabbat and holy days ; i. e. for 
Kiddish, and also for services at circumcisions and weddings. 
Some, but not many, people use imported wine, Italian, Hunga- 
rian, or German, which is certified as * Peracht’ or * Kosher 
wine.’ ” 
During the present year, (1888) the editor of the u Meth- 
odist Times,” who witnessed the celebration of the Jewish 
Passover in the city of New York, at the close of the ser- 
vices, said to the rabbi, u May I ask with what kind of wine 
you have celebrated the Passover this evening ? The 
answer, promptly given, was: 
“ With a non-intoxicating wine. Jews never use fermented 
wine in their synagogue services, and must not use it on 
the Passover, either for synagogue or home purposes. Fer- 
mented liquor of any kind comes under the category of 
‘leaven,’ which is proscribed in so many well-known places 
in the Old Testament. The wine which is used by the Jews 
during the week of Passover is supplied to the community by 
those licensed by the chief rabbi’s board, and by those only. 
Each bottle is sealed in the presence of a representative of the 
ecclesiastical authorities. The bottle standing yonder on the 
sideboard, from which the wine used t *night was taken, was 
thus sealed. I may also mention that poor Jews who cannot 
afford to buy this wine, make an unfermented wine of their 
own, which is nothing else but an infusion of Valencia or Mus- 
catel raisins. I have read the passage in Matthew in which the 318 
Alcohol in Society. 
Paschal supper is described. There can be no doubt whatever 
that the wine used upon that occasion was unfermented. Jesus, 
as an observant Jew, would not only not have drunk fermented 
wine on the Passover, but would not have celebrated the Pass- 
over in any house from which everything fermented had not 
been removed. I may mention that the wine I use in the service 
at the synagogue is an infusion of raisins. You will allow me, 
perhaps, to express my surprise that Christians who profess to 
be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, can take what He could not 
possibly have taken as a Jew—intoxicating wine—at so sacred 
a service as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.” 
To this testimony of tlie Jews, we add that of the 
11 Encyclopaedia Brittanica/’ 8th ed., art. u Passover” ; 
“ It is beyond dispute among scholars of the first rank that 
at the Passover, the wine used was non-intoxicating, and that 
our Lord instituted the Holy Supper with such wine.” 
Of this expression, “ The fruit of the vine,” Dr. Lees 
says (Works vol. ii. p. cxxi.) : 
“It occurs only in the account of the Last Supper of Jesus 
with his disciples, in the words he addressed to them on pre- 
senting the cup (see Matt. xxvi. 29; Mark xiv. 25; Luke xxii. 
18); but as he used either the Syrian language or the Chaldee, 
the present phrase must be regarded merely as a translation of 
the actual one. It has generally been translated as a periphras- 
tic expression for oinos, 1 wine/ but no sufficient reason has been 
alleged for its use in preference to the plain term. As it was 
the common practice to bring the bunches of grapes to the 
table, and then and there to squeeze them into a drinking-ves- 
sel, may not Christ have so used them on that occasion T And 
might he not thus have spoken of the contents of the cup with 
reference to the grapes he had only the moment before been 
pressing ? Some supposition of this kind appears necessary to 
reconcile the expression with the thing it was intended to de- 
note The writer has not yet met with the exact 
phrase in any Greek author. The one approaching nearest to 
it occurs in an ode to Bacchus, generally attributed to Anacreon, 
viz.: ‘ wine, the offspring of the vine/ an expression that prob- 
ably originated with the practice thus alluded to, for amid the 
ruins of Pompeii (destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 
about the year 79) there has been found near the Street of Dried 
Fruits, a painting of Bacchus pressing the juice out of a bunch of 
grapes held between his hands, into a vase placed upon a pillar.” The Wine Question. 
319 
This supposition that Jesus may have directly expressed 
the juice of the grape, has confirmation in the fact brought 
to light in the paintings in the catacombs at Rome. A 
writer in u The Family Treasury,” Part xiv. p. 178, says : 
“ The two great sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Sup- 
per are constantly represented and alluded to in the paintings 
of the catacombs, but no others. Thus the administration of 
the Lord’s Supper is depicted by a sketch of seven, or in one in- 
stance twelve Apostles, sitting on one side a table, on which 
is placed a dish containing loaves of bread, and grapes, some- 
times a fish.” 
To this view it has been objected that grapes could not 
have been obtained at the season of the year in which the 
Passover occurred; but Joseplius relates that grapes were 
preserved several months by the Jews, as fresh as when 
first taken from the vines. Niebuhr, in his “ Travels in 
Arabia,” (vol. I. p. 406,) said of Sana, in Yemen : 
“ Here are more than twenty different species of grapes, 
which, as they all ripen at the same time, continue to afford a 
delicious refreshment for several months. The Arabs, likewise, 
preserve grapes by hauging them up in their cellars, and eat 
them almost through the whole year.” 
So Murphy (“Hist. Mahomet. Emp.,” p. 298) says: 
“ The Granadians preserve grapes from one season to another 
with their stores of dried fruits; and they possess the art of 
preserving grapes sound and juicy, from one season to an- 
other.” 
And Robinson (“ Biblical Researches,” vol. iii. p. 453), 
says: 
“ Grapes at Damascus ripen early in July, and are said to be 
found in the market during eight months. 
“ When Mr. Delavan was in Florence, a ‘ wine manufacturer 
informed me,’he says, ‘that he then had in his lofts (Janu- 
ary) for the use of his table till the next vintage, a quantity of 
grapes sufficient to make oue hundred gallons of wine ; that 
grapes could always be had at any time of the year, to make 
the desirable quantity; and that there was nothing in the way 
of obtaining the fruit of the vine free from fermentation in 
wine countries, at any period. A large basket of grapes was 320 
Alcohol in Society. 
sent to my lodgings, which were as delicious, and looted as 
fresh, as if recently taken from the vines, though they had been 
picked for months.”—“ Enquirer,” Dec. 1841. 
These statements establish the following facts: 
1. The Passover, which preceded the Lord’s Supper as 
instituted by the Saviour, was to be observed without the 
presence of any fermented material, solid or liquid. 
2. “ Conforming Jews,” from that time on to the present, 
have used no fermented wine at this feast. 
3. What they have used is called, and properly, the 
“ fruit of the vine.” 
4. In grape-producing countries, fresh grapes could al- 
ways be obtained. 
5. The Christians who dwelt in the Roman Catacombs 
have described the presence of grapes, not wine, in their 
paintings of the observance of the Lord’s Supper. 
What further can be said from a historical stand-point to 
show the use of unfermented wine in the Lord’s Supper? Dr. 
Kerr answers this question, by showing that in the very in- 
fancy of the Church, and so on through several centuries, the 
11 fruit of the vine,” in some one of the two forms mentioned 
above, has been employed in that sacred rite. Some of his 
proofs, as translated from the original sources, are here 
given : 
“The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (2nd cent.) incidental- 
ly testify to this practice. In the ‘Acts and Martyrdom of 
Matthew,’ these words are narrated as having been addressed to 
Bishop Plato: ‘ And approach with an offering of holy bread, 
and having pressed out three clusters from the vine into a cup, 
communicate with me.’—(Tischendorf. ‘Acta. Apostol. Apocr.,’ 
p. 184.) 
“ Gratian (Pars iii., ‘ De Consec.’ Distinc. ii.) ascribes a De- 
cree to Pope Julius I., A. D. 337, in which these words occur : 
‘ If necessary, let the cluster be pressed in the cup, and mingled 
with water.’ (Given also in Labbe, ‘Sacr. Concil.,’ ii. 1267, Flo. 
1757.) This decree is deemed as of authority by Durandus (13th 
cent ), who says : ‘ In case of necessity, the grape cluster is to 
be pressed, and then Communion can be celebrated; but with The Wine Question. 
321 
the unpressed cluster, Communion cannot be had.’—(Rat. Div. 
Off.’ lib. iv. cap. xli. n. 10, Luga. 1565.) 
“At the Fourth Council of Braga (on the Cavado River in 
Portugal) held A. D. 675, reference was made to some who used 
no other wine but what they pressed out of the cluster at the 
Lord’s Table, and to others who communicated with the un- 
pressed cluster. The Council condemned the use of uncrushed 
grapes with water, thus allowing, by implication, the use of ex- 
pressed grape juice and water.—(Dupin, ‘ Eccl. Hist.,’ p. 20, 
3d edit. Dub. 1724 : Labbe, vol. ii. cap. ii. col. 155, 156; Bing. 
‘Ant. of the Christ. Ch.,’ v. 410.) 
“ In Egypt, when without fermented wine from the vigilance 
of the Emir Abdel Messias, who had prohibited the buying and 
selling of fermented wine in that country, the Christians in the 
ninth century steeped raisins in water and expressed the juice 
(Renaudot, ‘ Hist. Pat. Alex.,’ vol. i. p. 193. Lit. Orient. Coll., 
Paris, 1716). 4 They use this wine,’ says the historian (see also 
Neale, ‘ Hist, of the East,’ Ch. ii. 156. Lond. 1847). Diongsius 
Barsilibi testifies to the use of the juice of dried or fresh grapes 
when the other wine could not be had. He adds: ‘ In necessity, 
let the juice of grapes be taken, or the liquor expressed from 
dried grapes: . . . . with this the sacrament can be cele- 
brated.’—(Renandot, Lit. Orient. Collect, i. 193. Paris, 1716.) 
“In the 12th century, Johannes Belethus approvingly records 
the practice of communion in juice expressed from ripe grapes, 
on the Day of Transfiguration, in the absence of new wine: 
‘ Let us note that some on this same day set forth the blood of 
Christ from new wine, if it can be found, or from ripe grapes 
expressed into the cup.’—(‘Rat. Div. Off.,’ cap. cxl. 5.) 
“ Durandus speaks of the sacramental use of such un ferment- 
ed wine on the 6th of August in similar circumstances, as a 
well-known custom of the time : ‘Well known in certain places.’ 
—(‘Rat. Div. Off.,’ lib vii., cap. xxii. Lugd. 1565.) 
“ Duart6 Barhorosa, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
says, that because there is no [fermented] wine in India, the 
Christians of St. Thomas, whose work at Malabar was so cele- 
brated, steep raisins for a night in water. The next day they 
squeeze the fruit, and with the juice celebrate the Sacrament.— 
(Stanley in Hakluyt, ‘ Des- of E. Afr. and Malab.,’ p. 163. Lond. 
1866). 
•“ Bishop Osorius testifies concerning these followers of Christ • 
?They use wine made from dried grapes,’—(‘Dq Keh.,’p. 143. 
Olysipp. 1571.) 322 
Alcohol in Society. 
“ In the seventeenth century Thevenot writes that the Sa- 
baBans or Christians of St. John, used wine from dried grapes 
steeped in water, which they pressed and moistened the flour 
with.—(‘ Travels,’ pars. ii. p. 164. Lond. 1687.) 
“The Bishop of Jerusalem (Gohat), in his ‘Journal of a So- 
journ in Abyssinia, in 1834,’ speaking of the communion wine, 
says, ‘The wine is the juice of dried grapes with water’ (p. 
345, Lond. 1834); and again, ‘ Wine which is raisin juice and 
water ’ (ibid. p. 223). This practice of the Abyssinian Church 
is conceded by Archbishop Tatham, and seems to have ever 
been the common custom in that body of Christians.—(Kenan- 
dot, ‘Alvarez. Ethiop.,’ i. 193.) 
“Ainsworth, narrating his travels among the Nestorians in 
1840, records that ‘ raisin water supplied the place of wine,’ the 
bishop administering the sacrament.—(‘ Visit to Chaldeans,’ 
Jour. R. G. S., xi. p. 37, 1841. ‘Trav.,’ii. 210. Lond. 1842.) 
“ Tiscliendorf, in his narration of a visit to the monasteries of 
the Lybian Desert, in 1846, writes, ‘ Instead of wine, they used 
a thick juice of the grape, which I at first mistook for oil.’— 
(‘ Trav. in the East,’ p. 50, ed. by Shuckard. Lond. 1847.) 
“‘The Clerical Journal’ of 28th Feb. 1860, states that the 
Christians of the Syrian Church used ‘ the juice of the expressed 
grapes diluted with water.’ ” * 
Rev. Wm. M. Thayer, in his 11 Communion Wine,” (p. 
79,) says : 
“ Speaking of the emblems used at the Lord Supper, St. Basil 
(A. D. 328), writing to Cesarius, said, ‘ The hermits brought the 
consecrated bread into the deserts with them for a year’s sup- 
ply, hut could not preserve the wine so long.’ This is positive 
evidence that the wine was unfermented, since fermented wine 
will keep any length of time.” 
Dr. Lees (Works, ii. p. 171, note), in describing a kind of 
wine often used by the Jews at the Passover, says : 
“ The wine was often made of that species of grape of which 
the juice is red; the boiling would extract the coloring matter 
of the husk of the common grape. In mingling, the usual pro- 
portion was three parts water to one of wine. As the wine was 
thick with boiling, this would be almost necessary to dilute it. 
The water was kept hot in a kind of kettle (Mishna Tr. Pes. 
cap. vii. § 13). A remnant of this custom prevailed in the Greek 
* u Wines. Scriptural and Ecclesiastical,” pp. 106-111. The Yfine Question. 
323 
Church, which, according to Prof. Bresewood, ‘ in celebrating 
the Eucharist, required warm water to mingle with the wine.” 
—(“Diversity of Languages.” Loud. 1622, p. 136.) 
Dr. Samson testifies (p. 232), that, 
“ In all the long controversy between the Roman and Greek 
Churches, which ended in their separation, the Greek writers 
contended for the use of unfermented or greatly diluted wines 
at the Sacrament. Hence, Photius commended the Severians; 
of whom he says : * They were averse to wine, as the cause of 
drunkenness.’ Yet more, the Greek Church were specially scru- 
pulous in avoiding the use of intoxicating wine at the euchar- 
ist, for two reasons ; first, they insisted that the cup should be 
given to the laity, and opposed the Roman Church for with- 
holding it; and second, they maintained that the cup should 
always be administered to infants. Hence, to this day, in every 
branch of the Oriental Church, including the Greek and the 
Russian Churches, the wine used at the Supper is diluted largely 
with water.” 
He adds: “ The testimonies of travellers in the African branch" 
es of the Oriental Church are uniform as to this fact. In Abys- 
sinia, Egypt and Ethiopia, where Christianity was planted in 
the Apostles’ time, where the first Christian schools grew up, 
and where to this day its principles have withstood all the cor- 
ruptions, both of heathen idolatry and of Mohammedan intol- 
erance, the literal ‘fruit of the vine’ is used in the Lord’s Sup- 
per. In regions where the grape is not found, dried grapes, 
that is, raisins, brought from afar, are chopped, soaked in water 
and pressed ; and the sweet grape juice thus obtained, is used 
in the sacred rite. It is an echo, heard yet from Central Africa, 
of the voice of the primitive days, when the first Ethiopian con • 
vert returned riding in his chariot from Jerusalem ; whose un- 
mistakable testimony as to the wine which Christ consecrated 
has thus been perpetuated.” 
We conclude, therefore, that while it is true that Jesus 
did not use intoxicating wine in instituting his Memorial 
rite, it is also true that from that time on to the present, 
many of his disciples have followed his example in their 
choice and use of that which he sanctioned, and over which 
‘ he gave thanks.’ We believe that there is no sanction in 
the Scriptures, nor in reason, and none in analogy, nor in 
the impressive significance of symbolry, to justify us in 324 
Alcohol in Society. 
using alcoholic wines in administering or in participation of 
the Lord’s Supper. There is no proof that intoxicating 
wine was ever offered to him, save on one occasion only,—as 
he hung upon the cross, when a soldier, prompted no doubt 
by humane feelings, to stupefy and benumb the sensibili- 
ties of the sufferer, as was commended by Solomon, when 
he said : “ Give strong drink unto him that is ready to per- 
ish . . . Let him drink, and remember his misery no 
more,’’ u offered him wine mingled with myrrh ; but he re- 
ceived it not.’’ And it certainly is not consistent in us to 
employ, in our effort at obedience to his command to re- 
member him, an agent which to a healthy person, is a de- 
moralizing and debasing foe. 
If, too, we take the wine as the symbol of his blood, 
poured out for us for our profit and redemption, there is 
nothing in the alcoholic mixture that can possibly symbol- 
ize that blood. Fermentation has destroyed all those pro- 
perties which assimilate with the blood, and conduce to its 
health, which were so largely in the composition of the un- 
fermented wine. Look at the chemical analysis of the 
two : 
TlROSH,—WINE “IN THE CLUS- 
TER.”—Isaiah lxv. 8. 
Gluten—plentiful, and forms 
blood. 
Sugar—large amount. 
Gum. 
Aromas. 
Malic Acid and Citric Acids— 
small quantities. 
Phosphorus and Sulphur. 
Bitrate of Potash. 
Tartrate of Lime. 
Water. 
Yain,—the “mocker.” Prov. 
XX. 1. 
Alcohol—powerful narcotic. 
CEnanthic Acid 
(Enanthic Ether. 
Essential or Volatile Oils. 
Acetic Acid. 
Sulphate of Potash. 
Aroma. 
Chlorides of Potassium and 
Sodium. 
Tannin and coloring matter. 
Undecomposed sugar, gum, 
and extractive matter, in 
small quantities. 
The italicized compounds in Yam, the fermented wine, 
are new products, never found in Tirosh, the u fruit of the The Wine Question. 
325 
vine,” the unfermented product of nature. Dr. John Ellis, 
of New York, an active physician, and a zealous New 
Churchman, in a pamphlet addressed to his fellow-believ- 
ers, the disciples of Swedenborg, has the following perti- 
nent remarks, based on the facts disclosed in this analysis : 
“ Surely,” he says, “we have only to look over the two ta- 
bles of contents just given, to be able to see how truly ferment- 
ed wine, when it pretends to be either the fruit of, or from the 
fruit of the vine, is a hypocritical ‘ mocker.’ Its fruit part or 
gluten—corresponding to good—gone ; its sugar—corresponding 
to spiritual delights—nearly gone, and perverted into alcohol 
and vinegar, and its vegetable combinations of acids and alka- 
lies, combined expressly for the use of man by the Lord, in tlio 
fruit of the vine, with phosphorus and lime for the brain and 
bones, either destroyed, changed or precipitated—what have 
we left ? A fluid which will cause drunkenness, which is never 
caused by either the fruit of the vine, or the pure juice of the 
grape. Need more be said ? 
“ Yes, more may be desirable, for all experience demonstrates 
that when duty requires us to give up the traditions of the 
past as false, and to stop the gratifications of our perverted ap 
petites, we need ‘ line upon line and precept upon precept,’ or 
there is danger of our excusing and justifying our false views 
and evils, and continuing m them, instead of putting them 
away as sins against God. The truth must be made so plain 
‘ that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein.’ 
“ Wine has a similar signification to blood. Blood is com- 
posed, not simply of water, which is from the mineral kingdom, 
and corresponds to truths upon the natural plane of life, and is 
the medium through which nourishment is conveyed to every 
part of the material body, but it also contains in a state of solu- 
tion, all the substances required to warm and build up the ma- 
terial body, which correspond to good, all harmoniously blended 
in one fluid, a living current which is to the body of man what 
Divine Truth, always united with Divine Good, is to his soul. 
It is perfectly clear that wine has a similar signification, be- 
cause it has a similar composition. It has the water from the 
mineral kingdom; the sugar, which is so delightful to the inno- 
cent child, and which is appropriated to warm the material 
body ; the gluten or bread-part, which gives substance to the 
various tissues; the phosphorus for the brain, the lime for the 326 
Alcohol in Society. 
bones, the potash for the tendons and ligaments; and there is 
perhaps no part of the body which does not receive some nour- 
ishment from pure unfermented wine. With all these nourish- 
ing substances which are contained in the pure juice of the grape, 
and which correspond to good, either entirely or partially de- 
stroyed, precipitated, or converted into poisonous compounds, 
even with the delightful sugar perverted by leaven into alco- 
hol, which is so repugnant to the taste of the innocent child, 
Avhat relation has fermented wine to blood ? Its correspondence 
may have been appropriate to a state of the Church when faith 
was separated from charity; but how any intelligent New 
Churchman can sanction the use of fermented wine, is an in- 
creasing wonder to the writer.” * 
Dr. B. W. Richardson, of London, after listening to a 
paper on “ Wine, Scriptural and Ecclesiastical,” by Dr. 
Kerr (the same from which, in its printed form, we have 
so frequently quoted in these pages), made the following 
address, which is valuable alike in what it says of the sym- 
bolism of wine, and also that the wines of commerce are not 
even pure fermented wines, being heavily adulterated, and 
some of them wholly without a drop of the product of the 
grape in them : 
“ The subject which Dr. Kerr has brought before us to-day is 
very new to me. I heard it discussed last night at alarge meet- 
ing over which I presided at Holloway, when Dr. Lees delivered 
a lecture on a subject somewhat similar to this. I speak, there- 
fore, on the matter with the greatest possible diffidence, because 
my research and tone of mmdturn altogether towards the scien- 
tific side of this question. I think I might say in reference to 
Dr. Kerr’s remarks about the constitution of these wines, that 
if there is anything in what you may call similitude and in 
pure symbolism, as represented in the use of wine on the solemn 
occasion to which he refers, all the question of similitude turns 
towards a wine that is expressed simply from the grape. I think 
there is a passage in the service which says: ‘This is My blood.’ 
Now, if you take that at all as meaning anything symbolic, then 
* “ Pure Wino, Fermented Wine, and other Alcoholic Drinks, 
in the Light of the New Dispensation.” New York, 1880, pp. 
30-32. The Wine Question. 
327 
you have a common-sense view in the similitude which does 
really exist between the expressed juice of the wine and Iiis 
blood. That is strictly true. If you look at this table on the 
wall, showing the compositions of the two kinds of wine, the 
one fermented, and the other unfermented, you will see that the 
constituent parts actually of blood and of the expressed wine 
are strikingly analogous. One of the most important emblems 
of the blood, that which keeps it together, that which Plato 
speaks of as ‘ the plastic part of the blood,’ is the fibrine, and 
that is represented in the gluten of the unfermented wine. If 
we eome to the nourishing part of the blood, that which we call 
the mother of the tissues, we find it in the unfermented grape, 
in the albumen, and that is also present in the blood; and 
if wo come to all the salts, there they are in the blood, and the 
proportion is nearly the same in the unfermented wine as in the 
blood ; and if we come to the parts of the wine which go to sup- 
port the respiration of the body, we find them in the sugar. 
Really and truly on a question of symbolism, if there be any- 
thing at all in that, the argument is all in favor of the use of un- 
fermented wine. But, again, I would put it in this way in sup- 
port of Dr. Kerr. Presuming that you want the real thing that 
was fermented for your purposes, I should say scientifically that 
you could not go to that thing in its purest form. If you really 
do want to put a fermented substance forward, then you should 
put it forward in all its purity. The logical argument would 
be not to take an irregular substance which is called wine, and 
which may contain half a dozen things that are altogether 
apart from the real thing, but the point would be to take an 
actually pure, simple, fermented substance altogether free from 
everything except the fermented substance, the completed pro- 
cess and water. Yet, I suppose, if anything of that kind were 
put forward in the church, it would be rebelled at universally 
No one would think of doing it. Yet that is what should be 
done logically, if this is to be the thing. You either want a 
fermented or unfermeuted agent. If it be decided that a fer- 
mented agent is wanted, take it in all its purity ; if an unfer- 
mented agent, take that which is the natural, simple expression 
of the juice of the grape—the rich wine. 
“There is another view I might take about it. I believe 
bread is used in the same way. There are certain varieties of 
bread, but suppose by any kind of tradition or superstition or 
popular use, a bread was used that produced mischief to certain 
people. There is a form of rye bread, which when taken, pro- 328 
Alcohol in Society. 
duces in some persons, a singular condition of disease of a cere- 
bro-spinal nature, that ends in mortification of the extremities 
of the body. Presuming it became a fashion in the churches to 
use bread of that kind, and it was found that it produced a cer- 
tain amount of disease in the community who partook of it— 
and certainly it would never produce anything like the amount 
of disease that might be produced by wine—yet if that were 
suggested, all that kind of bread would be put away entirely. 
The general term bread, would be used to give the best and 
simplest and purest bread, and that would be taken and used 
which was perfectly harmless. I think that samo argument 
might apply very well to wine—to take that wine which is per- 
fectly harmless, and that would be unfermented wine,” 
In addition to the foregoing, there is one other consider- 
ation that ought to weigh on the minds of all Christian 
people, and that is, that it is not safe, especially for re- 
formed men, to run the risk of awakening old appetites 
and longings by participating in fermented wine at the 
Lord’s Supper. It is common for many good people to 
regard tins caution as unfounded, if not irrational; and for 
some to even say that it is expressing a doubt of the power 
of God’s grace in the heart of a converted man, to hint at 
the possibility of danger of this kind to one who has been 
truly regenerated ; but, leaving this latter objection to be 
considered farther on, we now propose to show, by the tes- 
timony of those best competent to speak on this matter, that 
we are not speaking of an imaginary, but of a real danger. 
James Parton, in his paper on “ Inebriate Asylums and 
a Visit to one,” says : 
“From conversation with the inmates of the Inebriate Asy- 
lum, I am confident that Mr. Greeley’s assertion with regard to 
the wine given at the Communion is correct. That sip might 
be enough to awaken the desire. The mere odor of the wine 
filling the church might be too much for some men. 
“There appears to be a physical cause for this extreme sus- 
ceptibility. Dr. Day has once had the opportunity to examine 
the brain of a man who, after having been a drunkard, re- 
formed, and lived for some years a tetotaller. He found, to his 
surprise, that the globules of the brain had not shrunk to their The Wine Question. 
329 
natural size. They didnot exhibit the inflammation of the drunk- 
ard’s brain, but they were still enlarged, and seemed ready on 
the instant to absorb the fumes of alcohol, and resume their 
former condition. He thought he saw in this morbid state of 
the brain, the physical part of the reason why a man who has 
once been a drunkard can never again, as long as he lives, safely 
take one drop of any alcoholic liquor. He thought he saw why 
a glass of wine puts the man back instantly to where he was 
when he drank all the time. He saw the citadel free from the 
enemy, swept and clean, but undefended, incapable of defence, 
and its doors opened wide to the enemy’s return ; so that there 
was no safety, except in keeping the foe at a distance, away be- 
yond the outermost wall.”—(“ Smoking and Drinking,” p. 109.) 
Dr. Kerr, speaking from his own professional experience, 
and the testimonies of others, furnishes the following serious 
warning: 
“ Some of the rescued from the bondage of strong drink, have 
little or no craving after the first few days. With more, the 
craving either gradually subsides, or is overcome by moral and 
religious influences. But with many the craving is ever latent, 
and the old unhallowed fire ready to be rekindled by the small- 
est sip of the weakest form of an intoxicating liquor. The sore 
of intemperance but too often leaves a scar which needs but a 
slight application ofthe old stimulant to break out afresh in all 
its pristine virulence. Not a few victims saved through ab- 
stinence from this vice, and crime, and sin, have, after manful- 
ly resisting the temptations of the world for years, been tempted 
again to ruin by partaking of alcoholic wine at the Holy Com- 
munion, in which they had with difficulty been persuaded to 
join, by an unenlightened, though zealous Christian minister. 
Of the victims who have met so sad a fate, we may indeed say, 
in the words of the poet, that they were— 
1 Hearts that the world in vain had tried, 
And sorrow but more closely tied ; 
That stood the storm when waves were rough, 
Then in a sunny hour fell off, 
Like ships that have gone down at sea, 
When heaven was all tranquillity.’ 
A Christian worker, A., not believing in the danger of alco- 
holic wine at the sacrament to those who have ever fallen under 
the power of drink, often remonstrated with a fellow Christian 330 
Alcohol in Society. 
worker, B., on the latter’s persistent absence from the Commu- 
nion. A. knew the reason, which was that B. had once been 
a slave to drinking, and though rescued from its thraldom and 
power, dreaded exposure to the old temptation, by partaking 
of ever so small a quantity of intoxicating liquor. B. had been 
appointed by those who knew him well, and had perfect confi- 
dence in his sobriety and conversion, to the responsible posi- 
tiou of Scripture reader to St. ’s Church. B. was closely al- 
lied with A. in all Church fellowship, except the Communion. 
A. repeatedly urged B. ‘ to trust to the grace of God/ reproach- 
ing the latter with want of faith in God’s power to uphold 
him. 
“A. further strongly urged the inconsistency of B.’s absenting 
himself from an ordinance, at which, in his public position, he 
ought rather to advocate attendance. At length A. invited B. 
to spend a Sunday at the former’s house, suggesting that if they 
together received the sacrament and returned home there could 
be no danger. So the matter was settled. Immediately after 
Communion, A., being called, crossed the Church was engaged 
only for a minute, and returned to the pew to find his friend B. 
gone ! A. searched up and down for a long time with dreadful 
misgiving, and, late at night, found B. mad with drink in a 
gin-shop near the church. Will it surprise you to hear A’s. sol- 
emn declaration, ‘ Never again will I ask any one to take fer- 
mented wine, even at the Communion ! ’ This is but a type of 
many of such cases. Owing to the fear of the facts becoming 
known, it is difficult to obtain permission from the friends, to 
mention names ; but in this case, I am at liberty to disclose my 
authority to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a guarantee of the 
facts. 
“As we ponder over such harrowing tragedies, can we won- 
der that a distinguished member of the non-abstaining section 
of the Church Temperance Society, a magistrate and a medical 
practitioner of note—Dr. Alfred Carpenter, President of the 
Council of the British Medical Association—recently declared, 
at a medical discussion on Dipsomania, that for habitual drunk- 
ards, alcohol was ‘ the very devil/ and ought to be religiously 
shunned by all such. (‘Med. Temp. Jour./ No. xlviii., July, 
1881.) Though this is language I would not myself care to use, I 
am bound to confess that there is more truth than poetry in the 
description. Alcohol is a veritable physical demon which, once 
introduced into the blood of many a reformed inebriate, even 
after the lapse of a long term of strict sobriety, may rage through The Wine Question. 
331 
his veins like a consuming fire, and hurry him into the lowest 
depths of his long abandoned, and sincerely repented of sin. 
“ Not for a moment would I seek to blame the clergy for the 
sacramental use of a narcotic poison, fraught with peril to the 
bodily and Christian life of the reformed drunkard. We all 
have been culpable, and most of all, we of the medical profess- 
ion, who, as men of learning and science, ought to have taught 
long ago that which we as a profession, are only beginning to 
teach now, the poisonous nature and influence of alcohol. It is 
difficult for any one, inexperienced in the treatment of dipsoma- 
nia, to realize the truth. But so real is the danger that, Church- 
man as I am, even when a drinker myself, I never allowed any 
reformed drunkard to go near a Communion table where an in- 
toxicating liquid was presented. In this practice I am sup- 
ported by Dr. Richardson, Dr. Fergus, Surgeon-General Fran- 
cis, and other experts in the higher ranks of the medical profess- 
ion. I would as soon have thought of putting a loaded pistol 
in the hands of a maniac in a lucid interval, bidding him take 
care not to shoot himself. 
“Well might the pious and venerable Archdeacon Jeffreys 
testify: ‘Many years’ experience of the cases of reformed 
drunkards has convinced me that the danger is real; and I feel 
a miserable misgiving of heart every time I administer the sac- 
rament to one of those unhappy beings in an intoxicating 
drink.’ 
“ Says Dr. Richardson: ‘As to the practical point whether 
there is danger in this matter of using wine at the Sacrament. 
Yes! I say there is! I say the danger is very great indeed in re- 
gard to a considerable number of people. The clergy have 
made to them certain statements by those who consult them, 
and we have too. The physicians’ room is, in fact, a confession 
al. Very often statements are made to us physicians which arc- 
made to none other. In respect of this very question, hardly a 
month passes but some one speaks to me on this very point 
which Dr. Kerr has brought forward. I could at this moment, 
if it were right to do so, name at least ten persons who wished 
to accept the Communion, and who do not go to it from the 
fear lest they should fall back into those ways from which they 
have been rescued by the influence of friends or physicians or 
from other causes. Well, this is a very important point indeed 
to bear in mind. I don’t know whether I have ever known a 
person myself go back from that cause. I invariably tell them 
not to run the risk, and therefore I have not had the opportuni- 332 
Alcohol in Society. 
ty of seeing, and never will have. If a person comes and asks 
me for his body’s health to tell him what is right, and I see a 
risk even in his accepting that part of the service of the church, 
I tell him not to take that risk, and I always shall. It remains 
therefore, for the very careful consideration of all who arc in- 
terested in this question, whether they cannot meet those who 
are working, as we are, by the general introduction of this par- 
ticular form of unfermented and harmless wine into the service V 
“ Address at Lecture to Church Homiletical Society, Nov. 1, 
1881.” 
“ Dr. Andrew Fergus, Member General Medical Council, ex- 
President Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, says: * In the 
case of a Dipsomaniac who followed my prescription of total 
and complete abstinence for life, I was asked by the patient’s 
wife if it would be safe to allow him to communicate. I said, 
‘ No,’ and advised her to leave town for a few days, so as to be 
from home at the time. So far as I can remember, this is 
the only case in which I have ordered a person to abstain from 
the communion for fear of the small quantity of wine raising 
the craving. I have had many other cases, in which, if I had 
been asked the question, my advice would have been to stay 
away.’—(Letter to Author, 13th Oct., 1881.) 
“ Said Surgeon-General C. R. Francis, M.B., F.R.C.S., late 
Principal Calcutta Medical College: ‘ I think it my duty to 
bear testimony to what Dr. Norman Kerr has said with refer- 
ence to the danger drunkards meet when they are called 
upon to drink fermented wine at the Lord’s Table. Recently 
there has come under my observation, a case in point where a 
lady somewhat fond of wine, though not a drunkard, took to 
drinking, at my recommendation, Wright’s unfermented wine. 
Lately, she went to a place of worship where fermented wine 
was drank, and came back to tell me, the following day, that 
she felt all the old feeling coming back. In fact it renewed the 
appetite; and it is a very dangerous precipice altogether upon 
which the communicants are called to tread.’ ”—(Address at 
Lecture to Homiletical Society, November 1, 1881.) 
Such evidence as this it is wise for us to heed, and to 
be guided by it in the provision which we make for the 
celebration of the holiest and most significant ordinance of 
the gospel. 
There is still one other reason why intoxicating wine The Wine Question. 
333 
should be banished from the Lord’s Table; and this, since 
it is so important, both as to its basis and proofs, we also 
prefer shall be stated by Dr. Kerr. We commend what 
follows to the attention of all, and especially to such of 
our readers as may recall what we have elsewhere said on 
the subject of Heredity : 
“ There is yet stronger reason for the substitution of innocent 
unintoxicating wine at the Lord’s Table, in the place of the 
poisonous intoxicating wine we, in modern times, have been 
accustomed to use. The saddest phase of the whole mournful 
subject of intemperance is the operation of the dread law of 
heredity in alcohol. This is no baseless theory, no ‘bodiless 
creation’ begotten of the exuberance of an abstinent phantasy. 
It is no phantom of a nephalian brain, but a stem, sad reality. 
As a celebrated non-abstainer, Dr. A. Clark, recently remarked: 
‘ The sins of the fathers, in this respect, are visited upon the 
children, unto the third and fourth generation.’ 
“ Again, Dr. Clark says that as soon as a man begins to take 
one drop more than the physiological quantity, the desire of 
alcohol is not only begotten in him, but becomes a part of his 
very nature—that nature so formed by his acts being calculated 
to inflict ‘curses inexpressible’ upon the earth, when handed 
down to the generations that are to follow after him, as ‘ part 
and parcel of their being.’ 
“This is an opinion shared by Aristotle, Plutarch, Lanceraux, 
Rousel, Richardson, Lunier, in fact by all who have made 
heredity a subject of special study. As clear to me as are the 
evidences of the hereditary transmission of feature, and such 
diseases as gout and cancer, are the evidences of the hereditary 
transmission, not only of the diseased conditions induced by 
drink, but of the drink crave itself. The latter is, so to speak, 
‘A mingled madness in the blood.’ 
A taint inherent in the very nature, a pent-up stream, -which 
at the lightest stimulus of alcohol is but too apt to 
1 Burst its confinement with impetuous sway, 
O’erswell all bounds, and hear even life away.’ 
“Not a week passes in which unmistakable proofs of the vi- 
tality of this immutable natural law do not tear my very heart 
strings. In one distressing case of confirmed inebriety, which 334 
Alcohol in Society. 
had continued for two years, a pleasant and talented girl of the 
tender age of fifteen, owed her inherited disease to both father 
and mother. Iu another case, that of a gen'al and accomplished 
scholar, the inclination descended from both parents. In yet 
another instance, in the practice of a medical friend, the grand- 
father had so indelibly stamped upon his desceudants this 
subtle proclivity, that on the first occasion on which his grand- 
son, then two years old, was offered intoxicating wine, the little 
fellow became intoxicated. On a review of 252 cases of habit- 
ual inebriety, this was found to be a family failing with no less 
than 116. 
“ That certain individuals are predisposed to excess in alco- 
hol, no medical practitioner and no Christian minister should 
ever forget. Such can abstain and can drink to excess, but drink 
moderately they cannot. To me there is no nobler sight on 
earth than men and women, sometimes of towering intellect 
and lofty aspirations, struggling all their life through against 
their concealed and hereditary foe. All honor be to them for 
their unremitting and gallant efforts to keep their unrelenting 
enemy at bay; but not till life’s fitful fever is over dare they 
relax their vigilance: for so long as the warm blood courses 
through their veins, does the hidden fire smoulder in their 
bosom, and they are ever 
u * As a good man, with dark strivings torn.’ 
1‘ For all such, the only safety is in absolute and uncondi- 
tional abstinence. The intoxicating principle found in the 
oldest and most delicate fermented wines, as in the strongest 
and most fiery ardent spirits, must be scrupulously avoided. 
In every intoxicating draught lurks their implacable foe. 
“ What lends a yet more serious aspect to these considerations 
is that, like the Americans, we live physically and mentally at 
so fast a pace that every year we are becoming more and more 
intolerant of alcohol. Thus every succeeding generation is less 
aud less able to resist the witchery of its charms, and the po- 
tency of its action. 
“ Let there be no misapprehension. Individually, I care 
little about the Communion Wine Question. The liquid is 
nothing to me, for I look upon the sacrament as a spiritual act. 
I never have communicated in unfermented wine. I have 
always commuuicated, and probably may always do so, in fer- 
mented wine Nor bas the question any interest for me on its The Wine Question. 
335 
merits. I care nothing about what you do with the strong 
who are free from any inherited taint of alcohol But my work 
as a physician with inebriate patients is marred, my labor as 
a Christian among the intemperate is to some extent undone, 
by the present very general use of intoxicating wine at the 
Communion The case of the reformed drunkard is so press- 
ing, the plight of the inheritor of the hereditary drink cravo 
is so piteous, that 
“ * I dare no longer stand in silence. Dare 
No longer see thy wandering on in darkness, 
Nor pluck the bandage from thine eyes.’ 
“At present what is the fact? Many of the reformed, who 
regularly worship at an established church, are compelled in 
sheer self-defence, either to deprive themselves altogether of 
the privilege of Communion, or to resort for that purpose (as in 
some cases they do to my personal knowledge) to some Noncon- 
formist chapel, where unmtoxicating wine is used. 
“ It is for the poor, the helpless, and the weak, that I plead; 
not for mercy, but for justice; not for pity, hut for the righting 
of a wrong. The repentant dipsomaniac, and the yet unfallen 
hereditary legatee of alcohol, are, as a physician, my peculiar 
care; and to whatever there is of honor, of equity, and of 
righteousness, in the visible Church of Christ, do I with confi- 
dence appeal to make her most sacred services safe for these weak 
brethren, by the celebration of the Lord’s Supper with health- 
ful, innocent, unintoxicating wine ”—(“ Wine, Scriptural and 
Ecclesiastical.") 
To this no more need be added We conclude here, 
therefore, what we have to say on this general subject of 
fermented and unfermented wines, commending the facts 
which have been adduced, to the attention of the thought- 
ful ) and especially desiring that Christian believers, of 
whatever sect or name, may be led to see their duty in re- 
gard to the Lord’s Supper, and to exert their influence to 
remove the stumbling-bloch of intoxicating wine out of the 
path of the u weak brethren for whom Christ died,'*7 V. 
OLD AND NEW OBJECTIONS. 
Objections to Total Abstinence Considered—A Confession of 
Weakness, and of the Insufficiency of the Grace of God— 
Alcohol is a Good Creature of God—Necessary in Labor, 
and as a Protection from Extreme Heat and Cold—Modera- 
tion is True Temperance—The Pledge an Injury to Man- 
hood—Causes of Intemperance—Custom—Example—Desire 
of Excitement—The Traffic Authorized by Law—Total 
Abstinence and Prohibition the Only Remedy for Intemper- 
ance-Failure of all License Laws—Prohibition Consistent 
with the End and Object of Government—Objections to 
Prohibition—An Infringement of Liberty—The Traffic a 
Source of Revenue—A Failure wherever it is Tried—Men 
Cannot be made Sober by Legislation—A Plea for Constitu- 
tional Prohibition. 
I, TV TOTWITHSTANDING- the evidences which meet 
J. \| men at every hand, that the use of alcoholic bev- 
erages leads to all manner of evil, defiling and debasing 
him who falls into the habit of imbibing them ; cursing 
his home, wrecking his reputation, and making him a pest 
in society ; still there are many who object to total absti- 
nence ; some of whom, men of good standing in society, do 
no little by their attitude to impede the Temperance cause - 
Some of the most common of these objections we will now 
proceed to consider, and, if possible, lay before the reader 
sufficient reasons to break their force and influence. 
(1.) One that is urged with quite as much assurance as 
[336] Old and New Objections. 
337 
any, and under the authority of reputable names, is put 
sometimes in this form : “ Total abstinence is a confession 
of weakness, incompatible with the Scripture exhortations 
to 1 resist evil/ and to rely on the 1 grace of God/ '’ Some- 
times it takes the form : u Keligion is enough The grace 
of God in a man’s heart will surely keep him from sin, and 
you are attempting to put something in the place of relig 
ion.” 
So great—and doubtless we should add, so good—a man 
as Dean Alford, in bis comment on Christ’s changing water 
into wine (John ii, 6-11), uses this strange language, in 
the line of this objection : 
“ He who creates abundance enough in this earth to ‘ put 
temptation in men’s way,’ acted on this occasion analogously 
with His known method of dealing The Lord here 
most effectually, and once for all, stamps with His condemna- 
tion that false system of moral reformation, which would com- 
mence by pledges to abstain from intoxicating liquors He 
pours out His bounty for all, and He vouchsafes IIis grace to 
each for guidance; and to endeavor to evade the work which 
He has appointed for each man, by refusing tbe bounty, to save 
the trouble of seeking the grace, is an attempt which must ever 
end in degradation of the individual motives, and m social de- 
moralization, whatever present apparent effects may follow its 
first promulgation. One visible sign of this degradation, in its 
intellectual form, is the miserable attempt made by some of the 
advocates of this movement, to show that the wine here and in 
other places of Scripture, is unfermented wine, not possessing 
the power of intoxication.” 
But what if the “ miserable attempt ” shall disclose, as 
we think it has, a scholarship enlisted in it quite as eminent 
as any that opposes it; and produce a history giving positive 
assurance that our Lord, acting as his countrymen after the 
flesh act on such occasions, could not have produced an in- 
toxicating wine; what is the fit word with which to charac- 
terize the u attempt” of him who, like this learned com- 
mentator, assumes, wholly without proof borrowed either 338 
Alcohol in Society. 
from scholarship or history, that it was intoxicating wane ? 
The “degradation” manifest in such a contrast is to be 
coveted rather than reproved, 
What a strange comment on the words and work of 
Christ we have in the above l Believing, as the Dean does, 
in the numerical oneness of God and Christ, the work of 
the one being in every case the work of the other, what can 
he mean by the assertion that Christ, in creating intoxicat- 
ing wine, “ acted analogously with his hnown method of 
dealing (the italicizing is the Dean’s), of putting “tempta- 
tion in men’s way ” ? On what other occasion on record, 
or imaginable, did God ever create and place directly in 
man's way, by His own hand, an intoxicating wine, or in- 
toxicating beverage of any kind ? 
At wliat other time did He who gives us the command 
not to say, “ I am tempted of God/’ do a thing analogous 
to this of making intoxicating wine, and commanding that 
it be borne to the Governor of the feast, for him to supply 
his guests with ? Or when did God ever create intoxicating 
beverages to lie even indirectly in man’s way ? Who is 
warranted in saying that alcohol, produced only by man’s 
intervention, in arresting the process of decay, is God’s 
“ bounty ” ? Yet the Dean says of alcohol, “ He pours out 
His bounty for all, and He vouchsafes His grace to each 
for guidance; and to endeavor to evade the work which 
He has appointed for each man, by refusing the bounty, to 
save the trouble of seeking the grace, is an attempt which 
must ever end in degradation,” &c. Does this really mean 
what it says: that intoxicating wine is God’s “ bounty,” 
and that he wTho pledges himself not to drink it seeks to 
evade God’s grace, and brings himself to degradation? 
What a sentence of condemnation on Samuel, Samson, John 
the Baptist, and all the Nazarites who were called of God 
in days of old ! What condemnation, too, of the thousands 
who through the Temperance Reformation have been 
brought into the Christian Church. Old and New Objections. 
33S 
“ David Naismith, the humble yet illustrious founder of the 
London City Mission, testifies that he regarded it ‘ as a duty 
to aid a work (the temperance movement) which is such a pow- 
erful auxiliary to the extension of the kingdom of Christ.’ The 
late Bishop of London said, ‘ After the most mature deliberation 
1 am convinced that no scheme has ever been devised more aux- 
iliary to the great ends of religion than that of the formation of 
temperance societies.’ And another occupant of the Episcopal 
bench, Dr. Stanley, of Norwich, spoke yet more pointedly aud 
plainly in the House of Lords : ‘ I have witnessed, not only in- 
dividuals, but masses of persons, who before had been heedless, 
profligate, and irreligious, turning over a new life when they 
became members of temperance societies; and those who had 
never frequented places of worship before, constantly attend- 
ing them, after joining this society.’ Honestly adding, ‘My 
evidence on this subject ought to have some weight, as 1 com- 
menced’ (like Mrs. Wightman) ‘by opposing total abstinence 
societies, but ended in being convinced of their utility.’ 
*' * Several members of my church,' says Eev. Newman Hall, 
‘ were plunged in the worst kind of infidelity, the infidelity of 
habitual profligacy, until grappled with by total abstinence. 
Having then become sober, they are now, also, through tlie 
grace of God, living a righteous and godly life.' (‘ Nephalism,’ 
p 170.) This is the testimony from abroad. A volume would 
not contain the testimony that could be furnished in this land. 
Facts as well as reason are therefore conclusive answers to the 
declarations of Dean Alford. Indeed, the experience of every 
man who has attempted reformation from the use of intoxicat- 
ing beverages, may be appealed to, to show that * the law in 
our members' is never so chained or held down by grace, that 
we can with impunity tamper with that element which so mm • 
isters to the gratification of our lower nature only. God has 
not announced that grace takes the poison from our bodies, 
placed there by our vicious indulgences; much less has He 
given assurance that grace renders the imbibing of fresh poison 
harmless. It is unwarranted presumption, therefore, and not 
faith, nor any other religious exercise, which prompts to indul - 
gence m that which intoxicates, just as it would have been pre- 
sumption, not faith, a 1 tempting,' not a trusting of God, in 
Jesus to have violated the law of nature by leaping from the 
pinnacle of the temple.” 
Rev. Robert Hall’s reply to one of his parish whom he 
was warning against the use of intoxicants, and who re- 340 
Alcohol in Society. 
torted that there was no danger, as he was kept by the 
grace of God, aptly applies to all who put in that plea: 
that he feared that the other had “kept very little of the 
grace : ” for all who insist on “ grace,” as a security in self 
indulgence, betray a strange ignorance of the Divine cau 
tion to watch and pray lest they be led into temptation ; 
and have need to be reminded of the warning given by Paul 
to the presumptuous in his day : “ Let him that thinketh 
he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” 
Dr. Kerr very wisely says on this subject: 
‘'Over and above the moral and spiritual aspect of intemper- 
ance, there is the physical aspect. Beside drunkenness the sin, 
there is drunkenness the disease. The soul of the inebriate 
may he regenerate, his spirit may he horn again, and the moral 
disease cured by the unerring skill of the Great Physician; but 
not unseldom 
* The senses still are in the bonds, although 
Bleeding, the soul hath freed itself,' 
“ The physical footprints of alcohol on the body and brain of 
man, can be effaced by no moral or religious agency. Pervert- 
ed nutrition and altered structure can no more thus be restored 
to their normal condition, than can conversion replace a tooth 
which has been knocked out, or an arm which has been cut off. 
With reference to the narcotic which 4 biteth like a serpent, 
and stingeth like an adder/ it may truly be said of the tissues of 
the dipsomaniac that4 the trail of the serpent is over them all/*' 
(Pp. 95, 96.) 
The following testimonies are all-important, Rev. T. 
L. Cuyler, D. D., writes to the New York “ Evangelist” : 
11 Mi. Gougli tells me tliat even the smell of brandy (a purely 
pbysieiaJ sensation) would arouse tbe demon of desire for 
drink in his own frame. Mr. Gough has been a sturdy, praying 
Christian for over thirty years. Once during his Christian life 
he was wickedly ‘ drugged’ in a soda-shop in New York, and 
under the mania of his aroused appetite, he drank like a beast 
for several days. During the awful suspense attending his dis- 
appearance, I said to Dr. Hodge (at Princeton). * My hope for 
my friend, Gough, is that he is a child of God, and, therefore, Old and New Objections. 
341 
has not gone back to his cups/ 4 Ahf ’ replied Dr. Hodge, with 
a shake of his head, 4 a drunkard’s appetite for drink is often a 
disease, a mania, that God’s grace does not reach any more 
than it does a fever, or a fit of insanity.’ 
“ Mr. Gough, furthermore, told me lately that several inebri- 
ates, who had loudly proclaimed that 4 conversion had extin 
gnished their appetite,’ have gone back to their old debaucher 
les. A friend of mine often told us, in my church prayer- 
meetings, that the 4 grace of Jesus Christ had taken away his 
appetite for drink entirely/ That poor man, after two years of 
Christian sobriety, went back to his cups, and died last year 
of delirium tremens ! I could multiply these painful examples 
by the score. 
44 What is their meaning ? Do they mean that no drunkard 
can conquer his old appetite by reliance on divine grace ? No ; 
but they do prove that to conquer or successfully resist an 
appetite is one thing, and to have that appetite entirely obli- 
terated is an entirely different thing. God gave Paul grace to 
fight down his lusts, hut God never took physical lusts so en- 
tirely out of Paul that he had nothing left to fight. Precisely 
so does God impart to a truly converted inebriate the divine 
strength to 4 keep under ’ a depraved lust for alcohol. This is 
the ‘drunkard’s greatest hope’—nay, his only hope. But let 
the converted man beware how he falls into the dangerous 
delusion that his old enemy is entirely dead, and dead for- 
ever. 
44 I have been betrayed into this length and warmth of dis 
cussion because the subject is one of vital moment, and good 
men are easily caught by a plausible theory. The simple, sol 
emn truth is that few genuine drunkards are ever permanently 
reformed ; and that is an overwhelming argument for total ab- 
stinence from the start. God never intended that when a man 
wantonly throws himself into the rapids, he should have an 
easy time in swimming ashore from the cataract.” 
In a very suggestive paper read at the annual meeting 
of the 11 American Association for the Cure of Inebriates,” 
the Rev. J. Willett, Superintendent of the Kings County 
(N Y.) Inebriates' Home, referring to the alleged u instan- 
taneous cure of the drunkard’s diseased appetite/’ by u su- 
pernatural agency,” says i 342 
Alcohol in Society. 
“According to this new order of teachers, the days of mira- 
cles must have come back to us, and, by a special dispensation, 
the natural laws are to be suspended in favor of every toper 
who has inflicted upon himself a diseased appetite for alcohol. 
Relying on the sure and certain teachings of Divine Writ, con- 
firmed by our experience and observations, we had come to the 
conclusion that ‘ in the physical world there is no forgiveness 
of sins,’ or, as the inspired writer states it, * Whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that sowetli to his flesh 
shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the 
Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’ ” 
And again : 
“Instead of teaching him to pray for the destruction of the 
appetite, it is our business to faithfully warn him (the drunk- 
ard) that all he has a right to hope for or expect, is the contin- 
ual impartatiou of God’s grace, and that this will be all-suffi- 
cient to control and keep in subjection his besetment; but that 
this grace will only be continued so long as he seeks after God 
with his whole heart.” 
(2.) Another objection is based on a misapplication of the 
declaration of Scripture : “ Every creature of God is good, 
and to be received with thanksgiving.” 1 Tim. iv. 4. A 
misapplication, for what Paul was contending for was sim- 
ply that all legal and ceremonial distinctions between clean 
and unclean meats were abolished, and, therefore, nothing 
was to be refused on the ground of those old distinctions. 
To give force to the objection as now urged would be equiva- 
lent to making Paul teach in this case that meats chemi- 
cally changed by putrefaction were as wholesome as those 
which were uncorrupted by decay. This no one would 
concede to be his meaning. Why, then, shall we apply 
the principle which Paul does set forth, to justify the use 
of that which is not alcohol till decay has changed the 
chemical constituents of the rotting grains, or grape-juice, 
from which alcohol is evolved? Nobody can claim that 
alcohol is a creature of God in the sense in which an ani- 
mal is a creature of God. Sir Humphrey Davy says of it: Old and New Objections. 
343 
11 It has never been found ready formed in plants.” (“ Agri- 
cul. Chem.” p. 126.) 
Count Cliaptal declares, u Nature never forms spirituous 
liquors; she rots the grape upon the branch, but it is art 
which converts the juice into wine.” Professor Liebig 
concurs in this view. 
Rev. Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, pithily says: “ I have heard 
a man with a bottle of whiskey before him, have the impudence 
to say, ‘ Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be re- 
fused, if it be received with thanksgiving.’ And he would per- 
suade me that what was made in the stillpot was a creature of 
God. In one sense it is so, but in the same sense so is arsenic, 
so is oil of vitriol, so is prussic acid. Think of a fellow tossing 
off a glass of vitriol, and excusing himself by saying that it is a 
creature of God. Whiskey is good in its own place. There is 
nothing like whiskey in this world for preserving a man when 
he is dead. But it is one of the worst things in the world for 
preserving a man when he is living. If you want to keep a 
dead man, put him in whiskey. If you want to kill a living 
man, put the whiskey into him.” 
(3.) A very common objection to Total Abstinence, is 
that alcoholic drinks are necessary in hard labor, or to 
protect from great beat, cold, or unhealthy occupations. 
In considering this objection we cannot do better than to 
draw somewhat largely from the treatment of it in Wash- 
ington Gladden’s book on “Working People and their 
Employers.” He says: 
“ In forming our judgment on this point, it is necessary, of 
course, to make a wide induction of facts. You can quote to 
me instances of individual drinkers who have lived to a great 
age, and who have performed much labor, and endured many 
hardships; hut concerning all such cases I should ask you two 
questions: First, are you sure that they are not exceptions to a 
general rule? Second, how do you know they would not have 
lived longer, done more work, and endured more hardships, if 
they had abstained from strong drink? A single fact is not 
enough to establish a scientific law. You must have a wide 
knowledge of facts hearing upon the case, and your verdict 
must be in accordance with the weight of evidence. Attempts 344 
Alcohol in Society. 
have been made to reach certainty in this matter, by a careful 
collation of facts. 
“ A gentleman in Uxbridge, Eng., kept account for a whole 
year of the work done by two gangs of brickmakers, one of 
which was composed of beer-drinkers, the other of total abstain- 
ers. Here is the result: 
“ Out of upwards of 23,000,000 of bricks made in 1841 by the 
largest maker in the neighborhood, the average per man made 
by the beer-drinkers was 760,269, while the average for the tee- 
totallers was 795,400, which is 35,131 in favor of the latter. 
The highest number made by a beer-drinker was 880,000; the 
highest number made by a teetotaler was 890,000, leaving 10,- 
000 in favor of the teetotaller. The lowest number made by a 
beer-drinker was 695,000 ; the lowest number made by a teeto- 
taller was 746,000 leaving 87,000 in favor of the teetotaller. 
“ From another group of workers in a very different field, we 
get the same testimony. The late Richard Cobden, speaking on 
one occasion of the severe labors of the parliament that debated 
the corn-laws, mentioned that out of 658 members, two gentle- 
men, Col. Thompson and Mr. Brotherton, endured the long sit- 
tings and wearisome debates of that body with greater ease 
than any other members, and they were both total abstainers. 
“ I have no statistics to present with reference to the soldiers 
in the late war; hut considerable observation of their habits, 
and inquiry among them, satisfied me that the fatigue of the 
hard marches were best born by men who never tasted intoxi- 
cating liquors. A single witness will not prove the case, as I 
have admitted ; but a witness whose testimony contradicts his 
inclinations has some special claims upon our credit. One of the 
bravest and best of the young officers of the Army of the Poto- 
mac, who was not during the war, and is not now, a total ab- 
stainer, was justifying, in a conversation with me, his use of 
strong drink. He drank it, he said, because he liked it, and 
that was reason enough. ‘But, did you use it in the army?’ I 
asked. ‘ I did,’ he answered, ‘ except on the heavy marches. 
Then I never touched a drop of whiskey. I found that it would 
not do. The men who stimulated always played out sooner 
than the men who abstained.’ 
‘ ‘ In anotlier quarter we find an accumulation of weighty evi- 
dence. That is the testimony of the athletes, the oarsmen, the 
pugilists, the hall-players, the pedestrians, all the men who 
have made it the study and business of their lives to secure 
the most perfect muscular development, from the days of Old and New Objections. 
345 
the Olympic races, down to the present time. Their testi- 
mony is very nearly uniform, that the highest degree of physi- 
cal strength is impossible to one who drinks even moderately. 
The trainers of these athletes have always insisted that their 
men shall abstain from even the mildest forms of alcoholic 
liquors. 
“ The literature of the ancients is full of references to the 
abstemious practice of the athletes. Thus Epictetus says: ‘ Do 
you wish to gain the prize at the Olympic games ? Consider 
the requisite preparations and the consequence. You must ob- 
serve a strict regimen. .... You must take no wine as 
usual; you must put yourself under a pugilist as under a physi- 
cian, and afterward enter the lists.’ Thus Horace, as trans- 
lated by Francis, bears witness in his essay on ‘ The Art of 
Poetry.’ 
‘ A youth who hopes the Olympic prize to gain, 
All arts must try, and every toil sustain; 
The extremes of heat and cold must often prove, 
And shun the weakening joys of wine and love.’ 
“A few of the trainers have lately attempted to introduce 
beer into the regimen of the oarsmen, but if I am rightly in- 
formed, the innovation has not been successful. The experi- 
ence of so many generations in such a matter is not likely to 
lead us astray, and it all helps to confirm the truth of the con- 
fession of Tom Sayres: 1 I’m no teetotaller; but when I’ve any 
business to do, there’s nothing like water and the dumb-bells.’ 
“One of the delusions most widely prevalent with regard to 
alcoholic liquors, is that they help to keep the body warm. 
Liebig classes them among ‘ respiratory foods/ and maintains 
that they act like fat, and similar substances, as fuel to increase 
the heat of the body. Every habitual drinker will tell you that 
they keep him warm on a cold day, and if you ask him how he 
knows, he will tell you that he knows by his feelings. So far 
as Liebig is concerned, his theory is not now accepted by the 
highest authorities. Dr. James C. White, and Dr. Edward H. 
Clarke, both declared before the Massachusetts’ Legislative 
Committee, that it was * undemonstrated.’ And so far as the 
drinker is concerned, it is sufficient to say that the feelings are 
not always trustworthy guides. You are not always warmest 
when you feel warmest. The only safe guide is the thermom- 
eter. And if any man will place the bulb of a thermometer in 
the current of his breath, or under his tongue, and pote the 346 
Alcohol in Society. 
temperature of his breath and of his blood before drinking a 
glass of brandy, and again a short time after drinking it, he 
will find that the temperature of bis body is perceptibly lower- 
ed by the stimulant. Travellers in the Arctic regions report 
that the use of strong drink lessens a man’s power to endure 
hunger, and cold, and fatigue. 
“Mr. Parton, in his essay entitled ‘ Will tlie Coming Man 
drink Wine ? ’—an essay wliicli has been of service to me in the 
preparation of this chapter—relates the following on the author- 
ity of a traveller: 
“ 1 When Russian troops are about to start on a march in a 
very cold region, no grog is allowed to be served to them, and 
when the men are drawn up ready to move, the corporals smell 
the breath of every man, and send back to quarters all who 
have been drinking. The reason is that men who start under 
the influence of liquor are the first to succumb to the cold, and 
the likeliest to be frost-bitten. It is the uniform experience of 
the hunters and trappers of the northern provinces of North 
America and of the Rocky Mountains, that alcohol diminishes 
their power to resist cold.’ 
“Upon such facts as I have recited, scientific men rest their 
theory that strong drink is man’s foe. The brick-maker, the 
law-maker, the soldier, the prize-fighter, the pedestrian, the 
oarsman, the ball-player, the Arctic explorer all unite in the 
testimony that the man who wants to do his best must let 
alcoholic liquors entirely alone. Taken in ever so moderate 
quantities, they impair the strength of the body, and diminish 
its power of endurance.” 
“ Dr. Carpenter mentions the interesting testimony of an old 
man in Dorsetshire, who, though himself concerned in the sale 
of spirits, and not likely to decry them unjustly or unneces- 
sarily, asserted, in regard to his employment as a fowler, ‘ that 
although the use of ale or brandy might seem beneficial in 
causing the cold to be less felt at first, the case was quite rever- 
sed when the duration of the exposure was prolonged; the cold 
being then more severely felt, the larger the proportion of fer 
mented liquors taken.’ And he further stated that all the 
fowlers of his acquaintance who had been accustomed to era 
ploy brandy with any freedom, while out on prolonged excur- 
sions, had died young", he and his brother (who had practised 
the same abstinence as himself) having outlived nearly all 
their contemporaries. 
“ In tropical climates, the best authorities condemn the use Old and New Objections. 
347 
Df alcoholic beverages. The records show that both on com- 
mon tropical service, and on march in India, the teetotallers 
were more healthy, and vigorous, and far better soldiers than 
those who did not abstain.” 
Dr, Barton, of New Orleans, in a discourse on the u Ap- 
plicability of Stimulants in a Warm Climate/’ given in 
New Orleans, some years ago, said: 
“ It is an undeniable fact that the injestion of ardent spirits 
operates in a direct line with all the injurious influences of a 
warm climate, and has every tendency to aggravate and pro- 
duce those very diseases that are characteristic of such a cli- 
mate, and that make a residence in it hazardous.” 
Dr. Frank H. Hamilton, one of our eminent army sur- 
geons, who served in the Union Army during the rebellion, 
says : 
“ In our own mind the conviction is established by the experi- 
ence and observation of a life, that the regular routine employ- 
ment of alcoholic stimulants by men in health is never, under 
any circumstances, useful. We make no exception in favor of 
cold, or heat, or ram, nor, indeed, in favor of old drinkers, 
when we consider them as soldiers.” 
Many years ago Colonel Lehmanousky, who had been 
twenty-three years in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte, 
arose in a temperance meeting, tall, vigorous, and with a 
glow of health on his face, and made the following speech : 
“ You see a man of seventy years. I have fought two hun- 
dred battles; have fourteen wounds on my body; have lived 
thirty days on horseflesh, with the bark of trees for bread, 
snow and ice for drink, the canopy of heaven for my covering, 
without shoes or stockings on my feet, and only a few rags on. 
In the desert of Egypt I have marched for days with the burn- 
ing sun upon my naked head, feet blistered in the scorching 
sand, and with eyes, nostrils, and mouth filled with dust, and 
with a thirst so tormenting that I have opened the veins in my 
arms and sucked my own blood How did I survive all these 
horrors ? I answer that, under the providence of God, I owe 
my preservation, my health and vigor to this fact, that I never 348 
Alcohol in Society. 
drank a drop of spirituous liquor in my life. Baron Larey, 
chief surgeon of the French army, has stated as a fact, that 
of the six thousand survivors who safely returned from Egypt, 
all of them were men who abstained from ardent drink.” 
Commodore Lynch says (“ United States Expedition to 
the Itiver Jordan and the Dead Sea ’’): 
“l was very particular in selecting young, muscular, native- 
born Americans of sober habits, from each of whom I exacted a 
pledge to abstain from all intoxicating drinks. To this stipu 
lation, under Providence, is principally to be ascribed their 
final recovery from the extreme prostration consequent on the 
severe privations and great exposure to which they were un- 
avoidably subjected.” 
In opposite exposures of extreme cold, the great naviga- 
tors in the Arctic regions, Franklin, Ross, Parry, Kennedy, 
and Kane have uniformly testified to the pernicious effects 
of alcoholic beverages in those severe regions, where all 
the energies of human life are tested to their utmost limit 
of endurance.* 
There is nothing, therefore, on which the objection we 
are now considering, can be supported, but on the contra- 
ry, it is disproven at every point. 
(4) It is objected that the urging of tlie total abstinence 
principle on all, is too sweeping a requirement, since Mod- 
eration is true Temperance, and the abuse of alcohol by 
some is no rule or reason why abstinence should be required 
of all. To this several things may be said in answer. 
And the first is, that Moderation is true Temperance only 
when it relates to indulgence in things good in themselves, 
and within certain limits, and only pernicious, or liable to 
be so, when immoderately used, as for example, food, 
bodily exercise, the acquisition of property, etc. And 
moderation in that, any use of which is evil, is in no sense 
* See more extended testimony on tins point in “ Alcohol in 
Science,” and in “Alcohol in History.” Old and New Objections. 
349 
whatever Temperance. Both ancient and modem philoso- 
phers have clearly taught and demonstrated this, as has 
been fully shown in u Alcohol in History.” 
And, second. If it should be conceded, that as regards 
the man who chinks moderately, no harm comes to him- 
self personally, would that be a justification for one’s refus- 
ing to become a total abstainer? Does or can any man 
live to himself alone ? And can it be possible that the 
man who says that he simply “ uses,” has no influence with, 
and does not by his example fasten still tighter the chains 
around him who 11 abuses.” Besides, much as Dr. Crosby 
and others denounce total abstainers for asserting that 
drunkards, the men who “ abuse,” as it is said, come from 
the ranks of the men who think that they rationally “use,” 
where else do they come from? On this subject Rev. 
Daniel Merriman has recently written : 
“ No doubt millions drink moderately, and yet never become 
drunk or drunkards in the common acceptation of those terms. 
But ‘moderate drinking’ is an utterly indeterminate phrase, for 
we must bear in mind the proof already given from the most 
unprejudiced authorities, not only that, for a large class of per- 
sons, any drinking means certain drunkenness, but that the 
vast proportion of so-called moderate drinking, though it may 
never produce open drunkenness, is yet genuine excess, accom- 
panied with the substantial results of intoxication. But, since 
all drunkards certainly began with what they, at least, consid- 
ered a moderate use (and it would seem hard in such an open 
question, not to concede them the right to their own opinion), 
it is difficult to see whence the great army of drunkards, 
and the vast evils of drunkenness come, except from those who 
begin with such use. That all who drink moderately do not 
become drunkards, does not alter the fact that all drunkards 
were first moderate drinkers, and, therefore, that moderate 
drinking tends to drunkenness. If all who take alcohol would 
only stop with half an ounce, or an ounce, a day, no doubt 
drunkenness would practically cease; but, in point of fact, a 
very large proportion do not stop there, and, from the very na- 
ture of the drug’s action, and the habit it fosters, will not. 
And hence the solid ground for abstinence, which is not pro* 350 
Alcohol in Society. 
posed for human nature and circumstances as they might be, 
but as they are.” * 
And then, again, it is the height of folly to assume that 
no personal harm comes from moderation. Dr. Pancoast, 
of Philadelphia, has recently put forth a book written ex- 
pressly for non-professional readers, entitled u What is 
Bright’s Disease f Its Curability ; ” in which he argues, 
as on preceding pages we have shown is also demonstrated 
by other physicians, that “ moderate drinking” is one of the 
causes of this rapidly increasing disease. 
The “ Philadelphia Record,” of July 24, 1882, quotes 
from a recent number of the London u Journal of Medical 
Science,” that a people who take small overdoses of alcohol 
daily, insufficient to produce intoxication, are more liable 
to serious diseased conditions than those who from time to 
time indulge in great excesses.” 
Canon Farrar, in his 11 Talks on Temperance/’ (p. 47,) 
says on this subject: 
“ Even those medical men who write against abstinence are 
constantly making admissions which tell dead against them. 
Dr. Burney Yeo wrote strongly against abstinence, yet he says, 
speaking of precisely the most popular wine of the day, ‘Dry 
sherries do an incalculable amount of harm.’ Dr. Brunton and 
Dr. Burdon Sanderson, and Sir W. Gull, are none of them total 
abstainers, and the first two are distinctly unfavorable to total 
abstinence, yet Dr. Brunton says before the Lord’s Committee. 
‘ If a man eats well and sleeps well, he does not want it, and is 
better without it.’ Dr. Burdon Sanderson says, ‘ It is not at 
all required in health; ’ and Sir W. Gull, among much more, 
which coming from such a man is of the most general and scien- 
tific importance, says that the constant use of alcohol, even in 
moderation, injures the nervous tissue, and is deleterious to 
health ; that a man may very materially injure his constitution 
short of drunkenness; and that a great deal of injury is done to 
health by the habitual use of wines in their various kinds, and 
* “ A Sober View of Abstinence,” reprinted from tbe Biblio- 
theca Sacra for Oct., 1881, p. 739. Old and New Objections. 
351 
alcohol in its various shapes, even in so-called moderate quanti- 
ties, by people of both sexes, who are supposed to be fairly 
well, and who are not in the least intemperate.” 
For very much more on this branch of the subject, we 
refer the reader to our previous essay, in which are many 
proofs that moderate drinking is evil, and only evil. 
(5). The last objection we shall notice takes this form : 
The Pledge to total abstinence takes away a man’s liberty. 
In the opinion of Dr. Crosby it does more than this: it u is 
a most pernicious instrument for debauching the con- 
science.” 11 Always an injury and never a help to a true 
morality.” u It is only an invitation to further sin.” 
Dr. Hopkins’ comment on this folly is pertinent. He 
says : 
“In a country whose independence was established by men 
who pledged their lives and their honor for its maintenance, 
whose marriages, and churches, and business contracts are all 
sustained and guarded by pledges, for a contract is simply a 
mutual pledge, that this wholesale onslaught upon them should 
be made, seems extraordinary. We had supposed that the 
Scripture precept, ‘ Vow, and pay unto the Lord thy vows,’ was 
still in force. By the pledge the influence of the social element 
is gained, and we do not see, as Dr. Crosby thinks he does, 
why the moral nature may not be appealed to for the keeping 
of the pledge as well as in any other way. Not alone to their 
moral nature, but to all that was noble within them, did that 
mother appeal when she asked each of her four boys, as he left 
her at an early age to make his own way in the world, to 
pledge himself never to use intoxicating drinks, or profane 
language, or tobacco, before he should be twenty-one. The 
boys pledged themselves and have kept their pledge, and now, 
at ages ranging from sixty-five to seventy-five, they are hon- 
ored men ; but one of them has had a sick day, and no one of 
them is worth less than a million of dollars.” 
May we not go further than this even, and say, that no 
moral conviction is ever of any avail to us until it issues in 
our pledging ourselves, either mentally or in some out- 
ward manner, to follow that conviction, and never to deviate 352 
Alcohol in Society. 
from it ? And do we not with one consent, do not all mem- 
bers of a community regard that man or woman as most 
free, as enjoying the largest liberty, who confesses to the 
obligations of love and duty, and walks most squarely with 
the requirements to be true to those obligations ? Out then 
upon this tirade against the total abstinence pledge, an ob- 
ligation that has harmed no one. 
Wliat is the special liberty that a non-abstainer obtains 
by refusing to become an abstainer ? In the light of what 
we have seen are the solemn facts with regard to even the 
most moderate use of intoxicants, it is simply the liberty to 
abuse himself; and if he oversteps his fancied bounds of 
moderation, the liberty of being a nuisance if not a crimi- 
nal, in society. Is this desirable ? A man may, indeed, 
for any reason that seems good to himself, say, I will not 
abstain, I will not countenance the abstinence of others; 
but he takes an untenable ground wrhen confounding such 
act or the motive to it with liberty; he simply gives himself 
to lawlessness and license. Does he not clearly disclose 
his present slavery to appetite, custom, or the fear that he 
may remove himself from the influence of these ? To such 
an one Carlyle speaks, in his quaint words: 
“ No man oppresseth thee, O free and independent franchiser! 
hut does not this stupid pewter-pot oppress thee ? No son of 
Adam can hid thee come or go ; hut this absurd pot of heavy 
wet—this can and does! Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the 
Saxon, hut of thy own hrutal appetites, and thie scoured dish 
of liquor. And thou pratest of thy liberty ? Thou entire 
blockhead! ” 
II. If we inquire, as we ought, if we seek to remedy the 
evil, Wliat are the causes of intemperance ? it will not be 
difficult for us to obtain an answer. The causes are numer- 
ous. Some of them are involved in the excuses we have 
just considered, the objections to total abstinence being, in 
very many cases, as their character indicates, the excuses Old and New Objections. 
353 
and attempted apologies and defence of the habits of the 
classes who offer them. These largely account for the 
stubborn continuance in drinking habits of thousands who 
have become addicted to the vice. What causes the begin- 
nings in this course ? 
(1) With the rich it is doubtless the influence of custom, 
often originating in the supposed value of intoxicants as a 
dietetic. Generations of the well-to-do have been brought 
up to believe that spirituous and malt liquors are necessary, 
in some way or another, to their bodily welfare. Physi- 
cians and other learned men have affirmed it. Our chief 
remedy for this state of things must be found, as already 
indicated, in educating such men aright; for at present 
many of them are not only ignorant of the truth, but 
are altogether too conversant with error. What science 
has already demonstrated and applied, in dismissing liquor 
from the army and navy ration because it unfits men for 
best withstanding exposure, the influence of climate, and 
the exhaustion of fatigue, is destructive to the theories of 
the common practice of medicine among people in less ex- 
posed conditions in life. Our best physicians are practising 
now on this knowledge, but the michief having already 
been done, it is difficult to apply the remedy, so many hav- 
ing acquired the habit of indulgence. During sickness 
they may heed their counsellor’s advice, but in ordinary 
health the cup is indulged in as a fancied luxury, when 
often the habit and appetite which indulgence has formed 
have rather imposed continued indulgence as a necessity, 
impossible to be avoided except by total abstinence. 
(2) The influence of example is another cause. The 
young, in most cases, put the cup to their lips in imitation 
of the example of parents, guardians, friends, or compan- 
ions. 
In a wider circle than this, even, the habits of the 
wealthy extend, forming the custom and fashion to which 
community at large becomes enslaved. There are many 354 
Alcohol in Society. 
who indulge who would find no difficulty in abstaining, 
who would for many reasons prefer to abstain, :f no undue 
influences were thrown into the scale ; but the customs of 
society, the demands of fashion, the apparent obligation to 
do as the upper classes do, are heavy weights in the scale 
against abstinence. What Lord Chesterfield records of 
himself is a common experience : 
“ I naturally hated drinking; and yet I have often drunk, 
with disgust at the time, attended by great sickness the next 
day, only because I then considered drinking as a necessary 
qualification for a fine gentleman and a man of pleasure.” 
The progress of the Temperance cause has largely di- 
minished the drinking habits of the wealthy, and in various 
ways, by banishing sideboard indulgences, and removing 
the wine cup from many tables, has made drinking less 
fashionable than it was half a century ago ; but custom 
and fashion still run too much in this direction, and number 
their victims by the hundreds and thousands, even in a 
land which boasts of the independence of its people. 
(3). The desire of excitement, and of society in our 
pleasures, greatly contributes to encourage intemperance. 
The temporary exhilaration produced by the cup, and the 
good cheer and fellowship of associates in our enjoyments, 
lead many to the saloon, wTho, before they are aware of it, 
have fastened habits upon themselves which hold them as 
in chains. A supposed moderate use of spirituous and 
malt liquors is a most prolific cause of intemperance. It is 
one of the terrible delusions of the drinking habit, one of 
the most impressive of its u mocking” and deceptive influ- 
ences, that no man realizes when he has passed the point 
of moderate indulgence ; but many a victim counts him- 
self as perfectly secure against danger, long after his 
friends and associates are painful witnesses of his extreme 
degradation. This is most emphatically true of those who 
are tainted by hereditary weakness in this direction; a Old and New Objections. 
355 
weakness never to be suspected while the cup is shunned, 
but sure to be manifest when indulgence is commenced. 
There are other causes of intemperance, some of which 
have been mentioned in this volume, and some in the pre- 
ceding essays; but perhaps the most prolific of all is 
found in the Authorized Traffic, and in its seductive influ- 
ences. The business of manufacturing and selling has 
been legalized and authorized by the government, both 
State and National, either for the sake of revenue, or to 
secure party supremacy. Many regard a license or the 
payment of a tax as a sanction for the business, while poli- 
ticians generally cater to the trade for its political support. 
Each of these classes contribute to the low condition of the 
public conscience in regard to this great iniquity, and en- 
courage its patronage. As the attitude of leading politi- 
cians for many years debauched public opinion in regard 
to American Slavery, by throwing around it the protection 
of law, and making apologies and concessions in order to 
secure the votes of those interested in its continuance, so 
those who for kindred reasons now legalize the liquor traf- 
fic, and plead and manoeuvre against its being overthrown, 
are in large measure the cause of the intemperance that 
abounds in our land. The laws which they frame and up- 
hold give position and influence to the traffic; and their 
compensation is in securing an alliance for political ends 
with the traffickers. But the result to society is increased 
drunkenness, by investing the traffic with a supposed right 
for its continuance. The history of permissive legislation 
in every State in the Union, is proof of this declaration. 
The opposition to Prohibition is, and has always been, 
most violent and most persistent on the part of those who 
fear, not that damage may come to the commonwealth by 
blotting out such a powerful source of crime and pauperism, 
but that their own party organization and their purely par- 
tisan ends may be thereby defeated. Anything, they say 
—even when their partisan ends are of no consequence 356 
Alcohol in Society. 
whatever—anything rather than this. And so the legisla- 
tion that protects the liquor traffic is far more than the 
protection of the traffic ; it is the bond of partisan union, 
the one thing which, more than another, the party relies 
on for its existence and support. And while its influence 
is direct in keeping a party together, it is far-reaching and 
ruinous in its general educating force in the community at 
large. 
These causes of intemperance are the most formidable 
obstacles in our path of success in ridding the land of the 
curse. They deserve our serious attention, and our wisest 
effort against them. The late Rev. Dr. Chapin, for many 
years an earnest worker in the temperance cause, has set 
forth in his impressively eloquent way, a view of these seri- 
ous obstacles, and a plea for their removal, in language 
which all ought to ponder and heed : 
“It is too plain to he denied, and so plain as to excite us with 
all the energy of indignant rebuke, that the rich, the fashiona- 
ble, the talented, and the powerful, stand between the temper- 
ance movement and its triumph. They check our progress, 
they paralyze our hands, they strengthen the adversary, they 
keep open the gates through which this tide of desolation rolls 
in and overflows the land. Who else, let me ask, who else 
stands in our way ? The intemperate masses; the slaves of 
appetite; the utter and abandoned drunkard ? They illus- 
trate our arguments ; they furnish our statistics ; they consti- 
tute our most tremendous and effectual appeals. And while 
thus 1 they point our moral,’ and afford us examples of that 
palpable nature to which we need hold up no mirror, they arc 
capable of being redeemed, and God hath aided us, and blessed 
our efforts to redeem them. Divide community into two classes, 
the utter drunkard on the one side, and the earnest, zealous 
friends of temperance on the other, and how long would intem- 
perance be a fact in our world ? Who, then, stands between 
the cause and its triumph ? The dealers in strong drink ? Un- 
doubtedly they do. 
“While men are toiling with renewed effort, and praying 
with their armor on; while woman hopes, and prays, and 
weeps; while the redeemed fall back, and rise, and fall, and Old and Neiv Objections. 
357 
rise again ; while every argument that can pierce to the heart, 
and every effort that can rouse the moral nature and reach the 
human; every law that stands on the Book of God; every re- 
buke and every warning that speaks from many-tongued ex- 
perience ; while all these are brought forward and urged by 
voices of eloquent pleading, of sound reason, of earnest rebuke ; 
while every day, yea, every hour, we are shocked by some new 
development of the evil of intemperance, and hopes are blasted, 
and hearts crushed, and homes made desolate, and minds 
wrecked, and souls darkened, and men slain ; while violence, 
and weeping, and woe, because of this traffic, increase on every 
hand; there are those who will feed the desolating flame, who 
open wide the doors of sin and death, who tempt the eye with 
splendid show, who mar God’s image, and the soul for which 
Christ died, for less than thirty pieces. 
“ But what do these dealers in strong drink tell us ? Say 
they : ‘ We never offer the cup to him who cannot hold it with 
a steady hand; we never ask men to drink; we never sell to 
the inebriate. Well may we ask them—why do you not sell to 
the confirmed drunkard—to him alone ? Why tempt those who 
are comparatively free? Why perform the initiatory work 
which makes drunkards in the end ? Why sow the seeds which 
shall ripen into appetite ? Is not this worse, far worse, than to 
give strong drink to those who are already drinkers ? To pass 
the cup to those who are already confirmed in the brutality 
which it engenders ? Is it not worse to deface the fair and 
complete statue, than to hack and hew that which is already 
marred and broken ? Is it not worse to poison the clear spring, 
the pure spring at its source, than to mingle pollution with 
the tainted and turbid waters ? 
“ While, then, this plea of the dealers in strong drink, that 
they never sell to the drunkard, but only to the moderate and 
respectable, does not excuse them, it suggests the very fact 
which I am now urging. They do not sell to the confirmed 
drunkard; to whom, then, do they sell ? Who sustain them ? 
Who open their doors, and lend them all the respectability that 
remains to them ? Evidently, those who are themselves respect- 
able, the wealthy, the fashionable, the influential. And, if 
we go back to final causes, who then are the causes of the traf- 
fic ? This dark, accursed traffic here, that opens its sluices all 
around us ; that crams your warehouses, and with which huge 
ships come reeling to your wharves ? 
“ To make this point clearer, again I say, divide the commu- 358 
Alcohol in Society. 
nity. Place on the one side the confirmed drunkards and the 
dealers in strong drinks, and let all the rest be arranged on 
the other side as the active friends of temperance, and how 
long would intemperance hold its seat in the laud ? I ask, 
then, once more, who stand between the temperance movement 
and its triumph ? And I answer, the wealthy, the fashionable, 
the influential! And undoubtedly it is so. The rum power in 
our country is backed up by the money power ! Mammon and 
Alcohol are hand in hand ! I know there are exceptions to this 
proposition—I would not make it a sweeping one. I look 
around me, and see many noble laborers in this great and good 
cause. There are men who went forth in the early dawn of 
this reformation, when the gray light first tinged the mountain 
tops, and the breathings of better things came like the morning 
air. And they have labored until now, when the sun travels 
high toward the meridian, and the heat and burden of the day 
have come. And they will toil without shrinking, without 
thought of abandoning the work, until they lay their bones on 
the field of their labor. There are, also, men of wealth, willing 
to sacrifice, and prompt in self-denial. There are men of talent 
bending all their energies to the work. Woman, too, has lent 
it her aid, and given efficacy to its endeavors. And, here and 
there, men have been raised from the depths of sensualism and 
sin, and made the most powerful advocates against that evil to 
which so lately they were enslaved. And though by the ma- 
chinations of enemies they may seem to have fallen, they shall 
yet go forth with new energy, and shake to its undoing this 
deep and cumbrous sin against which we strive. 
“ But with all this qualification, I must repeat what I said 
just now, that the majority of the wealth, the fashion, and the 
power, in our land, upholds the means of intemperance, gives 
to the traffic all the respectability that yet adheres to it; and 
if it should withdraw its countenance, that traffic could find no 
rest, no abiding place among us, save in the stealth and dark- 
ness, like those crimes which, banned and cast out of all worthy 
men, live only in secret and in shadow. Is the wealth of the 
land enlisted on the side of teifiperance ? Does that great 
death-stream run only through the hovels of the poor, and in 
the reeking channels of misery and vice? Lo, it flows through 
marble sluices, and drips from costly fonts! Are the fashion 
and influence of tlie land upon the side of temperance? Behold 
those splendid hotels, those gilded saloons, those sumptuous 
wine parlors! Is the talent of the land upon the side of tem- Old and New Objections. 
359 
perance ? See in how many of your legislative halls Bacchus 
sits crowned with his purple grapes, or mingles his drink for 
the eloquent and the great, with the intellectual nectar of your 
public festivals. The talent of our land! I see it exerted in 
our caucuses and our legislative halls, in behalf of some ques- 
tion of monetary interest, of currency or territory ; but alas ! I 
see too little of it enlisted for the highest interests of man, for 
the removal of that which mars and darkens the soul. 
“Advocate of moral suasion, have you force enough to pene- 
trate and to arouse the hearts of those, who, in high places, in 
stations of power and influence, stand aloof from that work 
which is going on in behalf of degraded, suffering humanity, 
degraded and suffering to a fearful extent, not only by their 
apathy, but by their example ? Advocate of legal force, your 
law, if it is worth anything, must be the voice of public senti- 
ment. Behold ! what a cordon of wealth, and talent, and influ- 
ence is drawn around this traffic ! See how much of your pub- 
lic sentiment is here, weighing its casks of alcohol in one scale, 
with dollars in the other, or sipping its wine in luxuriant ease. 
“I charge, then, and I deem justly, the wealth and the in- 
fluence in our land, generally speaking, with being on the side 
of intemperance; at least with being against temperance, by 
encouraging the example of using strong drink, and by uphold- 
ing the hands of those engaged in the traffic. And a word or 
two here, to some of that class who take the stand that because 
they are not drunkards, therefore they have nothing to do with 
the temperance movement. They can drink, so they say, and 
it does not hurt them; they can use wine and ardent spirits 
moderately, and they wish no interference with their will and 
their habits. I leave all other replies to this position, and now 
make only this one—that those who take this stand do more 
hurt than the drunkard. They are the very examples which 
decoy and embolden others to drink. The miserable, bloated, 
wallowing inebriate furnishes no motive for the use of strong 
drinks. He causes those whose hands are stretched out to take 
the first glass, to shudder and recoil, as they consider the end 
to which that first glass may lead. Oh! if upon the drinking 
of that first glass all the evils of utter inebriety should at once 
ensue, how many, think you, would dare to taste it ? But the 
young man, as he takes that glass, looks around, and sees those 
who boast that they can drink and it does not harm them ; he 
sees them carry the cup to and from their lips with apparent 
safety, and he says, ‘ So, too, can I drink with safety; I shall 360 
Alcohol in Society. 
never he a drunkard ; ’ and the spell is upon him. He drinks 
and falls, because another drinks and stands ; he stumbles, not 
over the drunkard in his kennel, but over his example, who 
says: ‘I can drink and it does not harm me; I have no busi- 
ness with others, nor they with me.’ Oh ! these are those who 
decoy others to their ruin; have they, then, no business with 
others, nor we with them ? They are the wrecker’s lights, 
that allure many a brave and noble bark from its course until 
it strikes the fatal rock, and lays its bones on the sand, to 
whiten there amid the tempest and the surge! And has the 
temperance cause no claim upon them ? 
“ And have we not this claim upon all those who occupy sta- 
tions of wealth and influence, that they use their power, not to 
perpetuate and extend this evil, hut to remove it ? We say to 
them that they are not merely apathetic in this matter, they 
exert a direct influence for evil; and our call upon them is made, 
not in the language of fanaticism, or of unreasonable interfer- 
ence, hut is made to their reason and their conscience, in the 
name of God and of humanity. And with that God above 
them, laying his requirements upon them, with that humanity 
around them, hound to them hy a relationship which no condi- 
tion can annul or hide, who are they that they should wish to 
stand aloof from the effort to which we summon them ? Who 
are they that they dare to set that example, and uphold those 
agencies which to hundreds and thousands are so rife with 
shame, and sorrow, and wasting, and death? If for them 
Christ suffered and died, so did He suffer and die for their mean- 
est brother yonder, covered as he is to the very lips with the 
leprosy of sin, and steeped in the kennel of sensuality! And if 
for them Christ died, who are they to be exempt from self- 
denial, and from sacrifice for others ? ” 
III. Having now considered the question of Intemper- 
ance, and shown its antagonism to the Individual, physi- 
cally, intellectually, and morally; to the Family, the Com- 
munity, the State, and the Nation ; having shown how defect- 
ive present modes of education are as a remedy for the evil, 
and what must be taught in order that education may bring 
intelligent influence to bear on its removal; and having 
also seen what force religion may wield, based on a just 
conception of the teachings of Revelation on this great sub- Old and New Objections. 
361 
ject we come now to note, in concluding this examination 
of these important phases of the subject, what all this 
knowledge, enlightenment, and intelligent religious con- 
viction must lead us to employ as sure remedies for In- 
temperance. 
Our conclusion is that these two are indispensable : Total 
Abstinence by the Individual; Prohibition by the State. 
Less than these is necessarily imperfect and inefficient; a 
poor palliative at the best, but too often a deception and a 
hindrance. 
(1). Abundant testimony has been presented to estab- 
lish the fact that not only is Intemperance the cause of dis- 
ease, but also that some of the worst physical consequences 
are borne by those who pride themselves on their moderate 
use of intoxicants. We have seen, too, that while it may 
be true in some circumstances and conditions that it is pos- 
sible to yield to slight indulgences and never overstep their 
bounds, yet the general tendency is such that the ranks of 
the intemperate are constantly kept full by recruits fur- 
nished from those who fancy themselves safe in their mod- 
eration ; so that we are justified in saying that no man can 
be absolutely safe short of total abstinence. 
Dr. Lees furnishes (vol. I. p. xv.) the testimony of 
Edward Baines, a man of letters, and intimately familiar 
with public life for many years, to this effect: 
“ I say boldly, that no man living who uses intoxicating 
drinks, is free from the danger of at least occasional, and if oc- 
casional, ultimately of habitual excess. There seems to be no 
character, position or circumstances that free men from the dan- 
ger. I have known many young men of the finest promise, led by 
the drinking habit into vice, ruin, and early death. I have 
known many tradesmen whom it made bankrupt. I have 
known Sunday scholars whom it has led to prison—teachers, and 
even superintendents whom it has dragged down to profligacy. 
I have known ministers of high academic honors, of splendid 
eloquence, nay, of vast usefulness, whom it has fascinated, 
and hurried over the precipice of public infamy with their eyes 362 
Alcohol in Society. 
open, and gazing with borror on their fate. I have known 
men of the strongest and clearest intellect and of rigorous reso- 
lution, whom it has made weaker than children and fools. 
Gentlemen of refinement and taste whom it has debased into 
brutes. Poets of high genius whom it has bound in a bondage 
worse than the galleys, and ultimately cut short their days. I 
have known statesmen, lawyers, and judges whom it has killed— 
kind husbands and fathers, whom it has turned into monsters. 
I have know honest men whom it has made villains—elegant 
and Christian ladies whom it has converted into bloated sots.” 
Why this is so, it is not difficult to tell when we remem- 
ber what is so fully proven, that it is in the very nature of 
alcoholic drinks to create an appetite for themselves, and, 
following the known law of all narcotics, to weaken the 
power of the will to resist. This being true, no man, what- 
ever his power of self-control up to the present time may 
have been, has the least ground on which to base his ex- 
pectation that he can rely on the continuance of that power 
to permit him to remain a moderate drinker in the future. 
Hence our argument and plea that Total Abstinence is 
necessary to all. 
But more than this : the total abstinence man is not only- 
sure of never being a sot, he is sure of being healthier, bet- 
ter fitted for intellectual effort, a better man morally and 
spiritually than if he tried the doubtful experiment of mod- 
eration. More than thirty years ago, upwards of two thous- 
and eminent medical practitioners signed the following 
certificate : 
“ We, the undersigned, are of opinion,— 
“ 1. That a very large proportion of human misery, including 
poverty, disease, and crime, is induced by the use of alcoholic 
or fermented liquors, as beverages. 
“2. That the most perfect health is compatible with total 
abstinence from all such intoxicating beverages, whether in 
the form of ardent spirits, or as wine, beer, ale, porter, cider, 
etc., etc. 
“ 3. That persons accustomed to such drinks may, with per- Old and New Objections. 
363 
feet safety, discontinue them entirely, either at once, or grad- 
ually, after a short time. 
‘ ‘ 4. That total and universal abstinence from alcoholic bever- 
ages of all sorts, would greatly contribute to the health, the 
prosperity, the morality, and the happiness of the human 
race." * 
The opinion has strengthened among learned physicians 
from that time on. Dr. Richardson, in his “ Vitality in 
Men and Races,” says: 
“I do not over-estimate the facts when I say that if such a 
miracle could be performed in England, as a general conversion 
to Temperance, the vitality of the nation would rise one-third 
in value, and this without any reference to the indirect advan- 
tages that would of necessity follow.” 
The testimonies of individual experience are all in this 
direction as to personal benefit. The learned Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, an excessive wine-drinker in his youth, tried to 
redeem himself by moderation, but was forced to confess : 
u I can abstain, but I cannot be moderate; ” and subsequent- 
ly adopted the rule of total abstinence. u His abandon- 
ment of wine,” says his biographer, Stephens, “ improved 
his health, and diminished the intensity of his melancholy 
fits.” 
On one occasion Johnson said; 
“Wine gives no light, gay, ideal hilarity, but tumultuous, 
noisy, clamorous merriment. Spirits are raised by drinking, 
as by the common participation of any pleasure. Cock-fighting 
or bear-baiting, will raise the spirits of a company as drinking 
does, though surely they will not improve conversation.” 
At another time, Sir Joshua Reynolds, having' argued 
that wine was a key to conversation, opening the mental 
box; Johnson said impressively; 
“No sir; before dinner, men meet with great inequality of 
understanding, and those who are conscious of their inferiority 
* Carpenter, on “ The Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors/1 
pp. xxiii., xxiv. _ 364 
Alcohol in Society. 
have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine every 
man feels himself comfortable, and loses that modesty, and 
grows vociferous; but he is not improved—he is only not sensible 
of his defects. Conversation is the key, wine is a picklock, 
which forces open the box and injures it. A man should culti- 
vate his mind, so as to have that confidence and readiness with- 
out wine which wine gives.” 
Mr. Ross, of London, in an address in Boston, in 1845, 
related what the poet Southey once told him : 
11 That since he had become an author, he had not drank any- 
thing stronger than water, because if he had done otherwise, 
he would have perilled his reputation.” 
The philosopher and divine, Rev. Sidney Smith, tried 
the experiment of total abstinence, and thus cheerfully de- 
scribes the result, in a letter to Lady Holland : 
“ Many thanks for your kind anxiety respecting my health. 
I not only was never better, but never half so well; indeed, I 
find I have been very ill all my life, without knowing it. Let 
me state some of the goods arising from abstaining from all 
fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep; having never known 
what sweet sleep was, I sleep like a baby or a plough-boy. If 
I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleas- 
ing hopes and pleasing recollections. Holland House, past and 
to come! If I dream, it is not of lions and tigers, but of Easter 
dues and tithes. Secondly, I can take longer walks, and make 
greater exertions, without fatigue. My understanding is im- 
proved, and I comprehend political economy. I see better 
without wine and spectacles than when I used both. Only 
one evil ensues from it; I am in such extravagant spirits that 
I must lose blood, or look out for some one who will bore or 
depress me. Pray leave off wine; the stomach is quite at rest, 
no heart-barn, no pain, no distention.” 
The late Rev. Samuel Miller, D. D., of Princeton, N. J., 
for sixteen years followed the advice of his physicians, “in 
drinking one or two glasses of sound wine daily.” 
“During all this time,” lie said, “my health was delicate. 
More than six years ago, when approaching my sixtieth 
year, I broke off at once. The experiment had not proceeded Old and New Objections. 
365 
more than a month, before I became satisfied that my absti- 
nence was very strikingly beneficial. My appetite was more 
uniform, my strength increased, my sleep more comfortable, 
and all my mental exercises more clear, pleasant and suc- 
cessful.” 
Mr. S. C. Hall, the well-known editor of the “ Art Jour- 
nal,” once gave this public testimony : 
“He lived by the labor of his brain, and could testify that 
since he had become a teetotaller, he had an increase of 
intellectual power, so that what he sent out to the public never 
came trickling through a disturbed and disordered medium. As 
to endurance of fatigue, he was able to work three times longer 
than ever he could while he indulged, even moderately, in the 
use of strong drinks. He was better in body, in mind, in 
home, in every comfort: and he felt proud, therefore, of the 
pledge he had taken to abide by the practice of entire absti- 
nence.” 
To these personal advantages of Total Abstinence, may 
be added many of a public nature, apparent to all who 
have observed what ills in society are caused directly by 
intemperance. As these have been dwelt on at some 
length in the foregoing pages, and as the whole subject of 
Total Abstinence has been fully considered in the preced- 
ing Essay, these hints may here suffice. 
But Total Abstinence is not always easy to practice. 
Indeed, sometimes, and often, it is so difficult as to be well- 
nigh, if not wholly, impossible, when the facilities for 
indulgence are easily found. The victim of habit, or of 
hereditary tendency to the use of intoxicants, often falls, in 
spite of good intentions, ardent prayers, and strong resolves. 
Many a man who desires to abstain, and who is filled with 
remorse whenever he gives way to indulgence, repeatedly 
gives way when the temptation is placed before him ; and 
a large number of traffickers spread especial snares for 
such, as also they succeed in dazzling the young by glitter- 
ing allurements and attractions, well-designed to catch the 
unsuspecting. 366 
Alcohol in Society. 
Hence the necessity for prohibiting the traffic, by put- 
ting it in the catalogue of things injurious to society, and 
therefore to be outlawed and forbidden. Ho so-called reg- 
ulation of the traffic has ever succeeded in averting or di- 
minishing the evils of intemperance. This wre have fully 
shown when giving, in the preceding essay, the history of 
the various efforts which have been made for suppressing 
the traffic. 
“ Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly, in the end, 
overcome everything; but inconsistent good can never be 
a match for consistent evil.” These words of Coleridge, 
spoken in rebuke of a trimming and time-serving policy 
pursued by eminent politicians during the anti-com-law 
and other reform movements in Great Britain, have special 
pertinence to the policy of legislation everywhere on the 
liquor traffic. Temperance men who are induced, from any 
consideration, to vote for license, invariably, no matter wdiat 
their motives may be, play into the hands of the traffickers, 
and contribute to the spread of intemperance. To this fact 
there has never been an exception, and from the very na- 
ture of the case, it is impossible that there ever can be. 
Few things can so utterly defeat a good object, and so securely 
fix and establish a public evil, as to deal with it by half- 
way measures, based, as such measures usually are, on the 
concession that the whole thing is an evil, but that it may be 
allowed partial protection, and be so regulated as to greatly 
curtail its power for mischief. The last most notable illustra- 
tion of this is found in the movements inaugurated by Rev. 
Dr. Crosby. As stated in full in “ Alcohol in History,” 
he first organized a movement for individual sobriety, by 
instituting a society which gave its members the option 
of several pledges, one only of these looking to total ab- 
stinence. During the first year several signed the total 
abstinence pledge, but ere long, the other branches of the 
society wholly absorbed this radical wing, its members 
giving up their strict pledge for one allowing them mod- Old and New Objections. 
367 
erate indulgences. He then tried the enforcement of 
the license law, seeking to confine liquor selling to the 
hotels; but in this he has been defeated by the liquor in- 
terest, and his regulating crusade has come to an end. His 
own story is thus told to a newspaper reporter: 
“ His first movement was to limit the retailing to hotels, hut 
was defeated by the obstacles created, and the devices counte- 
nanced by the city officials, from Mayor Ely downward, so that 
all which was necessary to evade the law was to ‘ nail a sign 
with “hotel” on it, over any den ten feet square.’ The next 
movement was to present a specimen ‘hotel’ (corner Houston 
and Greene streets), consisting of a single room—a place of very 
vicious repute—and to indict the Excise Commissioners for 
licensing it. But District-Attorney Phelps was so awed by the 
liquor interest, as to allow every obstacle to be thrown in the 
way that legal ingenuity could devise. At the trial no juror 
was accepted who failed to answer these three absurd questions 
satisfactorily to the liquor men: ‘ Do you consider a man who 
sells liquor at retail as respectable and reputable as any other 
man? Did you ever contribute money to the Spciety for the 
Prevention of Crime? Did you ever attend Dr. Crosby’s 
church ?’ The jury acquitted the Commissioners, of course.” 
Commenting on this 11 interview,” the New York “ Evan? 
gelist ” says: 
‘‘In another colnmn of our paper we give an interview of Dr. 
Howard Crosby with a reporter of the ‘ Evening Post,’ on what 
the Society for the Prevention of Crime has done for temperance 
in this city. It is a succinct but very interesting story. It 
shows how strongly intrenched the liquor-traffic is in law and 
usage, and what powerful interests that traffic can bring to its 
protection when in danger. For five years this society, headed 
by Dr. Crosby, than whom there is no moro zealous and deter- 
mined soldier of the temperance cause as he understands it, has 
done its utmost to restrict the sale of alcoholic liquors in this 
city. He has treated prohibitory measures as impracticable, 
and has refused to advocate total abstinence, as an extreme 
which would be regarded as fanatical. He has confined him- 
self to the eminently moderate task of reducing the sale and 
use of intoxicating drinks, through the enforcement of laws 
already in existence, and the enactment of now statutes. Yet 368 
Alcohol in Society. 
he confesses that he has met with no success, and concludes his 
interesting interview by saying : ‘ The only silver lining to the 
dark cloud that I can see, is that the fight has not been wholly 
given up, and will not be.’ ” 
During the course of this experiment, a paper in the inter- 
est of these measures, called “ Moderation,” was published, 
although but one number was ever issued; but it was ea- 
gerly seized on by the Brewers, and others interested in the 
liquor traffic, for gratuitous circulation, as an ally to their 
cause; the “ Western Brewer ” for January, 1882, saying of 
it, in reply to an adverse criticism of the “New York Re- 
tailer,” on the “ Business Men’s Moderation Society,” in 
whose interest it was published : 
“ There was money in $1,000 for 25,000 copies of the last issue 
of ‘ Moderation/ about $700 of good, clean, hard brewers’ 
money.” 
So much to advance the theory of the paper; but how 
much more to resist the application of the law, is not con- 
fessed. The whole is a fair specimen of the folly charac- 
terizing any so-called Temperance effort which proceeds on 
the basis of a compromise or discrimination in regard to 
this infamous traffic. 
(2). There can be, we repeat, but one consistent legal 
course with this business, and that is its entire prohibition. 
The very purposes for which government was instituted, 
demand this strict interference. Says Bentham : 
4<Tlie sole object of government ought to be the greatest hap- 
piness of the greatest possible number of the community. This 
end is promoted by the removal of restrictions on commerce, 
where such restrictions are detrimental to the prosperity of the 
community, by encouraging every industry and institution cal- 
culated to confer benefit, by discouraging and even sternly re- 
pressing those of a pernicious, immoral, and dangerous char 
acter; in a word, by such wise legislation as shall tend to pro- 
mote the physical health, the social comfort, and the intellect- 
ual enjoyments and culture of the people.” 
“If,” said Hon, George Sullivan, “the legislature of a State Old and New Objections. 
369 
permit by law, a traffic which produces poverty with all its 
sufferings, which corrupts the morals and destroys the health 
and lives of thousands in the community, they defeat the great 
and important end for which government was established.” 
“ We owe it to our history,” said Hon. Theodore Frelinghuy- 
sen, “to our free institutions, and above all, to Him whose 
benignant providence has so richly blessed us, that we purify 
our laws. If men will engage in this destructive traffic, if 
they will stoop to degrade their reason, and reap the wages of 
iniquity, let them no longer have the law book for a pillow, 
nor quiet conscience by the opiate of a court license.” 
Tlie late Bev. Albert Barnes pertinently said : 
“The true object of legislation is to prevent, not to protect 
crime. God never instituted a government on earth with a 
view to its throwing a protecting shield over vice and immoral- 
ity. He has never commissioned men to sit in high places to 
accomplish any such work. The end of government, so far as 
it bears on that point at all, is to suppress crime, to punish 
wrong-doers, to remove iniquity, to promote that which is just 
and true. And it matters not what the evil is, nor how lucra - 
tive it may be made, nor how much capital may be investednn 
it, nor how much revenue may be derived from it, nor how 
many persons may have an interest in its continuance. The 
business of the lawgiver is to suppress it, not to protect it; to 
bring it to as speedy an end as possible, not to become the pan- 
derer to it or the patron of it.” 
Blackstone, who defines 11 Common Law w to be : 
“ The law of custom and usage, or those customs and usages 
which have existed from a time when the memory of man run- 
neth not to the contrary,” says, “ Common law requires that a 
man shall not use his property to the injury of another, and the 
consent of the party injured is no mitigation of the offence.” 
These opinions of the province of law, and of the object 
of human government, are like axioms, beyond the reach 
of contradiction ; and it is certain that they apply with equal 
force to all things which are in antagonism with society 
and its rights and true interests. Is not the liquor traffic 
in this category"? Says the Secretary of the British Tem- 
perance Alliance : 370 
Alcohol in Society. 
u If anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic 
in strong drink does. It destroys my primary right of security, 
by constantly creating and stimulating social disorder. It in- 
vades my right of equality, by desiring a profit from the crea- 
tion of a misery I am taxed to support. It impedes my right 
to free moral and intellectual development, by surrounding 
my path with dangers, and by weakening and demoralizing 
society, from which I have a right to claim mutual aid and in- 
tercourse.” 
Of the liquor dealer, Prof. Ware of Harvard University, 
said: 
“The nature of his calling renders it inevitable, that he can- 
not be a dealer in spirits without becoming accessory to vice 
and ruin.” 
And the late Dr, Way land, in his Moral Science, said, 
in agreement with what we have assigned as one reason 
why total abstinence is so often defeated : 
“ Sucli is the relation of the power of appetite to that of con- 
science, that, where no positive allurements to vice are set be- 
fore men, conscience will frequently retain its ascendency. 
While, on the other hand, if allurement be added to the power 
of appetite, reason and conscience prove a harrier too feeble to 
resist their combined and vicious tendency. Hence he who pre- 
sents the allurements of vice before others, who procures and 
sets before them the means of vicious gratification, is in a great 
degree responsible for the mischief which he produces. Viola- 
tions of this law occur in most cases of immoral traffic, as in the 
sale and manufacture of intoxicating liquors, the sale of opium 
to the Chinese, etc. Under the same class is also comprehended 
the case of female prostitution.” 
The long1 array of facts recited in the foregoing pages 
are conclusive proof that the traffic is responsible for the 
chief part of the crime, pauperism, and taxation which 
afflict our modern life. Why, then, should it not be out- 
lawed ? Why should we hesitate to say that any other at- 
titude of government towards it than that of determined 
hostility and of persistent effort for its suppression is a con- 
doning of vice and crime? Yet on what slight pretexts Old and New Objections. 
371 
prohibition is opposed, and the State becomes a party to the 
very evils which it was created to forbid and suppress. 
(1). It must not be done, says one, because it infringes on 
the right of every one to do just as he pleases in this free 
land. It restricts and destroys the liberty of the citizen. 
No, this is a free land, because there is no right nor liberty 
which are not qualified by the condition that they do not 
interfere with the general good. The general good de- 
mands that some men be deprived of personal freedom, and 
we imprison them; it demands that only the government 
shall create coin, and we shut up the counterfeiter; it de- 
mands that the lives of citizens shall be made secure, and 
it kills the dogs which may have cost their owners large 
sums of money; so also it demands that lotteries shall 
cease, that adulterated food and drugs shall be destroyed, 
that no nuisance shall be set up in a community that is 
detrimental to health, or offensive to the inhabitants; and 
in a thousand ways teaches every citizen that his liberty 
and his rights do not confer on him a license to do just as 
he pleases, but always what is for the best to those with 
whom his lot has been cast. 
(2). It is a source of revenue to the government, say 
some, and a great loss would be sustained by destroying 
tbe traffic. The Imperial Commission lately appointed at 
St. Petersburg to consider the question of drunkenness, 
recommended the closing of a large number of liquor shops 
in the Russian Empire ; but it is intimated that the recom- 
mendation will not be acted upon, “ because of the serious 
loss of revenue it would entail.” That is the argument of 
the liquor-dealers of this country, but it is sadly vitiated 
by the appearance at the general government of a delega- 
tion of leading distillers, in the summer of 1882, asking that 
Congress shall so legislate as to reduce the revenue on dis- 
tilled spirits about $30,000,000. But aside from this in- 
consistency, the argument is good for nothing, and worse 
than that, from the fact that the sum paid in taxes and 372 
Alcohol in Society. 
licenses to the General, State and Municipal Governments, 
amounts to only a small fraction of the cost entailed on 
these governments by the sales of these taxed and licensed 
liquors. Rev. Albert Barnes shows that “ The exact sum 
received in the city and county of Philadelphia for tavern 
licenses in the year 1851, was $66,302 j and the whole 
sum in the State, was about $108,000. The expenses for 
prosecuting for crime, and for the support of pauperism, 
consequent on intemperance, was, for the same year, as 
accurately as it can be computed, $365,000.” The ratio is 
no less at the present time. 
The Chicago u Tribune,” in a recent issue, says : 
“ Of the total tax of a little less than $6,000,000 assessed last 
year, the entire liquor interest, including 3,603 saloons and 
every wholesale dealer, was assessed less than $12,000, or one- 
fifth of one per cent, of the whole ; also that a careful estimate 
of the extra expense caused by the liquor interests to the city 
last year (over and above all the ordinary expenses common to 
all, such as gas, water, sewerage, etc.) exceeded $930,000. De- 
ducting from this the sum of $182,226, for saloon license fees, 
and the above $12,000 for personal taxes, leaves a deficit of 
$735,773 on account of the liquor business, which thus not only 
pays nothing for the necessary expenses of our city government, 
but to this extent diverts the taxes for its support.” 
In a paper submitted to the National Temperance Con- 
vention, at Saratoga, in 1881, by Rev. George H. Vibbert, 
the following tables of revenue and expense were given : 
$700,000,000 paid for drink. 
33,529,000 liquor-dealers 
might produce. 
40,000,000 two hundred 
thousand drunk- 
ards might pro- 
duce. 
50,000,000 value of grain de- 
stroyed. 
“ The United States Commis- 
sioner of Internal Revenue re- 
ports total receipts from all 
sources relating to distilled 
spirits and fermented liquors, 
in 1880, 
$74,015,311 63 
There were 167,645 liquor- 
dealers. 
$823,529,000 total. 
Cost of crime, pauperism, in 
sanity, and idiocy, caused by 
drink, unknown. Old and New Objections. 
373 
Massachusetts’ statistics are fuller than any I have been able 
to get: 
$20,000,000 paid for drink. 
1,319,800 liquor dealers might 
produce. 
400,000 two thousand 
drunkards might 
produce. 
1,578,000 cost of crime caused 
by drink. 
1,200,000 cost of pauperism 
caused by drink. 
United States and State rev- 
enue from liquor in 1880, 
$2,491,012 16 
There were 6,599 liquor-dealers. 
$24,497,800 total. 
Probably the value of liquors exported from Massachusetts 
would be less than the value of grain and fruit destroyed, and 
of imported liquors. 
$22,400 cost of crime caused by 
drink. 
27,000 cost of pauperism 
caused by drink. 
2,666 cost of lunacy caused 
by drink. 
663 Excise Commissioners’ 
accounts. 
In 1878, in St. Lawrence Co., 
N. Y., the payments for liquor 
licenses, 
$2,231 25 
$52,729 total. 
Value of time lost by dealers 
and drunkards, unknown.” 
Mr. Vibbert adds: 
“ Though these statistics are only approximately correct, they 
suggest that for every dollar received for drink revenue, from 
ten to twenty-three dollars are paid for liquor, and to help 
repair losses and care for the victims of the drinking system.” 
There is no more shallow pretence than this of revenue 
from liquors. As Dr. Collins has well said, (“The Great 
Living Issue/’ p. 9) : 
“ Let the Government require the liquor traffic to pay its own 
bills, and make good to both individuals and the State all the 
damages that can be directly traced to it, and it would die for 
want of means in less than six months. It is only lucrative 
because the Government pays its bills, and supports and pro- 
vides for its victims.” 374 
Alcohol in Society. 
(3). But Prohibition, it is said, is a failure, wherever it 
is tried. If this is so, it is reasonable to presume that those 
interested in the continuance of the liquor traffic would not 
urge it as an objection against such legislation ; but as the 
objection comes most vehemently from this class, there is 
just ground for suspicion that it is not an honest one. In 
February, 1882, the “ Brewers’ Association,” issued a 
“ Circular to the Trade,” with a view to ascertaining if a 
change in their Rules would be likely to insure them a 
larger membership and an increased revenue. The situa- 
tion is represented as a critical one, and the need of means 
is urgent. 
“At present,” they say, “it is called on to fight the fanatics 
who in Iowa, Missouri, Indiana and elsewhere are striving for 
prohibitory laws aimed directly at malt liquors. Let no one 
suppose such a fight is local. It concerns the whole trade. 
Succeeding there, they will make fresh aggressions elsewhere. 
No State will be safe. At such a crisis, we need that every one 
interested should join our association, so that all concerned 
should act together, and give greater moral and material 
force.” 
Men do not thus stir themselves and others up against 
a policy that is a failure. 
11 The Western Brewer,” for March, 1882, confesses that 
prohibition is a success : 
“ Vermont lias to-day one of the most stringent laws against 
the sale of liquors ever devised by the ‘ wisdom and virtue ’ of 
any legislative body. In all the larger towns the letter of the 
law is lived up to, and the sale of alcoholic stimulants is 
restricted to a town agent, who is authorized to sell only for 
medicinal purposes, and then only on a physician’s prescription. 
Breweries have been closed and saloon-keepers driven into 
other States. In St. Albans the Weldon, the American and two 
other hotels have gone out of business, because, without the 
profits of the bar, they could not pay expenses.” 
The Illinois Liquor Dealers’ Association is also alarmed, 
having (March, 1882,) issued an appeal to all wholesale Old and New Objections. 
375 
dealers to contribute $25 each to fight prohibition, and beg- 
ging u all thinking and observing men, especially those 
directly or indirectly connected with the traffic, to observe 
the wonderful spread of the prohibition movement.” It 
adds: 
“ The ignorant and blind alone will any longer assert that 
there is no danger in Illinois, in view of the fact that the open 
retail sale of auy intoxicating liquor of any kind is absolutely 
prohibited and prevented in numerous local communities, nay, 
in entire counties and Senatorial districts; that under our own 
dram-shop laws the most careful and conscientious saloon-keep- 
ers, especially those in the rural districts, are frequently sen- 
tenced to heavy fine and imprisonment, and the earnings and 
savings of years of honest toil swept away by judgments for 
damages awarded under this very law.” 
Some of the distillers and dealers complain of the folly 
of conceding so much sense of alarm; and others look 
suspiciously on the consequences of organized effort against 
prohibition ; but all concede that in reality the prohibitory 
law is effective, and some, that it will be more so, in pro- 
portion as the liquor interest works openly in opposition to 
it. Mr. Martin, a distiller in Illinois, is in this latter class, 
and has lately published his views in the Peoria u Saturday 
Evening Call.” He says that: 
“ The worst enemies of the liquor manufacture and trade are 
those who seek to band the liquor interests together to fight 
both the temperance movement and the law.” 
He thus describes the forces arrayed against each other 
in such a conflict, and what will be the result of the oppo- 
sition : 
*•' There are less than one hundred great distilleries in the 
whole United States. The retail dealers, the ‘ saloon men,’ are 
generally men without means, and not of habits to acquire 
much wealth. With rare exceptions, like Peoria, the whole- 
sale dealers are not much better. The social position of the 
liquor trade holds no sort of comparison to the social status of 
American slavery. The moral and religious sentiment of Ameri- 376 
Alcohol in Society. 
can society is against it. The women are against it. This moral 
sentiment stands like a stone wall to confront it. Of course 
this is a free country, and any man, any editor, any class or 
any interest has. an undoubted right to beat its brains out 
against this stone wall. It is their privilege as well as their 
right. But, personally, yon can count me out of any such 
idiotic 4 d d nonsense.’ Let the liquor men go along 
quietly; let them take out their license and obey strictly tlio 
law; let them provoke as little attention as possible to their 
business ; let them ward off opposition by seeking to conciliate 
rather than antagonize the moral sentiment of the whole coun- 
try, and their business will go on with as little disturbance and 
annoyance as it is possible to do. But let a financial collapse 
of the distilling interest occur now, or in the near future, and 
it will scare every capitalist and business man from ever re-en- 
gaging in the distilling business. Then, with the temperance 
element rampant, and no capital to fight it with, prohibition 
could be enforced, and in ten years there would not be left a 
distillery, a brewery or a saloon in the whole United States.” 
When our enemies thus answer their own objection, little 
need be said by us in regard to it. This will suffice here. 
The law is as well executed as other laws against crime 
are. There is doubtless some secret selling, as there is 
secret counterfeiting, as there is stealing, perjury, or any 
other crime; and any argument against prohibitory laws, 
because in some instances they are violated, would be just 
as valid against all criminal laws. 
It may be added as further evidence of the dishonesty 
of the boast on the part of the parties engaged in the 
liquor traffic, that prohibition is a failure, that the most 
strenuous efforts are made by them to prevent the enact- 
ment of either statutory or constitutional prohibition. The 
United States Brewers’ Association, in session at St. Paul, 
Minn., in May, 1888, received, in the report of their attor- 
ney, Louis Schade, of Washington, D. C., the following 
information and assurance in regard to a proposed Prohibi- 
tory bill for the District of Columbia : 
*‘ Though Miss Willard and a whole battalion of female Pro- 
hibitionists made fervent appeals before the Senate’s District Old and New Objections. 
377 
of Columbia Committe, the simple reminder from the friends 
of personal liberty that there was a Presidential election pend- 
ing, sufficed to induce even the Republican members of the 
Committee (with the sole exception of Senator Riddleberger) to 
vote the bill down unanimously. No prohibition will pass this 
Congress. Indeed, I can proudly point to the fact that, with 
the exception of the School-book bill (and we did not fight 
that), none of the measures of the Prohibitionists have thus far 
passed the National Legislature, and in all likelihood will not 
hereafter, provided no mistakes are made on our part. 
“ The reason is very simple. In the first plaee, the leaders 
on both sides know that Prohibition is not a moral and temper- 
ance issue. Then they believe that Congress has no right to 
meddle with a question clearly belonging to the states. The 
watchfulness of the friends of personal liberty at the Capitol 
may also have had its effect. Their appeals to their friends in 
the States have frequently kept some of the recreant Congress- 
men at home forever.” 
It was further manifest in the reports, that between forty 
and fifty thousand dollars (including $9,000 paid out to the 
Literary Bureau) was paid by this one organization in the 
last year to fight Prohibition. And President Miles, allud- 
ing to the activity of the Prohibitionists since the recent 
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, which was in brief: 
“ The State of Kansas had a right to prohibit the liquor traf- 
fic. It did not thereby take away the property of the brewers. 
It simply abated a nuisance. The property is not taken away 
from its owners ; they are only prohibited from using it for a 
specific purpose, which the legislature declared to be injurious 
to the community.” 
President Miles said: 
“ Gentlemen, this Convention will fall short of its duty unless 
thorough and energetic measures are taken to protect and de- 
fend our business.” 
What measures will protect their business? Why, their 
preference seems to be for the measures which many others 
think will restrict and destroy their business. Hear Mr. 
Peter E. Iler, President of the Willow Springs Distilling 378 
Alcohol in Society. 
Co., at Omaha, Nebraska, as he writes under date of Jan- 
uary 7, 1888 : 
“ High License has not hurt our business, but on the contrary, 
has been a great benefit to it, as well as to the people, generally. 
. . . High License acts as a bar against Prohibition. . . . 
It also gives the business more of a tone and legal standing, and 
places it in the hands of a better class of people. . . . I do not 
think that high license lessens the quantity of liquor used, but 
places it in fewer and better hands, with better regularity. As 
to the trade repealing the high license law, if the question was 
left to it, I do not think, so far as my acquaintance is con- 
cerned, that it would do so I cannot see how any 
one who has anything at stake can help but favor High License, 
and enforce the law strictly. ... In all my experience 
of ten years in Ohio, before the temperance movement, and 
twenty years’ experience here previous to high license and 
since, I believe that high license is one of the grandest laws for 
the liquor traffic, and for men interested, as well as people at 
large, there is. I do not believe we would have any Prohibition 
people in our State if our high license law was more rigidly 
enforced.” 
Mr. M. B. Hokuf, liquor-dealer of Wilber, Neb., in a 
confidential letter written for the guidance of liquor-dealers 
in New Jersey, February 14, 1888, says of High License : 
“ It brings the business to a legal standing. My experience 
is, that the law has not resulted in less consumption, for 
when a better class of saloons are kept under High License, the 
business brings in a better class of customers, and what little 
he might lose on the outcast, he gains in new trade.” 
So Mr. 0. K. Bowman, distiller of Wooster, O., in a 
confidential letter written for the same purpose, February 
2, 1888, says : 
“ High. License does more to counteract Prohibition fanati- 
cism than anything else we can bring to hear Do 
not permit Prohibition laws and think to have free selling 
under them. No Prohibition laws in mine to fight. I don’t 
want to operate as an outlaw.” 
To the same effect, Metz Brothers, an Omaha brewing 
firm, write: Old and New Objections. 
379 
“ High License has been no injury to our business. We think 
it bars Prohibition. We are positively certain that were it not 
for our present High License law, Nebraska to-day would have 
Prohibition. High License does not lessen the consumption of 
liquor. If left to us—the liquor dealers—we would never 
repeal the law.” 
Judge ye from this whether Prohibition is not dreaded 
by the liquor interest. And if dreaded, it is hardly honest 
to call it a failure. 
(4). Finally, to avoid repetition, for all these objections 
have been considered in the previous essay, it is said that 
we cannot make men sober by legislation, but must depend 
on moral suasion to induce them to reform. It is sufficient 
answer to this to repeat what was said a few pages back, 
that many men cannot be permanently reformed, either by 
moral suasion, religious influences, or through any means 
whatever appealing only to themselves ; not because they 
do not desire to reform, nor because they do not put forth 
efforts for reformation, but wholly because of the work which 
alcohol has already wrought in them, rendering them 
powerless in its presence. The streets are not safe for 
them to walk in, when there are pitfalls at every corner, 
and allurements which they cannot withstand, all around 
them. 
Judge O’Neal says: 
“This year a Washingtonian, who sank into a drunkard’s 
grave, said, pointing to a grog-shop on the left, ‘ If I escaped 
that hell, this hell ’—pointing to another on his right—‘ yawns 
to receive me.’ This year has fully satisfied me that moral 
suasion has had its day of triumph; some other aids must now 
be sought to keep what we have gained, and to gain still 
more.” 
Cardinal Manning said, at Exeter Hall, London, in 
June, 1881 : 
“ That legislation is necessary nobody denies. We used to 
be contented with what I must call the cant of using moral 
means to put down drunkenness. I should like to know, sir, 
whether we have not been laboring to put down drunkenness 380 
Alcohol in Society. 
by moral means ? Have we been slack ? Has the convocation 
of the Church of England been slack ? Has the Church of Eng- 
land been slack ? Have the Nonconformist bodies been slack ? 
I will say, have they whom I represent been slack ? Let us 
hear, then, no more of putting down public houses by moral 
means! How am 1 to put down a public house by moral 
means ? Am I to go and preach to them ? Will that take away 
the license ? Will that hinder the public house from being put 
up ? This never came out of the mouth of anybody who had a 
desire to see the Legislature in action to put down this evil. 
This has come out of the mouth of those who wish to avert 
legislation.” 
But it must not be forgotten by those who urge this ob- 
jection, that Intemperance is not simply a vice affecting the 
individual; but it is also a war upon society at large; that 
it burdens us with taxation ; curses us with all manner of 
crimes; deteriorates the value of our property ; creates a 
nuisance in the neighborhood where we have fixed our 
home ; and in many ways is a curse and a hindrance to 
the enjoyment and prosperity of our daily life ; and, there- 
fore, whether prohibition reforms or fails to reform the in- 
dividual, it kills a traffic that has no right to exist. Wen- 
dell Phillips thus justly put the matter in terse words : 
“ Prohibition only says: When you throw open that door, 
and invite the passer-by to drink, and when two hundred years 
of experience have proved that by so doing you double my 
taxes and make it dangerous for my child to tread those streets, 
I have a right to say whether you shall open that door or not. 
I don’t care whether you sell him poison or food ; I don’t care 
whether you sell him alcohol or roast beef—it does not matter ; 
all I know is that, if you undertake to sell him something that 
doubles my taxes, and that makes my passage through the 
street more dangerous, you double this crime, and I have the 
right to interfere.” 
That is tlie principle; and in view of it, the liquor-sell- 
ers’ plea that we shall reform men by moral means, and 
then leave them to the tender mercies of such temptations, 
is the climax of folly. 
We plead, then, for Prohibition; and our plea is equally Old and New Objections. 
381 
valid, whether we base it on the high ground of philanthropic 
duty to suffering humanity, or on the lower argument of 
self-defence from taxation and annoyance ; whether we are 
incited to it by our desire to reform others, or by our ambi- 
tion to see our land purified from an intolerable pest. 
We plead for the fact to be accomplished, whether by leg- 
islative enactment, or by constitutional provision. 
In the former essay we have argued the advantages of 
the latter. They seem to us to be many and obvious ; and 
recent successes in Kansas and Iowa, cannot be other than 
encouraging to those who feel the necessity for kindred 
action in other States. 
We would lift this question, if possible, out of the reach 
of the contingencies which must always be imminent while 
we trust to mere statutory provisions; and have it no 
longer subject to such changes or defeats by injudicious 
amendments or by repeal, as ignorance, caprice, or fancied 
partizan demands would render it always liable to encoun- 
ter. Once incorporated in the organic law of the State, it 
would not be at the mercy of secret political caucuses, nor 
a thing to be betrayed, or bought and sold by liquor 
leagues and alliances; nor could it be removed without 
the knowledge and consent of the people. 
That it may he obtained in every State, and become the 
protection of white settlers, as it is now of the Indians, by 
United States statutes in our Territories, what is necessary? 
Not so much that the moral sense of the people shall be 
enlightened by arguments and the presentation of facts, 
as that they shall be roused to fidelity to their present light 
and knowledge. If, as has been confessed by one engaged 
in the vile trade, “ the Moral and Religious Sentiment of 
American Society is against ” the liquor traffic, all that is 
needed is, for our voters to make manifest that fact at the 
ballot-box, and thus overthrow the monster. May we so 
act that the condemning judgment shall not be pronounced 
against us ; u Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.’’ INDEX. 
Accidents caused by drunkenness, 31. 
Addison, Joseph, on the moral effects of drinking, 59. 
Adulterations of wines and other intoxicants, 90. 
Alcohol, Action of on the heart, 19; “A good creature of God,” 
342 ; A poison to all forms of animal life, 249; No place for in 
a healthy system, 14 ; Is it a food ? 262, 265; A fuel ? 262; A 
solvent of food ? 265; Its attraction for itself is cumulative, 
250; Never a natural, but an artificial product, 248; Percent- 
age of in popular bitters, 261; Physiological action of various 
kinds of, 251. 
Alcoholic beverages, Cause of suicide, 27; Composition and na- 
ture of, 248; Death rate from, 14; Hereditary influences of, 
38; Increased consumption of in France, 30; Mental effects of, 
48; Morbific action of, 9. 
“Ales,” religious fairs so called, 195. 
Alford, Dean, Claims that Christ made intoxicating wine, 338; 
His objection to total abstinence, 338. 
Allen, Dr. Charles, Analysis of unfermented wine, 294. 
Allison, Judge, on intemperance and crime, 123. 
Ames, Oliver and Sons, on contrasted effects of license and 
prohibition, 85. 
Andrew, Gov. John A., On intemperance and crime, 122. 
Anstie, Dr., On tendency of drinking to destroy conscience, 60. 
Archbishop of Dublin, On the wine made by Jesus at Cana, 
312. 
Army and Navy, effects of drinking in, 176; Army Life, value of 
temperance in, 347. 
Assyria, Falls by intemperance, 130. 
Athens, Overthrown by intemperance, 134. 
Athletes, Value of total abstinence to, 344. 
383: 384 
Index. 
Augustine, Against dissipation, 191; on the wine made by Jesus 
at Cana, 312. 
Austria-Hungary, Number of breweries in, 137. 
Babylon, Falls by intemperance, 131. 
Bacon, Francis, On drinking as destructive of life, 84; On mor- 
al effects of drinking, 59. 
Baines, Edward, On danger incurred by all moderate drinkers, 
361. 
Balcom, Judge, On liquor sellers supporting themselves on tlie 
earnings of others, 102. 
Barbour’s Statistics of intemperance in churches, 200. 
Barnes, Dr. Albert, On the object of government to suppress 
vice, 369 ; On the revenue argument, 372; On the unintoxicat- 
ing wines of the Bible, 303. 
Barton, Dr. On alcoholic drinks an aggravation of diseases in hot 
climates, 347. 
Bayley, and Wigger, Bishops, refuse Christian burial to liquor 
sellers and drunkards, 204. 
Beer, Adulterations of, 94; Annual production of, 137; Causes 
Bright’s disease, 258; Causes suicide, 27, 259; England’s ex- 
periment with the free sale of, 156; Evangelizing influence of, 
155 ; Percentage of alcohol in, 251; The use of creates a demand 
for distilled liquors, 156; Drinkers’ diseases all of a dangerous 
character, 166. 
Beer Drinking, Brutal Drunkenness caused by, 71; Effects of in 
the United States, 260; Attitude of Life Insurance companies 
to, 166. 
Belgium, Number of breweries in, 137; Increased consump- 
tion of ardent spirits in, 139. 
Bentham, Jeremy, On the object of government, 368. 
Bible wines of two kinds, 276-336. 
Bishop of Norwich, the, On the wine made by Jesus at Cana, 
312. 
Bismarck, Aversion of his mother to his being educated where 
beer-drinking was practiced, 216. 
Blackstone, William, On Common Law and its requirements, 
369. 
Blood, Unfermented wine a true symbol of, 324. 
Boniface, St., Complains of the intemperance of the English 
Bishops, 192. 
Boston, report of Associated Charities of, on intemperance as 
the cause of pauperism, 111. 
Breweries, Number of in the leading nations, 137. Index. 
385 
Brewers, Defrauders of the government, 89; Interests identical 
with those of the distillers, 90 ; Contribute money to sustain 
“ The Moderation,” 368. 
Brick-makers, Abstaining and Non-abstaining, difference in 
amount of work done by, 344. 
Briggs, Gov. Geo. N., On intemperance among public men, 173; 
On the wrong intemperance does to woman, 67. 
Bright, Hon. John, on Christian effort antagonized by the 
drink system, 211. 
Bright’s disease caused by beer, 258; By moderate drinking, 
350. 
Brinton, Dr., On mental effects of drinking, 55. 
British Medical Journal, On alcohol not food, 265; On moderate 
drinking, 13. 
Brougham, Lord, On the folly of relying on education to stop 
intemperance, 213. 
Buchanan, Pres’t. James, On drinking habits formed at College, 
213. 
Burne, Peter, On intemperauce as a cause of crime in Great 
Britain, 125. 
Burns, Robert, Drinking habits of, 222. 
Bush, Prof. George, On the unintoxicating wines of the Bible, 
301. 
Buxton, Charles, On intemperance a curse to home, 23, 66; A 
waste of wealth and life, 140; Its effects on national well-be- 
ing, 149. 
Byron, Lord, Drinking habits of, 226. 
California, Intemperance on wine in, 257. 
Camwright, Dr., On intemperate victims to the yellow fever, 
26. 
Cana, Wine at the wedding of, Claimed by Dean Alford to be 
intoxicating, 338. 
Carlyle, Thomas, On the drinker’s boasted freedom, 352. 
Carpenter, Dr. Wm. B., On injurious effects of moderate drink- 
ing, 10; On alcohol a poison, 268; On the death-rate from 
drinking, 15; On hereditary influence of drinking, 39; That 
alcohol does not produce heat, 346. 
Catacombs, Paintings in representing the Lord’s Supper, 319. 
Channing, Dr. Wm. E., on mental effects of intemperance, 48; 
On folly of relying on general education to stay intemperance, 
215. 
Chapin, Rev. E. H , On the opposition of the rich and influen- 
tial to total abstinence, 356. 386 
Index. 
Chaptal, Count, On Alcohol never a product of nature, 248. 
Chicago, Intemperance among women in, 75. 
“ Daily News,” On beer no substitute for distilled li- 
quors, 157. 
“ Inter Ocean,” On drunkenness in the city, 158. 
• ‘‘Tribune,” On the alleged revenue from the liquor traffic, 
372. 
Child, A, driven to suicide by the intemperance of his father, 
79. 
Children, how cursed by intemperance of parents, 76. 
Cholera, finds its largest number of victims among the intem- 
perate, 25. 
Christian Bishops, not to use nor be near wine, 183. 
Expediency enjoins abstinence, 186. 
Fathers, on the moral effects of drinking, 58, 190 ; On the 
wine made by Jesus at Cana, 312. 
Ministers, effects of the drink system on, 197. 
Christison, On alcohol a poison, 267. 
Chrysostom, On the effects of wine, 191; On the wine made by 
Jesus at Cana, 312. 
Church discipline frequently called for by intemperance, 200. 
Church of England, Memorial of on the evils of the drink sys- 
tem, 202. 
Cider, Adulteration of, 94. 
“ Cincinnati Gazette,” On crime caused by the Sunday liquor 
traffic, 211. 
Clarke, Dr. Adam, on Joseph’s interpretation of the butler’s 
dream, 303. 
Clement of Alexandria, On the evil effects of wine, 191. 
Clergy of America, Intemperate habits of, before the temper- 
ance reformation, 198; Since that time, 222. 
Coleridge, Hartley, Drinking habits of, 227. 
Colleges, Drinking habits in, 215. 
Collins, Dr. A. M., On the bankruptcy of the liquor traffic if it 
paid its bills, 373. 
Colton, Rev. C. C., Drinking habits of, 228. 
Columella, On preventing the fermentation of wine, 281. 
Common law, Requirements of, 369. 
Comstock, Mrs. Elizabeth, on intemperance and crime, 125. 
Cook, Rev. Joseph, On hereditary influence of drinking, 46 ; On 
unfermented wine, 291. 
Cooper, J. F., On drunkenness in France, 257. 
Crime, caused by Intemperance, 115. 
Crosby, Howard, attacks the total abstinence pledge, 351; Con- Index. 
387 
fessed failure of his movement to restrain the liquor traffic, 
367; Fate of his “ Moderation Society,” 366; His “Calm view 
of Temperance,” published by the Brewers, 247; On Scripture 
twisting by total abstinence advocates, 278; Ridicules the the- 
ory of unfermented wine, 278. 
Cunningham, Mr., On unfermented wine at the Passover, 314. 
Curtis, Geo. Wm., On danger to the country from emigrants, 155. 
Cuyler, Rev. T. L., On the drink appetite not destroyed by the 
“ grace of God,” 340. 
Davis, Judge Noah, On the relations of intemperance to crime, 
126. 
Davy, Sir Humphrey, On alcohol not found ready formed in 
plants, 343. 
Day, Dr. Alfred, On condition of a reformed man’s brain, 328; 
On the physiological action of alcohol, 252. 
Death-rate of the intemperate, compared with that of the gen- 
eral population, 15, 169; Increases in all countries in the ratio 
of the facilities for drinking, 16. 
Dickens, Charles, On wine-shops, the colleges and chapels of 
the poor in France, 237. 
Distillation never creates alcohol, 251. 
Distilleries, Keepers appointed in by the General Government, 
86. 
Distillers and Brewers, their interests one, 90. 
Doyle, Bishop, On intemperance as the source of the evils of 
Ireland, 140. 
Drink-system, The, Antagonistic to Industry, 84; To the Christ- 
ian religion, 197; Catholic Clergy on the evils of, 202 ; Causes 
Sabbath desecration, 210; Demoralizes all engaged in the 
trade, 86; Its effects on health and prosperity, 163; On the 
community, 82; On the family, 65; On national develope- 
ment, strength and wealth, 88 ; On national morals, 149 ; On 
religious welfare, 82, 210; On Sunday-schools and missions, 
204; Influence of on elections and legislation, 159; Injurious 
effects of on the army and navy, 176 ; Memorial of the Clergy of 
the Church of England on the evils of, 202: No branch of it 
contributes to the wealth of the people, 102; Prevents educa- 
tion from becoming general, 83; Subversive of morality and 
social order, 8; Of national prosperity, 130; Source of crime, 
15 ; Source of pauperism, 115. 
Drunkards excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven, 180. 
Drunkenness declared criminal in England in 1606, 116; Did 
not mean intoxication in ancient times, 295. 388 
Index. 
Duchatelet on relations of intemperance to prostitution, 128. 
DufSeld Rev. Dr., On use of unfermented wine by the Turks, 
297. 
Duke of Orleans, how his death by intoxication changed the 
history of France, 172. 
Ecclesiastical Canons of the 4th century, forbid any in orders to 
visit taverns, 192. 
Edmunds, Dr. James, on the physiological action of alcohol, 253. 
Educated countries, intemperance in, 231. 
Education, the folly of relying on general, to prevent or over- 
come intemperance, 213 ; To overcome, must embrace specific 
instruction in regard to the drink system, 240 ; On the compo- 
sition of alcohol, 248; On the physiological effect of alcohol, 
251; That alcohol is neither food nor fuel, 262; That all al- 
coholic drinks are poisons, 267; That the drink-system is 
opposed by political economy, 271; And by moral philoso- 
phy, 274. 
Ellis, Dr. John, on unfermented wine a symbol of blood, 325. 
Emigrants, Danger to the country from, 155. 
Epictetus, On the value of total abstinence to the athlete, 345. 
Essenes, The, total abstainers, 179. 
Family, Effects of drinking on the, 65. 
Farrar, Canon, On crime in England caused hy drink, 117; On 
confessions of non-abstaining physicians that intoxicants are 
harmful, 349 ; On British legislators overcome hy drink, 172. 
Feast of the Asota, a drinkers’ frolic, 196. 
Fenelon on the moral effects of drinking, 59. 
Fergus, Dr. Andrew, On danger to reformed men of using fer- 
mented wine at the Lord’s Supper, 332. 
Fermentation prevented by the ancients by excluding air, 281; 
By boiling, 281; By filtering, 282 ; By keeping at low tempe- 
rature, 282; By sulphurizing, 283 ; By covering with oil, 283. 
Fortnightly Review, The, On the deterioration of will-power by 
drinking, 55. 
France, Consumption of beer in, 142; Education and intemper- 
ance in, 237; History of, changed by wine, 172; Increased 
consumption of alcohol in, 138; Number of Breweries in, 137; 
Suicides in, 28. 
Francis, Surgeon Gen. C. R., On danger to reformed men of using 
fermented wine at the Lord’s Supper, 332. 
“ Fruit of the vine,” testimony as to the meaning of, 318; Proofs 
of its use at the Lord’s Supper in various ages, 320. Index. 
389 
Gale, Dr. L. D., On wine making, 293. 
Garfield, Pres’t. J. A., Intemperance of funeral escort of, 175. 
Geike, Dr. Cunningham, On tlie wine made by Jesus at Cana, 
313. 
German Students, Drinking among, 216. 
Germany, number of breweries in, 137; Increased consumption 
of whiskey in, 139; Increase of crime in, 139; Large number 
of suicides in, 259. 
Gladden, Washington, On fallacy of claim that alcoholic bever- 
ages are needed in hard labor, or to withstand heat or cold, 
343. 
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., On effects of intemperance in Great 
Britain, 139. 
Glutton Masses in England in the 10th century, 196. 
Goodrich, Professor, On drinking by college students, 220. 
Gough, John B., On intemperance in the home, 69 ; On the ap- 
petite for drink not destroyed by grace, 340. 
Grace of God, The, total abstinence supposed to war against, 
340; Does not obliterate appetite, 341. 
Great Britain, Pauperism in, 103. 
Greek Church, Use of unfermented wine at the Lord’s Supper 
by the, 323. 
Greeley, Hon. Horace, On drunkenness on wine in France, 256 ; 
On danger to reformed men in use of intoxicating wine at the 
Lord’s Supper, 328. 
Gull, Sir William, On the physiological action of alcohol, 252. 
Guthrie, Rev. Dr., On alcohol not a creature of God, 342. 
Hall, S. C., On advantages of abstinence, 365. 
Hamilton, Dr. Frank H., Against the use of alcoholic beverages 
in the army, 347. 
Harris, Dr. Elisha, On intemperance and crime in the United 
States, 120. 
Harvard College, Drinking among the students of, 219. 
Hearder, Dr. George J., On insanity caused by drinking, 54. 
Hereditary influences of drinking, 38. 
Hereditary tendencies, make the use of fermented wine at the 
Lord’s Supper, dangerous, 332. 
Herschel, Mr., On unfermented Passover wine, 314. 
Holland, Number of breweries in, 137. 
Holland, Dr. J. G., On the peculiar sorrows which intemperance 
brings to women, 67; On drunkenness in Switzerland, 257 ; 
On temperance education, 244. 
Holt, Rev. George, On intemperance as a cause of pauperism, 113. 390 
Index. 
Home Life Insurance Company issues a circular on beer drink- 
ing, 166. 
Hopkins, Rev. Dr. Mark, Replies to Dr. Crosby’s attack on tlie 
total abstinence pledge, 351. 
Horace, on the necessity of total abstinence to athletes, 345. 
Howe, Dr. Samuel, On intemperate habits of parents of idiots, 
47. 
Illinois Liquor Dealers’ Association alarmed at the spread of 
Prohibition sentiments, 374. 
India, Evils of the English drink-system in, 205. 
Indians, Illegal sales of liquor to, 101. 
Inebriate Asylums, Educated men in, 221. 
Ingersoll, Col. Robert G., arraigns intemperance as the source of 
many evils, 129. 
Insanity caused by intemperance, 48; Prevalence of in countries 
of Germanic stock, 260. 
Intemperance, A disturbing element in educational institutions, 
215; Among women, 66, 72; Caused by beer, 71; Cause of 
crime, 115; Of insanity, 48 ; Of prostitution, 127; Caused by 
custom, 353; Example, 353; Excitement, 354 ; The authorized 
traffic in intoxicants, 355 ; Children cursed by, 77; Cost of, 
and of war compared, 144 ; Curses the homes of the rich as 
well as of the poor, 72; effects of on the family, 65; In edu- 
cated countries, 231; Of educated men, 221; public men, 
171; Mental effects of, 48 ; Moral effects of, 57 ; New Testament 
treatment of, 176 ; The folly of relying on general education 
to overcome, 213; total abstinence and prohibition the only 
remedy for, 361. 
Intoxication means poisoning, 268. 
Ireland, Average liquor bill of, 141; Education and intemper- 
ance in, 233; Relations of intemperance to crime in, 126; 
Sufferings of, largely due to intemperance, 140. 
Isaacs, A. C., On unfermented wine at the Passover, 315. 
Israel, Rabbi Manasseh Ben, On unfermented wine at the Pass 
over, 315. 
Jacobus, Dr., On the unintoxicating wines of the Bible, 303. 
James, Dr. William, Lectures to Howard students on stimulants, 
247. 
Jefferson, Thomas, On the evils of intemperance on politicians, 
173. 
Jeffries, Archdeacon, On evils in India from the English drink- 
system, 205; On the danger of administering fermented wine 
at the Lord’s Supper, 331. Index. 
391 
Jerome, On “ wine, wherein is excess,” 182. 
Jesus “ Came eating and drinking,” significance of, 310. 
Jews, Did not use intoxicating wines at weddings, nor at the 
Passover, 314 ; Probably not an intemperate people in the New 
Testament age, 179; Total abstinence sects among, 179. 
Joachimsen, Judge, On unfermented wine at the Passover, 
317. 
Josephus, On Joseph’s interpretation of the butler’s dream, 
303. 
Kane, Bishop, Remonstrates with liquor dealers, 203. 
Kentucky, Crime in, traced to intoxicants, 125. 
Kerr, Dr. Norman, Bears testimony to the scholarship of Dr. 
Lees, 304 ; On the danger to reformed men of using fermented 
wine at the Lord’s Supper, 329 ; Danger of same to those who 
have hereditary tendency to drink, 333; On the disease of 
drunkenness 334 ; On unfermented wine, 284. 
Kingsley, Rev. Charles, Breaks up drinking customs at con- 
firmation, 201. 
Kirk, Rev. Dr., On drunkenness in France, 256. 
Knox, Dr., On intemperance of the English Clergy, 198. 
Lamb, Charles, His “ Confessions of a Drunkard,” 223; How far 
they relate his personal experience, 225. 
Lees, Dr. F. R., On the use of unfermented wine in Holland, 
297; On the unintoxicating wines mentioned in the Bible, 
304 ; On the wine used in the Passover, 315. 
Leeser, Rev. Isaac, On unfermented wine at the Passover, 316. 
Lehmanousky, Col., On the advantages of total abstinence in 
army life, 347. 
Lewis, David, On intemperance as cause of pauperism in Scot- 
land, 114. 
Lewis, Dr. Tayler, On the unintoxicating wines of the Bible, 
302. 
Liberty, He has the most who is under the strongest obligation 
to duty, 352; Total Abstinence pledge said to deprive a man 
of, 351 ; What is the non-abstainer’s, 352. 
License laws, defeat the object of government, 366. 
Life Insurance Companies on the use of beer, 166. 
Lill, William, On brewing, a demoralizing business, 150. 
Liquor traffic, Antagonistic to the object of government, 366; 
Confession of a distiller that the moral and religious senti- 
ment is against it, 375 ; Its relations to all other trade, 102 • 
Would be bankrupt if obliged to pay its bills, 373. 392 
Index. 
Liquors, Money spent for by leading nations, 136; In the United 
States, 137. 
Logan, Senator, Proposed to devote tbe liquor revenue to ex- 
penses of education, 239. 
London Times, The, On intemperance among the educated, 222. 
London Journal of Medical Science, on moderate drinking a 
cause of disease, 350. 
Lord’s Supper, The, Consideration of the wine question relating 
thereto, 313; Danger to reformed men of participating in, 
when fermented wine is used, 328 ; Danger of same to those 
who have hereditary tendencies to drinking, 333; Illustra- 
tions of in paintings in the Catacombs, 319. 
Lowth, Bishop, On the dream of the butler, as related to Jo- 
seph, 303. 
Lynch, Commodore, On the value of total abstinence in severe 
expeditions, 348. 
Mann, Hon. Horace, On antagonism of intemperance to educa- 
tion, 214. 
Manning, Cardinal, On the need of State interference against 
dram shops, 202. 
Massachusetts Board of Charities on relations of intemperance 
to crime, 123; To pauperism, 110j; On the physiological effects 
of alcohol, 254. 
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, On education and 
intemperance, 238 ; On the poverty of the working classes, 81. 
Maudsley, Dr. Henry, On heredity, 48; On mental effects of 
drink, 57. 
Medical declaration on the advantages of total abstinence, 362. 
Medical Temperance Journal, on the hereditary influence of 
drinking, 45. 
Mental effects of intemperance, 48. 
Mental labor, Total Abstinence the best help in, 231. 
Merriman, Rev. Daniel, on moderate drinking, 349. 
Miller, Dr. James, On alcohol not food, 264; On drinking habits 
formed in colleges, 221; On fatality attending sickness of 
drinkers, 25; On hereditary influences of drunkenness, 41; Oq 
the moral effect of drinking, 62; On moderate drinking, 12. 
Miller, Rev. Dr. Samuel, On the advantages of abstinence, 364. 
Minors, sales of intoxicants to, 100. 
Missions, Domestic and Foreign, Effects of the drink system on, 
205. 
Moderate drinking, A cause of Bright’s disease, 350; Dangers of, 
10, 64, 255. Index. 
393 
Moderate Societies, 366. 
Moderation, claimed to be true temperance, 348. 
“ Moderation, The,” A paper supported by the brewers, 368. 
Monasteries and Nunneries, nurseries of vice, 194. 
Moral effects of drinking, 82. 
Moral Science, Our text-books on, defective in the treatment of 
the drink-system, 274. 
Moral Suasion inoperative against an authorized traffic, 379. 
Morel, M., On perversions of the nervous system by intoxicants, 
165. 
Morselli, Dr. Henry, On suicide among beer-drinkers, 259. 
Mussey, Dr., Classes alcohol with poison, 268. 
Narcotic action of alcohol a proof that it is a poison, 269. 
National Medical Association of the United States on the hered- 
itary influence of drinking, 41. 
National Morals, effects of the drink-system on, 149. 
Navy, effects of drinking in the, 170. 
Nazarites, total abstainers, 180. 
New England Journal of Education, on temperance education, 
245. 
New Testament, The principles and precepts of, enjoin absti- 
nence, 184. 
New York, Drunkenness among women in, 75. 
Noah, M. M., On unfermented wines at the Jewish Passover, 
316. 
Nordhoflf, Charles, On the relation of drunkenness to political 
economy, 272. 
Norway, number of breweries in, 137. 
Nott, Eev. Dr., On drinking by college students, 218; On high 
esteem in which unfermented wines were held by the ancients, 
294; On increase of crime in Scotland in ratio of consumption 
of intoxicants, 126; On two kinds of wine mentioned in the 
Bible, 299. 
Oriental Church, use of unfermented wine at the Lord’s Sup- 
per, by the African branch of, 323. 
Oxford University Students, drinking among, 217. 
Paine, Kobert Treat, Drinking habits of, 230. 
Paley, Archdeacon, On drinking among the Clergy, 198; On mor- 
al effects of drinking, 59. 
Palen, Dr. Montross, On beer as a cause of Bright’s disease, 
258. 394 
Index. 
Pancoast, Dr., On moderate drinking a cause of Bright’s dis- 
ease, 350. 
Parker, Dr. Willard, On the hereditary influence of intemper- 
ance, 41; On alcohol a poison, 14 ; On alcohol not a food, 264 ; 
On average of life as affected by intoxicants, 16; On introduc- 
ing temperance instruction in public schools, 243. 
Parton, James, On'educated men in Inebriate Asylums, 221 ; On 
the use of alcoholic drinks by educated men a kind of sui- 
cide, 226 ; On the danger to reformed men of using fermented 
wine at the Lord’s Supper, 328; On the physical effects of 
drinking, 26; That alcohol does not produce heat, 346. 
Passover, The wine used in the feast of, unfermented, 314. 
Pauper homes, The wretchedness of caused by drink, 22. 
Pauperism, The relations of to intemperance, 108. 
Peck, Mrs. S. E., On intemperance among women, 72. 
Persia, Intemperance in, increased by intercourse with Chris- 
tian countries, 206. 
Persian Empire, The, overthrown by intemperance, 131. 
Phillips, Wendell, his definition of the prohibitory principle, 
380. 
Physicians, intemperance among, 222. 
Pierce, Judge, On intemperance and crime, 124. 
Pierpont, Eev. John, On rum and missionaries, 207. 
Pliny, On filtering wine, 282; On large quantities of wine con- 
sumed by the ancients, 295. 
Plutarch, On disease and death caused by fermented drinks, 18; 
On filtering wine, 282. 
Political economy, Relations of the drink traffic to, 271. 
Poe, Edgar A., Drinking habits of, 230. 
Political power and influence sought by catering to the liquor 
traffic, 355. 
Princeton College, Intemperance among the students of, 218. 
Prohibition, A remedy for intemperance, 366; A plea for by 
constitutional amendment, 370. 
Prohibition laws, An infringement on rights, 371; Loss of rev- 
enue by, 371; Cannot make men sober, 379; Are a failure, 374. 
Prohibitory principle defined by Wendell Phillips, 380. 
Prostitution largely due to intemperance, 127. 
Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, On the injurious effects of beer 
drinking, 166. 
Railroad Corporations, Efforts of to prevent accidents by drunk- 
enness, 35. Index. 
395 
Read, Rev. Dr., On intemperance a foe to college education, 
218. 
Reformed men, Danger of their using fermented wine at the 
Lord’s Supper, 328. 
Revenue, The, and the liquor traffic, 371. 
Reynold’s, Sir Joshua, His attempt to argue with Dr. Johnson 
on the beneficial use of wine, 363. 
Ribot, On heredity of alcoholism, 38. 
Richardson, Dr. W. B., On increased vitality by total abstinence, 
363; On alcohol a poison to all forms of animal life, 249 ; On 
alcohol neither food nor fuel, 262; On the course and effect of 
alcohol in the body, 18; On the cumulative attraction of al- 
cohol for itself, 250 ; On the danger to reformed men of using 
fermented wine at the Lord’s Supper, 331; On the general 
physical effects of drinking, 163; His Temperance Lesson 
Book noticed, 248; On mental effects of drinking, 61; On 
moral effects, 62; On the physiological action of alcohol, 252; 
On unfermented wine as a true symbol of blood, 326. 
Rights, Prohibition a supposed infringement of, 371. 
Rome, overthrown by intemperance, 134. 
Royce, Samuel, Statistics of Suicide, 28. 
Rum and Missionaries, Rev. John Pierpont on, 207. 
Russia, Peasantry of forced into drunkenness, 147; Consump- 
tion of beer in, 138; Number of breweries in, 137. 
Sabbath desecration caused by the drink-system, 210. 
Samson, Dr. G. W., Experiments in making unintoxicating 
wine, 293; On the Greek Church using unfermented wine at 
the Lord’s Supper, 323; On unfermented wine, 287, 291, 293. 
Scientific American, The, On the hardening of the brain by al- 
cohol, 255. 
Scotland, Intemperance causes increased crime in, 126, 231. 
Scully, Rev. Father, Deprecates the prevalence of intemper- 
ance,- 203. 
Sexias, Prof., Affirms that intoxicating and unintoxicating 
wines are mentioned in the Bible, 304. 
Shaftesbury, Lord, On insanity caused by drinking, 54. 
Shakespeare, On the moral effects of drinking, 59. 
Sheppard, Dr. Edgar, On insanity caused by drinking, 54. 
Smith, Dr., On beer as a cause of kidney disease, 258. 
Smith, Rev. Sidney, On the benefits of total abstinence, 364. 
Southey, Robert, A water drinker, 364. 
Stoddard, Charles, On the drinking habits of college students, 
219. 396 
Index. 
Stone, Rev. Dr., On intemperance on wine in California, 257. 
Stuart, Prof. Moses, On the preference of the ancients for un- 
fermented wine, 294 ; On two kinds of wine mentioned in the 
Bible, 298; On unfermented wine at the Passover, 314. 
Suicides, Largest percentage of in beer-drinking countries, 259; 
Majority of in the United States by Germans, 259. 
Sullivan, Hon. George, On license laws a defeat of the ends of 
government, 368. 
Sumner, Charles, On the necessity of educating the young in 
the principles of temperance, 243. 
Sunday schools, Effects of the drink-system on, 204. 
Sweden, Education and intemperance in, 234; Number of brew- 
eries in, 137. 
Switzerland, Increased consumption of whiskey in, 138 ; Num- 
ber of breweries in, 137. 
Tait, Dr., On the relations of drinking to prostitution, 127. 
Talbot, J. J., Drinking habits of, 229. 
Taylor, Bayard, Drinking habits of, 231. 
Temperance Education, Necessity fpr, 240. 
Theraputse, Total abstinence of the sect of the, 180. 
Thermometer, The, demonstrates that alcohol does not create 
heat, 345. 
Thompson, Sir Henry, On moderate drinking, 13. 
Tilden, Gov., On the small amount saved by the working classes, 
80. 
Total abstinence movement a help to the Christian Church, 362 ; 
Its relation to health and to human perfection, 362; Must be 
supplemented by prohibition, 368; Testimony of learned men 
to the advantages of, 363. 
Townson, Dr. Benjamin, On the relations of intemperance to 
insanity, 53. 
Tropical climates best endured by abstainers, 346. 
Turner, Dr. J. Edward, On the hereditary influence of drink, 
42. 
Unfermented wine, Chemical analysis of, 324; Exclusively used 
at the Passover, 314; The question of, considered, 276—336. 
United States, Annual cost of alcoholic drinks in, 137, 146; 
Comparative cost of liquors in, and of war, 145 ; Comparison 
between the number who are slain in var and those who die 
from intemperance, 147; Increased consumption of beer in, 
138; Number of breweries in, 137. Index. 
397 
United States Brewers’ Association, alarmed at the growth of 
prohibitory sentiment, 374 ; Controls legislation, 159. 
United States Congressmen, Intemperance among, 174. 
Vibbert, Rev. G. H., On revenue argument, 372. 
War, Costs of and of intemperance, compared, 144; Number 
slain in, compared with those killed by intemperance, 147. 
Ward, Robert, against theory of unfermented wine, 277. 
Warren, Dr. W. F., On drunkenness among German students, 
216. 
Wayland, Rev. Dr. Francis, On the liquor dealer’s responsibility 
for the mischief he causes, 370. 
Western Brewer, The,” Confesses that prohibition is a success 
in Vermont, 374; On beer-drinking emigrants a necessity to 
the country, 152; On breweries and churches as moral institu- 
tions, 151; On the evangelizing influence of beer, 156; On 
proposed temperance education in the public schools, 246 ; Pro- 
fanity of, 155. 
Whiskey Ring, The, Sustained by fraud and violence, 86. 
Will, The, Weakened by beer-drinking, 55. 
Willett, Rev. J., On drunkard’s appetite not destroyed by the 
grace of God, 342. 
Willis, N. P., On the homes of drunken paupers in New York, 
24. 
Wine, Adulterations of, 90; Apostolic injunction against the 
use of, 181; At the wedding at Cana, 312; Chemical analysis of 
the fermented and unfermented, 324; Danger of using the fer- 
mented at the Lord’s Supper, 328; Significance of the Hebrew 
and Greek words so rendered in the Bible, 306. * 
Wine-bibber, Jesus charged with being, 310. 
Wines mentioned in the Bible were of two kinds, 297. 
Wine, unfermented, a well-known ancient beverage 303; Ara- 
bian legend in regard to, 288 ; A symbol of blood, 324 ; Called 
wine by the best authorities, 284; Chemical analysis of, 324; 
Objections to the theory of, stated and answered, 310; Made 
and used at present, 290; Preferred before all other by the 
ancients, 294 ; The only kind allowed to be used at the Pass- 
over, 314 ; The theory of, ridiculed by Bumsted, 277; Cros- 
by, 278; Moore, 277; Parton, 278; Ward, 277; Wilson, 277; 
Various kinds used in celebrating the Lord’s Supper, 320. 
Winslow, Dr. Forbes, On intemperance among women, 76. Index. 
vVomen, Intemperance a peculiar curse to, 66; and a growing 
evil among, 72. 
Working-classes, Small savings of, 80. 
Yates, Hon. Richard, His attempted reformation, 174. 
Youmans, Prof., On mental effects of drinking, 50; On moral 
effects of drinking, 60. 
Young, Arthur, On drunkenness among the English Clergy, 
198.