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22X

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

BV W. H. WITHROW, M.A.

"The men who traffic in ardent spirit, and sell to aU who wiU buy, are
poisoners general; they murder his Majesty's subjects by wholesale ; neither
do their eyes pity or spare."— Jo/t» Wenley.

" Round about the caldron go ;
In the poisoned entrails throw.
For a charm of powerful trouble,
like a hell-broth boil and bubble-
Double, double, toU. and trouble ;
Fire, bum ; and, caldron, bubble."

—Maebeth.

Nothing so effectually counter-works God's purposes of grace,
bans the souls that He would bless, and destroys the bodies of
mankind as the giant evil — Intemperance.

It is the ally of the devil, the enemy of all righteousness, the
incentive to every lust and sin, to every crime and violence, to
every cruelty and wrong. Like the dread apocalyptic vials' of
wrath poured out upon the earth, t. .is fiery curse has spread with
the virulence of no other plague that ever blasted the world, and
haa burnt over the earth with its scoriae rivers of fire. No land
has been unscathed, from frozen sea to tiopic strand ; from insu-
lar Britain to its far antipodes. Entire races have melted away
at the breath of this pestilence like snow before the summer's sun
But the most dreadful darkness of this shadow of death, its doep^
est and most dire eclipse of woe has been in so-caUed Christian
lands. There the air has been

1^11 of farewells for the dying
And weeping for the dead,

for. as in thn Inflt. fnvaf. an/1 fxixmKln ^l»^... ..r x< ». i i

house has lain some slain victim of the traffic" Yet stiU tho

S. Bom, FuBUBHsa. Kwa Stbicbt East, Toiiomto.

work of death goes on ; still this wine-press of wrath is trodden
out by " Christian " feet ; still the Moloch fires of the distilleries
redden the midnight heavens. " Their worm dieth not on the
holy ^»abbath ; on that hallowed day when all other things with any
quality of goodness or salvation in them rest— the still-worm,
twin reptile of the worm that never dies, works on with all the
infernal energy of its kind. It works on while the people who
live by its profits are singing psalms in the house of God ! That
still- worn works on like sin, and for the wages of sin. It works
when all honest things are still and night hangs heavy on the
world. It works on to feed the appetites it has kindled to life-
appetites which ever become more imperious, crying out like the
grave, ' Give ! give ! ' "*

Therefore, God who is forever and implacably opposed to sin,
and wages eternal war against it, especially menaces with the
most terrible maledictions of His wrath, this direst of all sins.
The seven-fold curse of His eternal indignation is denounced
against the agents, aiders, or abettors of this red traffic in blood-
in the bodies and the souls of men. " Woe unto him that giveth
his neighbour drink" sounds the prophetic thunder of His Holy
Word.

This pernicious traffic, more than anything else, retards the pro-
gress of the gospel, and erects a kingdom of darkness in the midst
of Christendom, consigning millions of baj)tized men to a life of sin
and misery and ignorance far worse than any in the realms of
darkest paganism. It excludes men from the kingdom of heaven
and makes them the heirs of wrath and death eternal. It
everywhere creates and fosters crime and pauperism, irreligion
and vice ; causes physical and mental disease ; shortens life, and
often sends the soul into the presence of its Maker by an act of
self-slaughter, or crimsoned with the guilt of murder. It is the
cause of much of the Sabbath desecration, profanity, and abound-
ing wickedness that are the reproach of Christian civilization. By
its malign influence, many wlio might be useful members of so-
ciety and ornaments of the community, become its moral lepers
and lazars, disseminating pollution and misery all around them.
It makes of the streets of a Christian metropolis, reeking with
• Thos. Begg'g "World's Temperance Convention."— Introduction, p. x.

their " immortal sewerage"* of sinful souls, with their vile oi^es,
their haunts of vice and traps for virtue, a very pandemonium of
profligacy and crime.

The waste of food, and its conversion into liquid poison caused
by the liquor traffic, we contend, is contrary to the will of God,
and is therefore sinful and immoral. It needs no laboured argu-
ment to demonstrate this truth. It surely is self-evident to every
candid mind. God created every herb and every tree, in all their
vast variety and manifold excellence, to bo food for man— to min-
ister to the necessities and the enjoyment of the creatures He
hath made. The great staples of human existence— the cereal
grains and fruits and vegetables of the earth— contain all the ele-
ments which are necessary for the upbuilding of the body and for
its maintenance in a condition of health and vigour. Yet there
is hardly a single production of the soil, which is fit for food
that man Las not perverted from its proper use, to the manufac-
ture of poisonous and intoxicating liquors, which are injurious in
the highest degree to both body and soul.

In this process all the food-making elements are destroyed
The process of fermentation is literally one of putrefaction, by
which the wholesome grain or luscious grape is changed from
healthful food to death-dealing poison. Hence the hackneyed
assertion that wine is a good creature of God, and therefore to
be received with thanksgiving is as false as it is common. The
corn, in its golden gleaming, and the grape in its purple bloom
are indeed His good creatures which make glad the heart of man '
but the alcoholic principle, which perverted ingenuity has tor-
tured from them in the process of their putrefaction, and which
is not found in the universe except as the offspring of corruption
and decay, is in no sense a good creature of God, any more than
the fetid gases by which its evolution is accompanied, or than
the opium, strychnine, prussic acid, or arsenic, which man is able
chemically, to isolate from the vegetable or mineral substances
with which they are held in innocent combination.

The immense waste of food caused by the manufacture of
„„ .^„., 5„ pericctijr appuiiiug. According to a state-
ment of the United Kingdom Alliance, in a single y.ar there

•The expresaion ia the Rev. Sidney Godolphin Osborae'g.

were destroyed in the manufacture of beer and spirits, in the
United Kingdom, 52,659,000 bushels of grain. This would, as
food, supply nearly six millions of people with bread.

" In consequence of this great destmction of grain," says the
Report, " we have to buy every year from other countries from
20 to 30 millions of pounds' worth of food, which drains this
country of capital that might be spent on our own manufactures,
and thereby greatly improve our trade and commerce."

It has been computed that there are in England 1.093.741 acres
of land devoted to the growth of barley for malting, besides 56,000
acres of the best land devoted to the growth of hops, a weed
which contains not the least nourishment, and which, when used
habitually, is positively injurious. Thus, there are. not including
350,000 acres more, devoted to mising the materials for cider and
perry, 1,149,741 acres of land, which, notwithstanding the in-
creasing pressure of the population on the means of subsistence,
are perverted from the production of food to the production of
pernicious and poisonous beverages, which are sapping the
strength and destroying the industrial habits and moral principles
of the people

This land would produce, on a low average, 3J quarters of
wheat per acre, or 4,024.093J quarters of wheat altogether, from
the land now growing malt and hops. Now, a quarter of wheat
yields about 3501bs. of flour; therefore, this land would yield no
less than l,408.432,7251bs. of flour. Flour increases about one-
third in being made bread; so this quantity would produce
N l,877,910,3001bs. of bread, or sufficient to maintain 6,144,937
persons— or nearly the entire population of the kingdom of
Ireland, or over one-sixth of that of the whole of Great Britain—
for a full year. Better far that this immense amount of food
should be gathered into heaps and burned rather than that it
should be converted into that noxious draught that ruins the
health, degrades the character, and impoverishes the nation.

At l^d. per pound this quantity of bread, thus woi-se than
wasted, would amount to £11.736.937 7s. 6d., a sum sufficient to
pay the entire poor rate for nearly two years.

On careful computation of the eoraparative expenditure on
liquor and on bread, it is estimated that fully as much is thrown

away on those injurious beverages as is expended in the pur-
chase of the staff of life by the entire population. Nearly a
hundred years ago John Wesley, in a pamphlet on " The Present
Scarcity of Provisions," inquires, "Wliy is food so dear?" and
asserts the grand cause to have been the immense consump-
tion of grain in distilling. "Have we not reason to believe." he
says, " that little less than half the corn produced in the kingdom
IS every year consumed, not by so harmless a way as throwfng it
into the rfea, but by converting it into deadly poison ; poison that
not only destroys the life, but the morals of our countrymen ?
Tell It not in Constantinople," he exclaims in patriotic shame,
"that the English raise the royal revenue by selling the flesh and
blood of their countrymen !"

The immense disproportion between the consumption of whole-
some food and baneful liquor, is shown by the following statistics
of the London provision supply : To 3,000 grocers. 2.500 bakers,
1.700 butchers, and 3.500 other provision dealers, making an
aggregate of 10.700 engaged in the supply of food, there were no
less than 11.000 public-houses dealing out disease and death,
both bodily and spiritual, to the people.

In Scotland the statistics of forty towns— a good sample of the
whole country-show a stiU more deplorable state of things
While it requires 981 of the population to support a baker 1 067
to keep a butcher, and 2.281 to sustain a bookseller, every 'l49
support a dram-shop. This reminds one of FalstafiTs " ha 'penny
worth of bread and intolerable deal of sack." and is a sad com-
ment on the social condition of one of the most Christian and
enLghtened countries on the face of the earth.

Even in the Dominion of Canada, with its population of only
4.000,000. there were destroyed in a single year over 2.000,000
bushels of grain in the manufacture of Hquor, besides 380,7871bs.
of sugar and syrup. From this was manufactured 11,513.732
gallons of intoxicating Uquor, or nearly four gallons each' for
every man, woman, and child in the Dominion. This fact is
indeed an augury of ill omen for its future prosperity. A worm
—the worm of the still— is already gnawing at its heart and
destroying its very vitals.

In the United States, in a single year, there were consumed

640,000.000 gallons of intoxicating liquor, or the enormous
quantity of thirteen and a-half gallons to every living soul in the
nation, or two and a-half gallons of proof spirit. In the manu-
facture of this deluge of strong drink there were destroyed
62,000,000 bus! els of grain and fruit, or nearly two bushels to
each individual in the land.

Had we the complete statistics of the destruction of food in
the manufacture of intoxicating drinks throughout Christendom
we would be overwhelmed with astonishment and dismay.

Thus does this hideous traffic take the food from the mouths of
millions, and by an infernal alchemy transmute it into a loath-
some draught which maddens and destroys mankind. This is no
mere rhetorical figure, but a sober literal fact. During the horrors
of the famine-year of 1847-8 in Ireland— that dread carnival of
death, when hunger-bitten men and women were literaUy
dying of starvation in the streets— the grain which God gave to
supply the wants of His children was borne by waggon loads
into the vast distiUeries and breweries of Belfast (we have the
testimony of an eye-witness to the fact), and there, for all the
purposes of food, destroyed ; nay, as if to aid the task of famine
and of fever in their work of death, it was changed into a deadly
curse, which swept away more human lives than both those fatal
agencies together.

Dr. Lees thus eloquently describes the horrors of that famine-
year : « Mobs of hungry, and often dissipated poor, paraded the
streets, headed by drunken and infuriated women crying for
bread. Was there at that period a natural and inevitable famine ?
No such thing ! It was distinctly proved that we had an ample
supply of food for all the natural wants of the people; and that
the impending horrors of starvation might be averted by stopping
the breweries and distiUeries in their work of destruction
Wasted and wailing chUdren wandered through the streets • yet
appetite went on to the next tavern and drank the bread of
those innocents dissolved in gin. Famished mothers walked the
village lanes, where briery scents and blossoms mocked their
hunger. Respectability cast the hungered one a copper and
passed on to drink' its beer. The publican, while the voice of
hunger and suffering ascended to the skies, stiU went on dispena-

ing the pernicious product ; above all, sanctioning all. waved the
banner of the mistaken law : ' Licensed to destroy food and
create famine.' That period of indifference is a blot upon our
history— an indelible stain upon our patriotism and humanity.
The work of waste and wickedness went on. Half a million of
souls were sacrificed to the traffic." *

It needs no lengthened argument to demonstrate that such
unhallowed destruction of the staff of life of God's great family of
the poor awakens His most intense displeasure. The whole spirit
of the beneficent legislation of the Hebrew commonwealth, the
denunciation of the oppressors of the poor, and the express declar-
ation of Holy Writ, "He that withholdeth the corn, the people
shall curse him," all attest the loving care for the creatures of
His hand of the great All-Father who giveth us aU things richly
to enjoy. '

Even where starvation does not ensue from this wicked de-
struction of grain, the increased difficulty of obtaining a sufficient
amount of food for the sustenance of life— always difficult
enough, God knows, to thousands— makes their lives bitter unto
them, abridges their comforts, impairs their health, shortens their
existence, and makes it, instead of a period of enjoyment, one
long and hopeless conflict with hunger, want and woe, the only
refuge from which is the refuge of *,he grave. Such iniquitous
waste and abuse of God's bounties .i contrary to the entire spirit
and letter, scope, tenor, and design of His gospel of good-will to
men. So abhorrent in His sight is all waste of human food, that,
after a stupendous miracle of its creation, He gave the command.
" Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost." What words
therefore, shall fittingly describe their guilt, who diligently gather
immense stores of necessary food, for lack of which vast multi-
tudes must suffer, for the very purpose of its wholesale destruc-
tion and perversion to the vilest ends !

Even the Times newspaper, speaking of this waste of food,
says : " It is far too favourable a view to treat the money spent
on It as if it were cast into the sea. It would have been better
if the corn had mUdewed in the ear. . . Xo way so rapid to
increase the wealth of nations and the morality of society, as the
• "Argument for Prohibition," pp. 127-8.

utter .nnihilation of the manufacture of ardent .pints, co„,tit«.
tiag 08 they do an inHiiite waate and an unmixed evil "

nquor produces precisely similar results. Never was there a

joeful want, than the results of the liquor traflie, for nowhere
do poverty and misery so al«und as where spirituous liquoraZ
BrtiM^ "■'"ufactu^.d. Much of the agricultuml d stressTf
Br Uin and other countries is directly caused in this way

In the ishnd of Mull, in SooUand, some years since £300n
were contributed to keep the people from starvation yet tol
than tw,ce that amount was spent on whisky. During tt"
UncashTe cotton famine, when money flowed inTmoall English!

were m full blast destroying the food of the people, and more
money was spent in Uquor in the famine district than woZ
have mamtamed the entire population in comfort ZZZ
entire period of depression in trade. If any Government at .
Ume when the wail of famine rose upon the^air, andTu^t-^e;
hunger clamoured for bread, were to authorize the gathering „f
immense heaps of grain and its consumption u> ashes^it woufd be
hurled by an indignant.people with execration l™m irpia^
yet It may permit the change of the same food to a death-dE,;

sr^raSr"'""™""""' """^""' -^ -'«> <«

The table of imports into Ireland during a period of scatoitv
w en the distilleries were closed, show that there wasa^^
inereased consumption of excisable articles ; so we see that^yei
uf fcmme, wuk prohMicn. is better than a year of plenty JZ

Moreover, nothing so prevents the progress of religion in the
wo.ld, and frustrates God's gracious purposes for the SlvatTon of
the race, as the traffic in strong drink, and its inevitable"
quence, intemperance. For this reason also that traflie is esneoT
ally obnoxious in His sight. It leads men to waste uponTefr
lusts the material w»»Uh of whi-h *^— ,- i. "."*"" "•«"

• 1 J ,. . ' ■• ^'"'■" "i^oj- are but His stewarrfa

mstead ot promoting therewith the great policy for which fte

Son of Ood becfinie incartiato. It is asserted by Dr. John Camp-
bell tliat Protestant nnd pious Britain annually spends thirty
txmtH as much for strong drink as she spends for the world's
salviition. Durin- the last year the expe.iditure of the British
and Foreign Bible Society was £217,31)0 19s. lOd., and the num-
ber of copies of the Scriptures circulated was 2/) 19,427. Even
at this gigantic scale of operations it would take' over three
hundred years to supply every poor heathen in the world with a
copy of the Word of God. In the same year there was spent in
Great Britain alone £100.000,000 on intoxicating drinks This
money, thus worse than wasted, would give a copy of God's Word
m his own mother tongue, to every son and daughter of Adam'
on the face of the earth in less than one year !

Even in the Mission field itself the evil effects of the traffic
and Its dread concomitants make themselves felt ; raarrin" the
efforts and frustrating the toils of the agents of the Churches''

In consequence of the prevalence of drinking habits among
European residents in India, we are told on the authority of a
returned Missionary that the word drunkard and Cnristian have
become synonymous terms among the native castes. When the
pagan Hindoo wishes to represent the Christian Englishman he
begins to stagger in his gait to counterfeit inebriation.

" The very ships," says Mr. Thos. Begg,* " that bore the Mis-
sionaries and messengers of salvation to heathen lands were often
freighted with intoxicating liquors, which, like some of the
plagues, unviaUed in the apocalypse, were let loose to drown in
their burning deluge every grain of Christianity before it could
germinate in the heart of the half-enlightened heathen They
fired his nature with lusts foreign to the brute, and which never
raged m his appetites, nor infuriated his passions before his con-
tact with the vices of civilization. The spirit of intemperance
malignant ghost of the bottomless pit, slew its tens of thousands •
and one sweeping fiery curse followed in the wake of Christian
commerce."

The liquor traffic, too, was the chief support of the slave trade

that foulest crime, in thft hiafnrv nf nti-^of tj>:«.»:„ ^i-_, . .. '
- '^j — •"•-«L villain, j,iiac trailed

hei meteor flag, dishonoured, through the dust. English merchanta
♦ "Report of World's Tempenmce Convention. "—Introd. viii.

and English sailors, beneath the redcross banner of freedom

tf r.ufl'T "^"^"S ^^ slave-stealers and slave-traders
and made that badge of liberty the livery of disgrace. And rum
fiery rum, was the instrument of barter for the bodies and the

2 J T .? T'" ""^" ^^- ^'^^' " ^' - premium ot':
minted gold m the slave-factories of the African coast. It fired
tiie fierce lusts of the natives with a craving which their own
slow liquors could not kindle."

Thank God, that blot, at least, is removed from the escuteheon

sin J 7 T . f ' ""'"^"^ '' ''^ P^P^^'« ™*^ d«««e«ded. and
smote this direful curse from British soil for ever. But stiU ite

twin-cnme, the liquor traffic, continues to enslave the bodies 'and
the souls of men in a bondage more galling than even African
servitude. Oh that the people, in the ma^ of their mTg't
would anse and banish it from the face of the earth forever t
Hnf ?7 '"^ ««'^«terworks the evangeUstic agencies in opera-
taon, at home as weU as abroad, a^ the vice of intemperance It
hardens he heart, steels the conscience, and deadens the soul to
eveiy religous feeling, and thus prevents tl>e due influence of
gospel truth on the community. Not only does this evil beast

Church of Christ; It also prowls around the fold, and snatches
thousaiids yearly from its sheltering embrace. As "when the
sons of God came together, Satan came also with them," so even
among the ministrants at God's alter, ordained to the perpetual
handling of holy things, this hideous vice appears, and the
abomination of desolation is set up, even in the sacred places of
the sanctuary. Universal testimony asserts that this is the most
frequent cause of apostasy, both in the pulpit and the bew the
foul stain upon the snowy robe of Christianity, the chiefest blight
upon her bloom. This vice seizes the children of our Sunday-
schools, effaces the holy lessons written on their hearts and
changes them to a foul palimpsest, inscribed all over with the
vile characters of sin. Many of them find their way to prison
and figure in the annals of crime. Of 1,060 boys in the Salford
TTnf f °''^' 977 had attended Sunday-school Of 10.361 in-
mates of the principal prisons and penitentiaries of Great Britain

no fewer than 6,572 had previously received instruction in
Sabbath-schools.

" Give WW the little children, "

Cries Crime, with a wolfish grin,
" Let 7n« train up the children

In the pleasant paths of sin 1"

Many are thus prevented from entering the Sunday-school at
aU. In forbidding the little children, the tender lambs of Christ,
who are especially included in the covenant of grace, and for
whom such careful provision is made in the Christian economy—
to come to Christ, the traffic especially e- tes the indignation of
the blessed Saviour who rebuked His own disciples for the same
oflfence, saying, " Suffer the children to come unto me, and forbid
them not." Yet it is estimated from the statistics of intemper-
ance, that an average of one boy in eight grows up to be a drunk-
ard. Think of it, parents, as you look upon your household
darlings— the olive branches around your board. On which of
your boys shall fall this fearful doom; or, more dreadful stiU,
which of your girls will you resign to this death-in-life, far worse
than death itself? Would you not rather see them in their
graves?

The noble phalanx of home missionaries, Bible-women, tract
distributors, and other labourers for the evangelization of the
masses, all bear testimony, in very bitterness of spirit, that the
liquor traffic is the greatest barrier to the success of their eflforts.

A hundred years ago, when that traffic had not nearly attained
the gigantic magnitude it now possesses, John Wesley said, "We
verily believe that the single sin of intemperance is destroying
more souls than all the ministers in Britain are instrumental in
saving."

More recently. Lord Brougham said, " Into whatever path the
philanthropist may strike, the drink demon starts up before him
and blocks his way."

The ignorant and irreligious masses of the people continue
to multiply beyond every e£Fort of the Church to provide
evangelistic agency. Underneath the decorous surface of society
a great weltering mass of infidelity, drunkenness, profligacy, and
vice, continues to seethe and struggle; ever and anon breaking

through the thin crust of repression in those volcanic outburats
of appalhng wickedness, which are the reproach of our modem
civilization. The Helots of Christian England, through the
tyranny of the liquor traffic, are held in a more abject bondage
than that of ancient Sparta.-a bondage not only of the body
but of soul, heart, brain, and everything that makes the man. to
the toul dommion of an animal passion, of a brutal lust

Under the very shadows of the churches, and surrounded
by Christian institutions, hundreds of thousands live in practical
heathemsm, utterly ignoring God and everything pure, and holy
and divme ; or using His sacred name only to blaspheme and
to invoke His maledictions on their souls. In the city of London
alone,-the great heart of Christendom, from which go forth
pulsing tides of holy effort which are felt to the ends of the
earth,-ure over a million of souls who never enter the house
of God, nay, for most of whom there is no church accommodation
even if they desired it. In Glasgow, the great industrial < entre
of pious, Presbyterian Scotland, one-half, and in Edinburgh one-
third of the population, attend no place of worship. Nor are
other towns much better; and even throughout the rural districts
the plague of irreligion and indifference has spread, till millions
live and die heathens in the midst of Christendom In the
words of Dr. Guthrie, that eloquent advocate of the outcast and
the poor « They know no Sabbath, read no Bible, enter no place
of worship, and care neither for God nor man; beUs might have
been mute, and pulpits silent, and church doors shut for them
So far as they cared or were concerned, the cross, with its blessed
bleeding burden, might never b-^ve stood on Calvary" It has
been truly said that many parts of heathen lands, to which
missionaries have been sent, are a paradise compared with many
places in the very heart of London.

Such a scene is thus vividly described by Professor Kingsley
that champion of the rights of England's poor: "Go. scented
Belgravians, and see what London is. Look ! there is not a soul '
down that yard but is either beggar, drunkard, thief, or worse.
Write anent that ! Say how ye saw the mouth of heU. and th&
twa pillars thereof at the entry— the pawnbroker's shop o*
one side, and the gin-palace at the other— twa monstrous deevils

eating up men and women and bairns, body and soul. Look
at the jaws o' the monsters, how they open, and open and
swallow in anither victim and anither. Write anent that ! . . .
Are not they a mair damnable, man-devouring idol than any
red-hot statue of Moloch, or wicker Magog, wherein the auld
Britons burnt their prisoners ?"*

Upon God's holy day, with the sacred sound of the Sabbath
bells calling to the place of prayer, the vile orgies of drunkenness
are celebrated, like a carnival of fiends ; and British bacchanals
and moenads wanton in revels, more like those of Gomorrah,
than scenes in a Christian land. With heaven-defying impiety,
multitudes trample God's commands beneath their feet, profane
His day and blaspheme His name. It would seem sometimes
as if the seven deadly sins were let loose, the seven last plagues
poured out, and pandemonium set up on earth. This British
idolatry is more loathsome and degrading than that of Jugger-
naut. If St. Paul walled the streets of London his soul would
be moved with deeper indignation at these Christian vices than
even at the superstitions of the Athenians.

In the intelligent city of Manchester, every beer, wine, or
spirit shop was visited by the Committee of the Manchester and
Salford Temperance Society on the Sabbath-day. and the number
of those who entered during legal hours accurately counted.
For though food may not be sold on Sunday, this pernicious
drink is vended under the sanction and protection of the law.
The number of houses was 1,437 ; the number of visitors, men,
120,124 ; women, 71,609; children, 23,585 ; total, 215,318; about
half of the entire population of Manchester, although many may
have made several visits. We shall not pollute these pages with
an account of the scenes that were witnessed in that Christian
city on the Lord's Day. One district is described as a " perfect
hell upon earth." One house, the "Swan Inn," was visited
by 1,732 persons during the day. Many of the visitors were
of very tender years. What fearful Sabbath desecration is tKus
caused ! Besides this, it is said that there are 40,000 malsters in
Great Britain employed all day iorg every Sunday in the

•••Alton Locke."

manufacture of the liquor, to say nothing of those who are
engaged in its sale.

The clerical testimony as to the effects of the traffic on the
work of the Churches reported by the Committee of the Lower
House of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury confirms
the truth of th-e statements above made. The foUowing are
specimens of their evidence : —
" No drunkard attends the ordinances of religion."
"Sabbath-breaking, sw. iring and drunkenness are vices that
go together."

" Many dare not face the pulpit."

"Those who drink most woroliip least."

" Produces practical atheism."

" Causes prodigious immorality."

" The violent and painful deaths of drunkards are no warning
One was roasted to death on a lime-kiln, and thf, same day
his two sons consoled themselves by a drunken debauch."

" Men elect to give up Christ rather than the ale-house "

Archdeacon Garbitt says, "No organization, no zeal, no piety
however devoted, no personal labours however apostolic wiU
avad to effect any soUd amelioration in the presence of the
traflfic.

Rev. Canon Stowell, M.A., says, "That dark and damnable
traffic has turned the day of God almost into a day of Satan
and has made it questionable whether, for the mass of the
people, It would not be better to have no Sunday at aU "

The debauch begins on Saturday night, and frequently lasts
aU through the Sabbath and far into the week. It is said that
30,000 people go to bed drunk in Glasgow every Saturday night
The ale-house IS their church, drinking their worship and liquor

r . u-J """'^ *'''"' ^^' '""^ ^^ ^""^^° ^'i^dness into the
gall of bitterness and hate ; and converts the love of wife
and child into a demoniac frensy, impelling the human fiend
to their destruction. This is the cause, of that brutal wife-
beating, which on the continent is considered Ihe national
characteristics of an Englishman, and not that he is in any-
wise devoid of the natural affcctfons.

Besides those flagrant crimes, of which intemperance is the

fruitful cause, every form of vice and evil is fostered, and
stimulated, and often created by the liquor traffic. Especially is
this true of that great sin and sorrow of large cities, which is
known as pre-eminently the " social evil," — that hideous vice,
which blasts the fairest bloom of beauty, which tramples beneath
satyr feet upon the cruel streets those blighted flowdrs that
might have flourished fair in dear home gardens but for the lusts
of sinful men ;

" That blurs the blush and grace of modesty.
Makes virtue hypocrite ; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage vowb
As false as dicers oaths."

These sad waifs of humanity, — of whom there are ten thousand
in the awful vortex of London alone, — blasted forever for the
sins of the people, at once the victims and the Nemesis oi
society, are invariably sustained in their death-in-life, and
enabled to ply their loathely trade by the stimulation of liquor ;
and among the devotees of the bowl are their guilty partners in
debauchery chiefly found. The almost universal testimony of
these unhappy daughters of sin and shame is, that they were
betrayed to endless infamy when their passions were inflamed,
their reason dethroned, and the upbraidings of conscience
drowned, through the influence of strong drink.

The most frequent known incentive to the heaven-defying
crime of suicide is intemperance ; either as the cause of domestic
misery, mental depression, or libertine life; or, as inflaming
the mind and nerving the hand to the immediate commission
of the fatal deed. We have also seen that it otherwise destroys
the lives of 60,000 persons every year, one hundred and sixty
every day, or seven every hour. In view of these appalling
facts every lover of his race must share the feeling expressed by
the prophet : " that mine head were waters and mine eyes
a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the
slain of the daughter of my people !"

This national vice produces also national degeneracy and
degradation, debauches the public conscience, is the facile instru-
ment of bribery and political corruption, and leads British

electors to betray their country into the hands of demagogues
and social pirates, and to barter their birthright as freemen for a
vile mess of pottage. Instances are known where as much
as £20,000 have been expended at a single election in thus
corrupting the morals of the people, sapping the foundations
of the Constitution and destroying the palladium of the public

liberty.

Every criminal or economical statistician bears witness that
the amount of crime and pauperism is in a direct ratio to the
extent of the liquor trade. By some of the highest authorities
the proportion of these evils directly attributable to intemperance
is placed as high as nine-tenths, or even as ninety-nine hundreths.
Irrefutable evidence of the truth of this stupendous assertion
will hereafter be adduced.

It will not be denied that intemperance is the mother of
ignorance, that fruitful cause of social debasement and crime.

Horace Mann asserts, " Intemperance is a upas tree planted in
the field of education, and before education can flourish this tree
must be cut down."

This is also strikingly confirmed by the statistics of Ragged
Schools, as given by Dr. Guthrie. Fully ninety-nine hundreths
of the scholars in those schools, he assarts, are the children
of drunkards. With pathetic eloquence he exclaims : " With
respect to them I may put into the mouth of our country the
complaint, 'My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.'
Ignorance is their sole, sad inheritance. They are punished for
it, impoverished for it, imprisoned for it, banished for it, hanged
for it. The 'voice heard in Eamah, lamentation and bitter
weeping ' falls on our ears. Rachel is weeping for her children.
Herod is dead, yet the innocents are slaughtered. Subjects in
the time past only thought of punishment, I call on. Justice to
sheathe the sword, and lift up her shield, and throw it over
uhe heads of these unhappy children. And next, I call on
Religion to leave her temples, and, like a mother seeking a
lost child, to go forth to the streets, and gather in those infants
for Jesus' arms— save those gems for a Saviour's crown."

Wc have thus endeavoured to show the sinfulness and im-
morality of the conversion of the people's food into a liquid

aagogues
Qen for a
IS much
in thus
ndations
le public

less that
io to the
ithorities
nperance
undreths.
assertion

other of

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lanted in

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f Kagged
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children
: "With
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lowledge.'
ished for
t, hanged
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ibjects in
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[ call on
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36 infants

and im-
a liquid

poison, which naturaUy destroys not only their bodies but their
souls. In view of the accumulated wickedness and misery
caused by that traffic, small wonder that the indignation of that
Christian phUanthropist just quoted finds expression in this
solemn indictment: "Before God and man, before the Church
and the world, I impeach Intemperance. I charge it with the
murder of innumerable souls. I chaT^e it as the cause of almost
aU the poverty, and crime, and misery, and ignorance, and
irreligion, that disgrace and afflict the land. I do in my con-
science believe that these intoxicating stimulants have sunk into
perdition more men and women than found a grave in that
deluge, which swept over the highest hill-tops, engulfing a world
of which but eight were saved." Of other vices, as compared
with this, it might be said, " They have slain their thousands, but
Intemperance its tens of thousands."

The whole system is accursed. It scorches, scars, and brands
all who come nigh it, or havt aught to do with it. There is con-
tamination and pollution in its very contact. The drunkard
himself is guilty of moral suicide. " This vice," said St. Augus-
tine, fourteen hundred years ago, " is a flattering devil, a sweet
poison, a pleasant sin, which, whosoever doth commit, committeth
not a single sin, but becomes the slave of all manner of sin."

But the most solemn and awful responsibility rests upon the
manufacturib and dealers connected with this vile traffic " I
would rather," says John B. Gough, "be what I have been as a
drunkard, than I would be the man to stand behind the counter
and give him the drink that made him drunk." The purest
moralists of every age agree in the denunciation of this traffic in
blood. "I never see the sign 'licensed to seU spirits' "says
McCheyne, " without thinking it f license to ruin souls
Wretchea men, do you not know that every penny that rings on
your counter shaU eat your flesh as if it were fire ; that every
drop of liquid poison swallowed in your gas-Ut palaces, wUl only
serve to kindle up the flame of the fire that is not quenched."

Lord Viscount Lonsdale, in the debate on the Gin BiU, in
1743, said : " I must look upon every man who takes out a license
as a sort of devil set up to tempt men to get drunk."
The Eev, Albert Barnes writes: "The great principles of the

Bible, the spirit of the Bible and a thousand texts of the Bible,
are pointed against it ; and every step the trafiicer takes he in-
fringes on the spirit and bearing of some declaration of God."

We have over and over again seen the stern vehemence with
which John Wesley denounces this godless traffic.

Even the publicans themselves have not the approval of their
conscience in the wretched trade. " There is no hope for me,"
said one in a dying hour, " for I have been making a living at the
mouth of hell." Another who had spent years in the traffic
remarked, " It is the most damnable business in which a man
ever engaged." Another, who had abandoned the traffic, was
asked why he gave up such a lucrative business, and replied as
follows : —

" In looking over my account book one day I counted up the
names of forty-four men who had been regular customers of
mine, most of them for years. Thirty-two of these men, to my
certain knowledge, had gone down to a drunkard's grave, and ten
of the remaining twelve were then living, confirmed sots ! I was
appalled and horrified. To remain in such a dreadful, degrading,
and murderous trade, I could not ; hence I abandoned it."

It is not merely the retail dealer, or low tavern-keeper on whom
the responsibility of the traffic, and the curse that ever accom-
panies it, shall rest. The great manufacturers, the wholesale
dealers, the respectable wine and spirit merchants, Me men of
vast wealth, gotten by wrong, the great landlords and owners of
vast estates, the membei*s of parliament and great capitalists who
are regarded as the bulwarks of the country, these are equally
guilty with the vulgar publican, who is their mere factor for the
performance of the ignoble work, of which they are ashamed.
Nay, as the prime agents and chief supporters of the ungodly
traffic are they not much vwre guilty than he ?

" It is the capital of the rich," wrote Rev. W. E. Channing,
"which surrounds men with temptation to self-murder. The
retailer takes shelter under the wholesale dealer, from whom he
purchases the pernicious draught, and has he not a right to do
so ? Can we expect him to be sensitive, when he treads in the
steps of men of reputation V*

No morbid sympathy with the agents of the traffic should

(

t]
e^
tl
fc
hi

19 ■

prevent our arriving at just conclusions as to its enomutv W„

od^ur ^'fh! w "*"" ^"""''S '•''•""'^ f««d with the

om:ttfr.errii%r^hoi r-""" '"™"-

hV ffrirfe^' '"""'' f.""^' «'«y'»"e'non the CdTd

ortiZis tit; It t't the. n '""■"*.' "^'^ '^^ ^^"'-

hrmr, f>,o ,7^/^®^*- -^et them get some honest caUing : nor

thXma; k1 "! r' '""f-^ "' *•"'' ™'8hbo„r-s door Z
fW r '^ """^- ^' '*«°' l»tl>ink them of the fact

ttat they are every year sending down sixty thous»d hTpl^
victims-fathers, husbands, brothers, wiveZ-to a X«
grave and to a drunkard's hea anmltards

A hundred yeai's ago, that stem iconoclast of wrong John
I^IM ^' 1 '"' "'"''"y '"""^ ^ " The men whf 'ta^c

fa?e Li W r "r'"'"^ "' ^"^ ^^'^'y'' ^'"■J""'' by whole-
s^e neither does the.r eye pity or spare. And what is their

^m Is It not the blood of these men ? Who would enw

~ a fi^m ^°^ ^ "" *^*'' ^^'^' '^0^ ^0^. their
^v.8, a fire that bums to the nethermost heU. Blood blood

aouart.t.^ T' *^"" ''"P^' "^ »f Wood, though

hou art clothed m scarlet, and fine linen, and farest sumptuouX

evey day, canst thou hope to deliver down the field olh^Z

h».des^yed,hoth ^.;:t^::i,t5rmiorirsts"'p:^h

of L"a "^ ^'^'°'' ^ ^^^*^ *^" ^''^^^"^y «^ ^« ^^' the license

nghttoiasueorto receive such a Ucenee as that. "Licensed
t« scatter fin^brands, arrows, and death ; •• Licens^'.> t. t^m n's
souls on fire with fire of hell ;

" Licensed to nuke the strong man we»k,
Licensed to Uy the brave map low •
Licensed, the wife's fond heart to br^
And make the orphan's tears to flow.

" Licensed to do thy neighbonr harm,
Licensed to kindle hate and strife ;
Licensed to nerve the robber's arm,
Licensed to whet the murderer's knife.

" Licensed, where peace and qniet dwell,'
To bring disease, and want, and woe j
Licensed to make this world a heU,
And lit man for a hell below."

W what avail wUI be such a "license" as that when! the
Eight»on» Judge shaU make inquisition for blood J '"""l'""

TORONTO : GUARDIAN Omo« PRINX.