07Z 
 
 /
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 APPEAL ^ ^ / 
 
 THE BRITISH NATION, 
 
 THE GREATEST REFORM 
 
 YET REMAINING 
 
 TO BE ACCOMPLISHED. 
 
 BY JAMES S. BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 READ AND ADOPTED AT THE WORLD'S CONVENTION, 
 
 HELD IN LONDON, AUGUST, 1846. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JAMES RID G WAY, PICCADILLY, 
 
 AND ALT, BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 1846. 
 Price Is. 6d. stitched, 2s. 6d. bound.
 
 C. WHITING, BEAUPORT HOUSE, STEAND.
 
 HV 
 APPEAL 3^5^ 
 
 TO 
 
 THE BRITISH NATIOK 
 
 GREATEST REFORM YET TO BE ACCOMPLISHED. 
 
 Fellow Countrymen, 
 
 The age in which we live is called the Age of 
 Reform ; and among the nations of the earth, England takes the 
 foremost rank amongst Reformers. The wise and the good in all 
 countries look to it for example, and in most instances look to it 
 with hope ; but there is one Giant Evil yet to be reformed, in 
 which its example is more pernicious than beneficial, and in which 
 its national influence has created so vast an amount of injury, that 
 all its energies should be put forth at once, and without an hour's 
 delay, to remove the blot from its otherwise bright escutcheon. 
 
 As a people, you are intelligent — the world admits it : — but, 
 much as you have learnt, and great as is the superiority you mani- 
 fest, in arts, in science, and in commerce, you are yet, as far as the 
 majority of your numbers is concerned, steeped in the profound- 
 est ignorance as to the extent of injury sustained by you all, in a 
 greater or lesser degree, by what you deem the innocent and 
 moderate use of intoxicating drinks. 
 
 As a people^ you are wealthy — no other people on the globe 
 are your equals in this : — but, in no country on earth is so large a 
 portion of that wealth utterly wasted and destroyed, as it is by 
 usages and customs prevalent among you, in all ranks of society, 
 from the cottage to the palace — by all ages, all professions, both 
 sexes, and all conditions of men. 
 
 As a people, you are courageous — your history has proved it : — 
 but there is one foe whom you have not courage to front, whom 
 you shrink from attacking — and before wliost s'/.ay you bend in 
 dread and homage — the tyrant, Fashion.. 
 
 l06;^373
 
 4 APPEAL TO THE 
 
 As a people you are free : — none perhaps really freer ; — but 
 amidst all your boasted freedom, you are slaves to a habit which 
 holds you in fetters more closely riveted than those which manacle 
 the African ; for while you have broken his chains to pieces, you 
 still wear your own, apparently unconscious of the bondage. 
 
 Asa people, you are benevolent, moral, religious ; — your numer- 
 ous institutions and munificent subscriptions everywhere proclaim 
 it ; — but you nevertheless seem to be unmoved by a sweeping tor- 
 rent of destruction, rolling over every part of your otherwise 
 beautiful and happy country, which mars your benevolence, out- 
 rages all morality, and is the greatest stumbling-block to pure 
 religion that has ever obstructed its heavenly path. 
 
 These are severe rebukes^ I admit ; but are they just ? are 
 they true ? If so, their severity is kindness, and their utterance 
 will be mercy, should they awaken you to a sense of the incalcu- 
 lable and indescribable evils under which thousands of your fel- 
 low-countrymen and country women — nay, even thousands of young 
 children — still labour; evils which it is entirely within your 
 power almost instantly to remove ; and for the further continuance 
 of which, you are, therefore, in a great degree responsible. 
 
 Let us reason together a little on this subject, till the light of 
 truth shall gradually become visible to you : — 
 
 It has been proved by Parliamentary evidence, — sifted, examined, 
 and scrutinized, but never yet confuted or denied, — that the actual 
 expenditure of money, in Great Britain alone, exclusive of all 
 her Colonies, in the mere purchase of intoxicating drinks, exceeds 
 fifty millions sterling ! a sum greater than the whole revenue of 
 the kingdom, from every available source. 
 
 Does this vast expenditure make any one stronger, or healthier, 
 than if he abstained entirely from its use ? The united intelligence 
 of the most enlightened and eminent Medical Men of the country 
 answer NO ! — and out of a long list of those who have so an- 
 swered, by their signatures to public document expressing this, it 
 will be enough to mention the names of Sir James Clark, Sir 
 James Macgrigor, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir William Burnett, 
 Drs. Chambers, Paris, Bright, Copeland, Forbes, Latham, Bos- 
 tock, Guy, Key, Elliotson, and a host of others, including the 
 very heads of the medical profession.
 
 BRITISH NATION. 5 
 
 Does it make any one more industrious, or capable of enduring 
 greater labour ? The uniform testimonies of landed proprietors, 
 merchants, manufacturers, and employers of large bodies of men^ 
 in agriculture, trade, mining, in fleets, in armies, in isolated labour 
 or in co-operative force, answer NO ! On the contrary, they prove 
 that it produces idleness, to such a degree, as that, on an average 
 of the whole working community, one-sixth part of their time, or 
 one day in every week, is wasted and expended, by drinking usages 
 and indulgencies ; and that another fifty millions sterling are there- 
 fore lost to the whole nation by the suppression or stagnation of 
 so much productive power : while the sickness and debility occa- 
 sioned by intemperance, both in parents and their progeny, adds 
 considerably to this loss of efficient labour and production, great as 
 it already is. 
 
 Does it improve the intellect, or increase the skill of any living 
 being ? All experience answers NO ! It renders some stupid, 
 others self-willed and obstinate, some vain and conceited, and others 
 furious and demoniacal : but of patient learning, practised skill, 
 and calm and deliberate wisdom, it never imparted an atom. It 
 makes present idiots and future lunatics, but it makes no man 
 wiser or more competent to the discharge of any of the great duties 
 of life. 
 
 Does it make men more moral, women more chaste, or children 
 more truthful and honest ? Alas ! in no one instance has it ever 
 done this. Stimulating drink is every hour the exciting cause of 
 nearly all the crimes that fill our prisons, that people our penal 
 colonies, and that supply the executioner for the gallows. Strong 
 drink is the parent of nearly all the mutinies in the navy, and in- 
 subordinations in the army ; and almost all the tortures of flogging 
 and every other species of naval and military punishment is clearly 
 traceable to this single cause. Stimulating drink is the powerful 
 agent used to facilitate seductions, adulteries, and the daily viola- 
 tions of chastity, in thought, word, and deed : and the inmates of 
 every female asylum, with one united voice, will answer, that, but 
 for the use of reason-drowning drink, their betrayers would never 
 have succeeded in depriving them of all that rendered life valuable, 
 their hitherto unspotted honour ; and that but for the same con- 
 science-scaring poison, they would have returned again, repentant,
 
 6 APPEAL TO THE 
 
 to the bosom of society ; their expulsion from whichj as outcasts, 
 was owing to the crimiiial conduct of others ; but, in the delirium 
 produced by drink, they find their only solace, by steeping their 
 unutterable woes in temporary oblivion. And for children — in 
 every country emblems of purity and innocence, in every religion 
 personifying angels of bliss and glory — oh ! let it be written in 
 burning tears of mingled grief and shame — children are every day, 
 in every town and village, in every hovel, and in every mansion, 
 trained, by their blind and unthinking parents, to acquire an appe- 
 tite for this destroying poison every time that it is given to them 
 by the maternal hand — which should never dispense aught but 
 blessings — as a reward for good behaviour — as something to gratify 
 them and do them good ! — or, when seating them at the table, and 
 bidding them drink the healths of those around, to elevate them 
 for the moment to the dignity of little men and women : never 
 dreaming that in after life this taste, first sanctioned and fostered 
 by parental example, and meant, no doubt in kindness, may, by a 
 subsequent vicious indulgence, bring these originally pure and 
 innocent children to the last stage of dishonour and degradation, 
 a drunkard's grave — a fate that never could btfal them, if they 
 iiever tasted this insidious poison. 
 
 Here, then, are fifty millions of money actually spent, and fifty 
 millions'' worth of valuable time and productive labour wasted, 
 without adding to the health, strength, capacity, skill, intellect, 
 wealth, virtue, morality, or religion, of any single being. Is this 
 the conduct of a nation calling itself wise ? AVill it be endured for 
 a moment longer by a people calling themselves free ? Shall it be 
 quailed before, as an unconquerable evil, by a people calling them- 
 selves brave ? If so, let them abandon all these titles, and submit 
 to be considered the weakest and feeblest of mankind. 
 
 But, if I have proved to you what these 100 millions of ex- 
 penditure and waste do not accomplish ; let me, for a moment, 
 enumerate a few of the proved and admitted evils which it brings 
 in its deadly train. 
 
 It fills, not merely our workhouses, but the damp cellars, and 
 obscure courts and alleys, of every town in the kingdom, with ill- 
 fed, ill-clad, ill-housed, sickly, and miserable occupants, whose 
 sunken eyes, and pallid cheeks, and shrivelled limbs, and bending
 
 BRITISH NATION. 7 
 
 forms, betoken premature age, suffering, and decay ; while the 
 stunted grov/th, the ragged garments, and the famished looks of 
 their Httle children, cry aloud to Heaven for mercy, and to us for 
 help and rescue. 
 
 It fills our prisons with criminals, our hulks with convicts, and 
 our penal colonies with the outcasts of society, there to spread the 
 British language and British name; and there, in many instances, 
 to corrupt the aborigines of distant lands, and make them more de- 
 graded by the vices of civilization than they were before by the 
 barbarism of savage life. 
 
 It fills our streets with prostitutes, more numerous than in any 
 other country in the world ; and turns the young, the innocent, 
 the beautiful, and often the most confiding, generous, and interesting 
 of their sex, into the most degraded and unhappy of human beings. 
 
 It inflicts upon the nation, a cost — to maintain its system of 
 poor-laws, with all its complex machinery — to build and support 
 its prisons, and penitentiaries, asylums, hospitals, hulks, and penal 
 colonies, its police at home and its establishments abroad — of many 
 milliona annually. 
 
 It destroys property as well as life, in shipwrecks and fires at 
 sea, in spoilings and waste, in intentional and accidental fires and 
 destructions by land, a large proportion of which is clearly traceable 
 to the drunken carelessness of some, or the wilful incendiarism of 
 others ; and it hinders the successful accomplishment of under- 
 takings, which, in sober and discreet hands, would meet a differ- 
 ent fate : the united cost of which, taken altogether, amounts to 
 many millions more. 
 
 HerCj then, are Evils, more extensive in their destruction of 
 life and property, and more obstructive of human happiness and 
 improvement, than all the wars that were ever waged — than all 
 the plagues, pestilences, and famines that ever swept the earth — 
 than all the slavery that was ever perpetrated — or all the monopo- 
 lies that ever existed. And shall we remain unmoved amidst this 
 general wreck, when so simple and practical a remedy is in every 
 man's hand ? — needing no combination of wealth to effect, no or- 
 ganization of societies to carrv, no Acts of Parliament to enforce — 
 costing nothing but the single resolution of a moment, which
 
 8 APPEAL TO THE 
 
 we should for ever liide our heads in shame, if we have not the 
 virtue or the courage to make. 
 
 Every humane and generous heart that can feel for the woes of 
 others, every mind that is not steeped in the lowest depths of sen- 
 suality and selfishness, eagerly enquires : — "What is the remedy?" 
 — To abolish so great an evil — to promote so great a good — 
 every voice exclaims " Tell it me — and I will instantly adopt it." 
 
 Let not its simplicity startle you. All great truths are simple. 
 The sublimest acts of the Deity are simple. " Let there delight — 
 and there ivas light" — is the eloquent record of the great act of 
 creating the glorious orb of day, and building up and binding all 
 the starry firmament in the harmony of motion through infinity of 
 space. " God is Love," is the simple definition of the ever-adorable 
 Deity. " Love your neighbour as yourself," is the blessed 
 Saviour''s simple but comprehensive catalogue of all our human 
 duties: for "on this," and "the love of God," said his divine lips, 
 " hang all the law and the prophets." 
 
 Our remedy for this Giant Evil has the same characteristic sim- 
 plicity. — May it have the same high sanction, and emphatic force ! 
 
 —"ABANDON ALL INTOXICATING DRINKS."— 
 
 Nothing more than this is needed; and this is in every one's 
 power. Millions of people in India and China, in Asia and 
 Africa, have lived for ages, as Hindoos, Buddhists, and Moham- 
 medans — in burning plains, on snowy mountains — in lives of 
 sedentary study, in labours of active toil — with no stronger drink 
 than water — the oldest, purest, brightest, sweetest, healthiest, and, 
 for all these reasons, given by God as the most abundant fluid, to 
 quench the thirst, and assist in the nutriment of all his creatures. 
 Millions of people in America, Ireland, Scotland, England, and in 
 all our Colonies, have now — some, like myself, for twenty years, 
 and others for periods of fifteen, ten, and five years consecutively 
 — proved its superiority to every other fluid as a beverage, in 
 strengthening the body, invigorating the mind, calming the passions, 
 giving firmness to the character, increasing, in short, the health, 
 wealth, and enjoyment, in every way, of those who have made the 
 change, who have given up entirely the use of wine, beer, spirits, 
 and alcoholic drinks in every form, without once repenting the change.
 
 BRITISH NATION. 9 
 
 We ask you then, to try the same experiment : — we know by 
 experience what will be the result. Banish it from your tables — 
 expel it from your houses — root it out from wherever your influ- 
 ence extends — and the whole Nation will, on the following day, 
 begin to be regenerated. Your banquets need not be the less 
 hospitable : but let purer^tastes and more wholesome appetites be 
 gratified : and if all will cease to use intoxicating drinks — no man 
 will need it for his guests any more than for himself. 
 
 Let the Women of England begin this great work, and the men 
 must follow. Let the flushed cheek and glaring eye, the unsteady 
 hand, the parched lip and foul breath, which wine, spirits, beer, 
 and other intoxicating drinks engender in the man, be shamed by 
 the frown, or withered by the scorn, of the chaste and beautiful 
 maidens and matrons of Albion. Let their own purity and loveli- 
 ness never more be tainted by the unhallowed touch of the wine- 
 bibber and inhaler of the fumes of uncleanliness and corruption. 
 And oh ! let the holy and angelic innocence of their children never 
 come within the atmosphere of this pollution ! 
 
 Christians and Patriots ! Arise in the majesty of your strength — 
 and stay this desolating plague, before another sun shall set upon 
 your existence. — Resolve to-day, that the insidious and useless cup 
 shall be no more filled for you. To-morrow endeavour to persuade 
 your nearest and dearest friends to do the same. In a single week 
 after this, some portion of the fifty millions now spent in useless 
 and destroying drink will be diverted into different channels: — some 
 portion of the fifty millions lost by idleness and waste will cease 
 to be so destroyed ; some portion of the millions more expended 
 for the support of hospitals, prisons, hulks, police, and peni- 
 tentiaries, will be set free for other uses : — and in a year, when 
 100 millions might, by your abstinence alone, be made available 
 for other expenditure, in food, clothing, education, books, arts, 
 sciences, benevolence, and religion, there need be no man, 
 woman, or child, in all the British dominions, wanting cither, as 
 far at least as means to furnish all to them exist. When every 
 idle drunkard, now maintained by the labour of the industri- 
 ous workman, is converted into a producer of wealth by his own 
 labour and a consumer of the articles made by others, and when 
 every family shall expend what they now waste in stimulating
 
 10 APPEAL TO THE 
 
 drinks, in some other useful and honourable mode of sustaining 
 tlic native industry of the country, and giving it the best protec- 
 tion it can enjoy, it is impossible to exaggerate the actual physical 
 benefits which must be conferred on every class, and equally im- 
 possible to over-rate the moral and religious improvement that 
 must follow in its train. Yet, vast as would be this change, it 
 may speedily be accomplished, if you and others will simply 
 ABSTAIN FROM THE USE OF THESE DRINKS, 
 and assist to banish them from the community. 
 
 You have will enough, and power enough, to effect every con- 
 quest and every reform needed, if your intelligence and influence 
 be but exercised aright; but your entire history furnishes a con- 
 tinued series of proofs of how this will and power has been hitherto 
 mis-directed. 
 
 You have spent millions to conquer India and humble China, 
 and sent up your thanksgivings to Heaven for your victories ; but, 
 amidst all your boasted triumphs, you are either not able, or not 
 willing, to achieve the far nobler conquest of rooting out the opium 
 traffic of the East, or the rum traffic, gin traffic, and beer traffic of 
 the West — a conquest that would cost you neither lives nor money, 
 but be a saving and improvement of both. 
 
 You have obtained a great change in the constitution of your 
 Parliament : but the system of treating and bribing, chiefly by 
 means of intoxicating drinks, which makes drunken electors prefer 
 profligate expenditure in a Representative to every other virtue, is 
 still unrcformed. 
 
 You have carried the question of an ultimate free trade in corn, 
 and commenced the work of a comparatively free trade in sugar ; 
 but you have done nothing to prevent the perversion of millions 
 of quarters of grain from wholesome food to poisonous drink, or 
 the extraction, from nutritious sugar, of demoralizing and destroying 
 rum. 
 
 You have given twenty millions sterling to secure freedom to 
 less than one million of oppressed Africans, and maintain an 
 armed force for the suppression of the slave-trade ; but you not 
 only offer no aid, you look on with indifference and apathy, upon 
 a slavery of so-called free Englishmen, which embraces mani/ 
 millions in its thraldom ; and which, in the case of its more un-
 
 BRITISH NATION. 11 
 
 happy victims who sink to a drunkard's grave, is far worse than 
 any other bondage, as it kills both body and soul. 
 
 You send abroad missionaries and distribute bibles in heathen 
 lands ; but you do nothing to arrest the exportation, sale, and use, 
 of that which destroys all Christian teaching, by the pernicious 
 influence of Christian exaiflple ; the Hindoo and the Mohammedan, 
 in their superior sobriety, looking down upon your ministers with 
 contempt, as drinkers of the maddening and forbidden liquor, 
 which they are too pure to touch. 
 
 You seek to reform your criminal code and abolish capital pun- 
 ishments, to improve prison discipline, and provide for the children 
 of convict parents ; but you permit, and encourage by your custom 
 and example, the manufacture, sale, and use of the principal instru- 
 ment in the production of crime ; the entire withdrawal of which 
 from consumption would render most of these efforts unnecessary. 
 
 You are moved to compassion by the slaughter of an Indian 
 battle, a single murder, or a railway accident; but you see unmoved 
 thousands of victims reeling and staggering through your streets, 
 with decaying frames, to the grave — and some daily perishing by 
 violence, delirium tremens, and other awful forms of death. 
 
 You are eager to abolish flogging in the navy and army : public 
 meetings are called, and Parliament is invoked, because a sailor is 
 condemned to be hung at Cork for striking his superior officer, and 
 a soldier is flogged to death for the same offence at Hounslow ; 
 but neither in the Parliament nor by the press, neither at pubhc 
 dinners, nor in private parties, do you hear a word uttered against 
 the use of that maddening drink which excited both these unhappy 
 men to commit the unreflecting indiscretions of which they were 
 guilty, and under the influence of which, had any of us been in 
 their places, we should, in all probability, have done the same 
 thing. i\ gainst which, then, should be your horror or your indig- 
 nation directed ? Not against the oflScers who ordered these pun- 
 ishments, for that was done in due form of law, and by regularly 
 constituted tribunals : — not against the men who inflicted the lash, 
 for they but obeyed the orders of their superiors ; — Against the 
 Legislature, if you will, for permitting such brutalizing punish- 
 ments to remain lawful for an hour ; but still more against the 
 makers, vendors, and licensers of the accursed drink, without
 
 ^'2 APPEAL TO THE 
 
 wlucli, the insubordinations would never have been manifested, nor 
 the punishments of flogging or hanging be inflicted. Yet on this 
 part of the subject a profound and universal silence is maintained, 
 as if a sense of guilty participation in the crime and its conse- 
 quences, on the part of all who encourage drinking by their 
 example, sealed your lips : such is the obliquity of your vision — 
 such the obtuseness or wilful blindness of your understandings ! 
 
 Arouse, then, from your lethargy, O ! People of England: you, 
 who in yonr national anthem proudly swell the chorus that "Britons 
 never will be slaves;" arise! awake! — Emancipate yourselves 
 from this thraldom, and prove yourselves as mighty to save as you 
 have been hitherto powerful to destroy. 
 
 Princes, Nobles, and Gentry ! you, to whom the high trust is 
 given, to be a terror to evil doers, and friends and protectors to 
 those who do well — you, to whom your humbler dependants look 
 up for example and advice ! — How many of your highest ranks, even 
 from the most ancient to the latest ennobled of your order, have 
 dishonoured themselves, and disgraced their titled dignity, by in- 
 temperance .'* Yet for you, as for all others, emptiness and vanity, 
 disease and accelerated age, are the fruits of its indulgence : 
 benefi ts innumerable to y o urselves and others will flow from its disuse. 
 
 Men of Property 1 living on your rentals, of houses, lands, and 
 funds I — Consider how your incomes are reduced, by the losses, 
 taxes, rates, and contributions, which the drinking usages of society, 
 its immense expenditure of millions, involves. 
 
 Legislators, magistrates, ministers of religion, teachers of youths, 
 parents and guardians of both sexes ! — Reflect, for a moment, how 
 all your generous aspirations for the happiness of those committed 
 to your care are thwarted and destroyed, by habits which you 
 sanction by your personal adoption : and which, if you will only 
 discontinue, those subject to your authority and influence will also 
 speedily lay aside. 
 
 Merchants, traders, artizans, and labourers ! — Ask yourselves 
 what injury is occasioned to all the several branches of productive 
 industry which you follow — by the absorption of fifty millions 
 spent in drink, and fifty millions wasted in loss ? What would 
 be the demand for your productions, and the wages of your labour, 
 if these lOOmiDions could be annually expended among you all.''
 
 BRITISH NATION. 13 
 
 Authors, publishers, editors, and all engaged in literary under- 
 takings — Think, for an instant, what would be the change to you, 
 if every child in the kingdom were well-educated, every parent 
 sober, in every house a little library, magazine, and newspaper ! — 
 and mental wants are even more powerful than corporeal ones, 
 when the appetite is onc^ trained to its joyous indulgence ; and in 
 a universally sober nation each of these, the physical and intellec- 
 tual, would have their due and allotted share. 
 
 Sound then, your loudest trumpets of alarm, ye Watchmen of 
 the day and night, ye Morning and Evening Messengers of In- 
 struction, and Weekly and Monthly Heralds of the Press — by 
 whose hands the pen should be wielded for higher objects of attain- 
 ment than mere temporary triumphs of evanescent fame. Pro- 
 claim it from the watch-towers on which you stand as Sentinels, 
 that the enemy is not merely at our gates, but in our camp : — 
 that the most alarming and devouring fire that ever raged within 
 our borders, is consuming bodies and souls at every corner of our 
 streets, yet no engines are hastening to extinguish them : — that all 
 the hail-storms that ever fell have never shattered and destroyed 
 so many fragile frames as poisonous drink is breaking up and 
 withering every hour, and yet no workmen are called in to arrest 
 or repair the evil : — that the interiors of the gin-palaces, beer-shops, 
 and brothels of England, are infinitely more impure than our 
 streets, and that filth, disease, and misery, revel in these chambers 
 of death ; yet no machinery, moral or mechanical, is set on foot 
 to cleanse them : so that, while our well-paved and well-swept 
 avenues of traffic and pleasure are clean as the whited sepulchre 
 without — yet, within their desecrated and unhallowed walls, cor- 
 ruption and decay still riot unmolested. 
 
 The theme is endless, if it could be pursued. But, here at least, 
 it cannot be. Yet, enough, it is hoped, has been said, to rouse all 
 who read, to think, to examine, and to judge for themselves ; and 
 having so thought, examined, and judged, let them act immediately 
 on their decision, by putting aside, at once, within their own fami- 
 lies, at least, the use of every kind of stimulating drink — making 
 the experiment for a few months only, so as to watch its effects, — 
 and, surely, no man will confess himself so poor in virtuous resolu- 
 tion, so weak in self-command, so enslaved by custom and fashion, 
 as not to be able and willinir to do this.
 
 14 APPEAL TO THE BIIITISH NATION'. 
 
 If any one ask, '' Why should 1. who use these drinks in 
 moderation, give up even the slight enjoyment which their use 
 affords me," — the answer is, " Because, as the Ocean itself is 
 made up of minute drops, so the 50 raiUions abstracted from the 
 general fund of national wealth — and the 50 millions lost by 
 idleness and waste — is made up of yours and every other family's 
 small portions of the consumption ; but, above all, because the 
 example of the respectable classes of society, in using these drinks 
 at all, is constantly urged by the poor as a justification of their 
 using them also; and it is only by the moderate use at first that 
 the most abandoned drunkards and criminals are made, since no 
 one becomes so but by degrees. In the spirit, therefore, of the 
 Great Apostle, who said, " It is not good neither to drink wine, nor 
 to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth or is made weak," 
 and in conformity with the example and precept of his and our 
 Divine Lord and Master, that we should " love our neighbour as 
 ourselves, and do good unto all men," wherever and whenever the 
 opportunity is afforded to us — let all who call themselves Christians, 
 Philanthropists, or Patriots, try but this slight experiment — the 
 simplest Remedy for the most destructive Pestilence that ever 
 afflicted mankind ; and if they wiU but do this, the greatest 
 Victory of Good over Evil that has ever yet been achieved by 
 moral means since the creation of the world, will be speedily and 
 easily accomplished. Who, then, would not feel joy inexpressible, 
 at being instrumental, in the smallest degree, to this Greatest 
 OF ALL Reforms that yet remains to be accomplished? 
 
 I am, your faithful friend and fellow-countryman, 
 
 J. S. BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 13, George Street, Hanover Square. 
 London, August lOth, 1846. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 It may, perhaps, -vrith some minds, give additional force to the facts and reason- 
 ing presented in this Appeal, if it can be shown, that they are the result of 
 careful inrestigation, much experience, and deliberately formed judgment ; and 
 not taken up hastily to servo a momentary purpose. To convey such conviction, 
 there will follow this, the Kcport of a Speech deUvered in the British House of 
 Commons, and the Report of its Committee, with a List of their Names, and those 
 of the Witnesses examined twelve years ago, when the subject was scarcely thought 
 of by any class of society ; but since which, happily, millions have become sen- 
 sible of its importance, though milhons more remain to be eonvinced. May this 
 effort assist towards that important and desirable issue !
 
 SPEECH OF MR. BUCKINGHAM, 
 
 ON THE 
 
 EXTENT, CAUSES, AND EFFECTS OF 
 
 DRUNKENNESS, 
 
 Delivered in the House of Commons on Tuesday, June 3, 1834, 
 
 (From the Mirror of Parliament.) 
 
 Sir, — In rising to call the attention of the House to the motion 
 of which I have given notice, for a Select Committee to inquire 
 into the extent, causes, and consequences of the great increase of 
 habitual Drunkenness among the labouring classes of this king- 
 dom, and to devise legislative measures to prevent its further 
 spread, I am so fully sensible of the difficulty of the task, that 
 nothing but a strong conviction of its public importance would 
 have induced me to undertake it. In the expositions which it will 
 be my painful duty to make, I can scarcely fail to encounter 
 the hostility of those who profit largely by the demoralization, 
 of which they are both the cause and the support. In suggest- 
 ing the remedies which I shall venture to propose, I foresee the 
 opposition of a large class of persons interested in maintaining 
 the existing state of things in all its force ; while, from those who 
 have no pecuniary interests involved in the inquiry, but who con- 
 tend conscientiously, perhaps, that all legislation on such a subject 
 is mischievous, and that the evil should be left to work its own 
 cure, I shall have to endure the imputation of cant and puritanism 
 in affecting a higher regard for morality than others, of officious 
 meddling, and oppressive interference with the rights of property, 
 and the enjoyments of the labouring classes. For all this I am 
 prepared ; and yet, in the face of all this, I shall firmly persevere in 
 my original intention. Not that I am indifferent either to the 
 rights of property, or to the enjoyments of my fellow-men ; and 
 the humbler their class, the more sacredly should their rights and 
 enjoyments be guarded from legislative suppression ; but after 
 years of mature deliberation — after some reading, much reflection, 
 and still more practical experience, grounded on extensive personal 
 observation of the present condition of society in England, Scot- 
 land, and Ireland, which, within the last five years, has brought 
 me into close intercourse with many thousands of all ranks and
 
 16 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 classes, my conviction is as strong as it is sincere, that of all the 
 single evils that afflict our common country, the increased and 
 increasing prevalence of Drunkenness among the labouring classes, 
 including men, women, and children, is the greatest; — that it is 
 not only an evil of the greatest magnitude in itself, but that it is 
 the source of a long and melancholy catalogue of other evils 
 springing directly from its impure fountain; — and as its daily opera- 
 tion is to sap the very foundations of social happiness and domestic 
 enjoyment, my conviction is, that he who may be instrumental in 
 arresting its fatal progress, will be conferring an inestimable 
 benefit on his country, and rendering a valuable service to man- 
 kind. {Hear, hear.) 
 
 Under this conviction, I propose, Sir, with the indulgence of the 
 House, to direct its attention to some few of the causes which 
 appear to me to have been most powerfully operative in extending 
 the increase of Drunkenness, and to some few of the baneful effects 
 which it produces, not merely on its immediate victims, but on the 
 best interests of society at large. I shall then, I hope, be able to 
 adduce sufficient reasons to show that legislative interference is 
 imperatively demanded to check the evil — that it is justified by 
 precedent and analogy — and that it will produce the end desired. 
 After this, I will submit to the House the steps which appear to 
 me most likely to operate as immediate checks, as well as others 
 more appropriate to be considered as ulterior remedies for an evil 
 which it is desirable first to arrest in its present progress ; and 
 then, if possible, to root it out and extirpate it entirely. 
 
 Of the fact of the increase of Drunkenness among the labouring 
 classes of the country, I think there will be no doubt. But if 
 there should, a reference to the reports of the police cases, pub- 
 lished in any town of the United Kingdom, will be more than 
 sufficient to remove such doubts ; and if to this be added the 
 evidence furnished by the records of our criminal courts of session 
 or assize, and by the coroner's inquests, hospital returns, and 
 other public documents, accessible to all, the most irresistible proof 
 will be produced to show that Intemperance, like a mighty and 
 destroying flood, is fast overwhelming the land. I content myself 
 with two short extracts of evidence on this subject from very dif- 
 ferent quarters, which I have selected from a mass of others, be- 
 cause they are the shortest and the most recent, not written to serve 
 any special purpose, and above all question as to their authenticity.
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 17 
 
 The first is from the latest official Report of the Middlesex 
 Lunatic Asylum, at Hanwell, as published in the Times of the 
 present month. It is as follows : 
 
 " GiK Dkinking. — The seventy-six deaths which have occurred 
 in the year, have been, with the exception of those who have died 
 from advanced age, principally caused by the disease of the brain, of 
 the lungs, and the complaints brought on by those deadly potions 
 of ardent spirits, in which the loiver classes seem more tlian ever to 
 indulge. In a very great number of the recent cases, both amongst 
 men and women, the insanity is caused entirely by spirit-drinking. 
 This may, in some measure, be attributed to the young not being 
 taught to consider the practice disgraceful, and to their being 
 tempted, by the gorgeous splendour of the present gin-mansions, 
 to begin a habit which they never would have commenced had 
 they been obliged to steal, feai'ful of being observed, into the ob- 
 scurity of the former dram-shops." 
 
 The second document to which I beg to draw the special at- 
 tention of the House, is one of the most appalling, perhaps, that 
 the history of Intemperance has ever produced. It is a report of 
 the number of men, women, and children, who entered, within a 
 given time, into 14 of the piincipal gin-shops in London, and its 
 suburbs ; of which there are 2 in Whitechapel ; 3 at Mile End ; 
 1 in East Smithfield ; 1 in the Borough ; 1 in Old Street ; 2 in 
 Holborn ; 1 in Bloomsbury ; and 3 in Westminster. From 
 these tabular statements I make only the following selections : — 
 At the principal gin-shop in Holborn, there entered on the 
 Monday, 2880 men, 1855 women, and 289 children, making a 
 total of 5024 human beings in one single day ; and in the whole 
 week 16,998 persons had visited this single house. At the prin- 
 cipal gin- shop in Whitechapel, this had even been exceeded ; for 
 there had entered at this house on the Monday, no less than 3146 
 men, 2189 women, and 686 children, making a total of 6021 
 in a single day; and in the course of the week, the numbers 
 amounted to 17,403. The grand total for one week only in tlie 
 14 houses selected, the names of wliich I have seen, and the 
 localities of which I have myself inspected, amount to no less a 
 number than 269,437, divided in the following proportions — 
 namely, 142,453 men, 108,593 women, and 18,391 children — 
 the women and children united, nearly equalling the men ; and 
 often surpassing them in the grossness and depravity of their
 
 18 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 demeanour ! Alas ! Sir, is it England of which we arc speaking 
 — the land of the lovely and the brave — the scat of the sciences 
 and the arts — the school of morality and religion ; or are those 
 attributes of excellence ascribed to us in mockery, in order to 
 heigliten our sense of sorrow and of shame ? Yes ! in a country 
 second to none in wealth — in intelligence — in power — and I will 
 add, too, in general purity of conduct and character — there yet 
 remains this deadly plague-spot, which I call upon the members 
 of this House to assist, to the utmost of their abilities, in endea- 
 vouring to wipe away. If this almost inconceivable amount of 
 degredation is produced by 14 houses only in the metropolis, 
 what must be the mass of vice and immorality engendered by 
 the thousands of other houses of the same class, though of inferior 
 magnitude, which rear their decorated fronts in every street and 
 avenue, whichever way we turn, though, like the whited sepulchres 
 of old, they are, without, all gorgeousness and splendour — within, 
 all rottenness and death ; and if tlie waste, disease, and crime, 
 produced by intoxication in London alone be thus enormous, what 
 must be the aggregate amount of each in all the other towns and 
 districts of England ? The sum is so fearful that I shrink appalled 
 fx'om its bare contemplation. {Hear, hear.) 
 
 If we turn to Scotland, the prospect is quite as discouraging. 
 From a letter, dated Edinburgh, April, 1834, written by an 
 eminent resident of that city. Dr. Greville, I extract only the 
 following passage : — 
 
 " I have been this day in the City Chambers, and have ascer- 
 tained fron the official records, that in the Royalty (or city) there 
 were issued for the years 1833-4, no less than 736 licences. The 
 Royalty contains 54,232 souls, and 11,046 families ; this is, 
 therefore, a licence to every fifteenth family. The whole popula- 
 tion of Edinburgh, and its suburbs, is about 166,000 ; but beyond 
 the Royalty, the licences are mixed up with those of the county, 
 and it is not so easy to obtain a distinct account of them. This, 
 however, is well known, that three years ago, there were only I7OO 
 licences in the whole of this district; so that the increase in that 
 short space of time is enormous.'' 
 
 If we ask whether Ireland is affected with this deadly plague 
 as well as Scotland and England, the ansv/er must, unfortunately, 
 be in the affirmative. In Dublin, and in Cork, the increased 
 consumption of ardent spirits, and the consequent increase of dis-
 
 CAUSES AISD KFFECTS OF DllUNKE^'NESS. 19 
 
 ease and crime, is undeniable; and testimonies might be multi- 
 plied on this subject to any required extent. But to take the 
 north of Ireland, rather than the south, for an example, as the 
 north is universally admitted to be in a higher state of order, 
 peace, and comfort, than the south, I quote a single passage from a 
 Report drawn up by the Jlev. John Edgar, Divinity Professor, in 
 the Royal College of Belfast, dated in January of the present year, 
 in which he says, — 
 
 " The demand for spirituous liquors is so universal, that spirit- 
 shops in the towns of Ulster average 16, 18, and even thirty, to 
 one baker's shop ; and in some villages, every shop is a spirit-shop. 
 In one town, containing only 800 houses, there are no less than 
 88 spirit-shops ! The fruit of all this exhibits itself every where 
 in the destruction of property, and peace, and health, and life, and 
 happiness ; in the increase of crime, the injury of the best interests 
 of individuals, of families, and of the community at large." 
 
 Subsequent to the date of this Report, I have received a letter 
 from Mr. John Finch, of Liverpool, a gentleman well known for 
 his intimate acquaintance with the lower orders of the people 
 generally, from his having made their condition the subject of 
 personal investigation and continued care. He says, 
 
 " I have just returned from a six weeks' journey in Ireland, 
 having visited all the principal seaports in that island, from the 
 Giant's Causeway to Bantry and Wexford ; and certainly the 
 condition of the great mass of the people in that country is as 
 miserable as it is possible ; they are filthy, ragged, famished, 
 houseless, herding with pigs, and sleeping on dunghills, without 
 regular employment, and working for sixpence, and even four- 
 pence and five-pence per day. No doubt this wretchedness is 
 in part owing to absenteeism, want of leases, high rents, and, in 
 sotne trifling degree, to tithes; but I feel satisfied that drunken- 
 ness and whiskey-drinking are a greater curse than all these put 
 together. Do you ask for proof ? The finest mansions, parks, 
 and farms in Ireland belong to distillers and brewers ; the largest 
 manufactories are distilleries and breweries, and at least one out of 
 every four or five shops in Ireland is a dram or beer-shop. In 
 one street in Belfast, I counted seven whiskey-shops together, on 
 one side of the street. One of the Poor Law Commissioners told 
 me at Waterford, that it had just been ascertained that £50,000 
 worth of whiskey, and other intoxicating liquors, were sold at 
 
 c 2
 
 20 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 Clonmel in the retail shops last year, with a population of about 
 15,000; and it was believed, that, in Waterford, with a population 
 of about 30,000, nearly £100,000 worth was sold in the same time. 
 Can we wonder, then, that the Irish people are so poor?''* 
 
 In the central parts of England, in the great manufacturing 
 towns of IManchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and their surrounding dis- 
 tricts, the evil is widely extending in every direction. In Man- 
 chester, and the surrounding towns of Bolton, Stockport, Oldham, 
 and others, the increase of spirit shops and spirit drinkers, is 
 greater, perhaps, than in any part of England. Take the following 
 testimony as to the former, from the excellent work of Dr. Kay, 
 an eminent physician of that town, " On the Condition of the 
 Working Classes f — 
 
 " Some idea (he says) may be formed of the influence of these 
 estabhshments, the gin-shops, on the health and morals of the 
 people, from the following statement, for which I am indebted to 
 Mr. Braidley, the Boroughreeve of Manchester. He observed the 
 number of persons entering a single gin-shop in five minutes, during 
 eight successive Saturday evenings, and at various periods, from 
 seven o'clock till ten. The average result was 1 12 men, and 163 
 women, or 275 in forty minutes, which is equal to 412 per hour." 
 
 Mr. Robert Jowett, a most respectable merchant and manufac- 
 turer of Leeds, states, that according to the official returns, there 
 are no less than 297 hotels, inns, and taverns, licensed in that 
 borough alone ; besides 289 beer-shops, making in the whole, 586 
 houses furnishing intoxicating drinks, in which, calculating the 
 receipts of the former as on the average of £17, and of the latter 
 on the average of £3 per week only, there would be expended the 
 sum of £307,632 per annum ; and by far the largest proportion of 
 this paid by the working people. 
 
 In the Sheffield Iris, of the 17th of May, but a few weeks ago, 
 is the following paragraph, which, though short, speaks volumes, 
 as to the fearful increase of Intemperance in the great district of 
 which it is the centre. The paragraph is most appropriately headed, 
 and is as follows: 
 
 * Five years after the delivery of this speech, the benevolent Father Mathew 
 took up the subject in Ireland ; and his labours have happily wrought a great 
 reformation there.
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 21 
 
 " The Intoxicating March to Death. — It is a painful, but 
 at the same time a most melancholy fact, that Mr. Badger, the 
 coroner of this district, has, within the short space of ten days, had 
 occasion to hold inquests on thirteen persons who have come to 
 their deaths by accidents solely arising from indulging in the bane- 
 ful vice of drunkenness." > {Hear, hear.) 
 
 Sir, it would be easy to multiply evidence of this description to 
 any extent required; but I refrain from adducing any more. Here, 
 in the immediate precincts of the seat of legislation, under the 
 venerable shadow of Westminster Abbey, as well as in other parts 
 of this great metropolis; in Holborn and Seven Dials, on the 
 north ; in Southwark, and St. George's-fields, in the south ; in 
 Whitechapel, and Mile-end, in the east ; in the Strand, in Pic- 
 cadilly, and in Oxford- street, in the west ; as well as in Smithlield, 
 Barbican, and Shoreditch, in the centre ; every where, in every 
 direction, in the heart and around the suburbs of this mighty 
 city, the demon of Intoxication seems to sweep all before him with 
 his fiery flood ; while in the remotest villages and hamlets of the 
 country, as well as in the manufacturing towns, the evil has in- 
 creased, is increasing, and cries with a loud voice from every 
 quarter for redress. 
 
 From the melancholy facts of the case, I pass for a moment to 
 consider what appear to me to have been among the causes of this 
 increased drunkenness among the humbler classes. The first of 
 these I take to be the early example of their superiors in the 
 higher classes of society, among whom, in periods not very remote, 
 drinking to excess was so far from being regarded as a vice, that it 
 was often boasted of as a sort of prowess worthy of distinction and 
 honour, when no entertainment was considered to be hospitably 
 concluded without the intoxication of the majority of those who 
 partook of it ; when ladies were obliged to quit the dinner-table, to 
 prevent their being shocked by the excesses of the gentlemen who 
 remained ; and when the liberahty of the host was tested by the 
 number of the guests he had made drunk at his cost ! Happily, 
 for the better educated classes of society, this state of things, which 
 many hon. members whom I now address are old enough, no doubt, 
 to remember, has passed away from them. But drunken servants 
 began at length to imitate drunken masters ; and intoxication being 
 regarded as a proof of gentility and spirit, and a sign of property 
 or credit in the drinker, the vice soon spread lower and lower in
 
 22 CAUSES ANr EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 the ranks of society, just as any other bad habit, wlicthcr of dress 
 or manners, after having been discarded by the upper ranks, with 
 whom it first originated, descends progressively to their inferiors. 
 
 Another cause has been, undoubtedly, the severe pressure of 
 taxation, and the equally severe pressure of that excessive labour, 
 by which alone a poor man could hope to find subsistence. These 
 two causes operating conjointly, rendered it almost impossible for 
 labouring men to provide themselves with homes of comfort ; and, 
 therefore, the blazing fire and easy chair of the ta}5-room at the 
 pviblic-house possessed a more powerful attraction for them than 
 an empty hearth, a damp floor, and a cold and comfortless lodging. 
 They could not enter into this comfortable retreat without drinking 
 something : the first glass begat a stronger thirst for the second ; 
 smoking was added by the landlord, to increase still more the thirst 
 v/hich he profited by quenching ; and associates in all vicious 
 habits commending each other, for the purpose of quieting the 
 reproaches of conscience, the moderate drinker looked indulgently 
 on the drunkard, till he became tainted with the destructive hdbit 
 himself. The large size of the towns, increasing in every direction, 
 making the old rural sports of England more and more difficult of 
 access, and the lengthened hours of labour aifording less time for 
 healthful recreation, and forcing men to those more quickly excited 
 pleasures of intoxication, were, no doubt, each auxiliaries to the 
 causes I have described in towns; while the departure from the 
 old and wholesome custom of farmers entertaining their labouring 
 men beneath their own roofs, produced the same result of driving 
 them to pass their evenings at public-houses in the country. 
 
 Another cause may, perhaps, be found in the sanction given to 
 the sale of spirits by a Government licence, which took away from 
 the traffic the disrepute which would, no doubt, otherwise have 
 attached to it, if not so authorized. The Government, deriving a 
 lart'-e levenue from this source, again looked favourably even on 
 the excesses which itself had in some measured created ; and the 
 large sums which flowed annually into the Exchequer, by the in- 
 creased consumption of ardent spirits, made them encourage 
 rather than repress the disposition in the people to swell the Trea- 
 sury through this productive channel. The duties were therefore 
 continually augmented until they reached their maximum. This 
 augmentation led to smuggling; and as the tax which the smuggler 
 evaded was regarded as a hindrance to the enjoyment of the people,
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DU'JNKENNESS. 23 
 
 public sympathy ran rather with the violators than with the obser- 
 vers of the law. The smuggler became every where a welcome 
 visitor. The rich and the middle classes, as well as tlie poor, 
 delighted in cheating the Government by purchasing a contr.iband 
 commodity. The very risk and secrecy of the transaction gave 
 additional zest to its fruits. Spirit-drinking accordingly increased 
 extensively, and while legal distilleries were encouraged for the 
 aid they gave to the Treasury, illicit distillation and unlawful im- 
 portation were encouraged by high duties; while the sellers of 
 each left no exertion untried to increase the taste for a beverage, 
 the sale of which brought them such large profits; and which, in 
 its seductive nature, was calculated, if it could be but once im- 
 planted, to go on creatino" a vitiated appetite, which would grow 
 by what it fed on, and know no bounds to its continued augmenta- 
 tion, till it destroyed its victim by his own excess. 
 
 To meet the increased demand engendered by this increased 
 dissipation, new houses of entertainment sprung up in every 
 direction, in the shape of wine-vaults and gin-shops, in the large 
 seaports and manufacturing districts, and taverns and ale-houses 
 in the agricultural provinces. The Government, too, instead of 
 checking the evil, added only fresh fuel to the already too rapidly 
 devouring flame ; and the reduction of the duty on ardent spirits 
 on the one hand, and the increased facilities given to the sale of 
 beer on the other, spread a flood of desolation over the whole sur- 
 face of the country, which, departing from the mighty heart of 
 the metropolis, was circulated in all the arteries and veins to the 
 utmost extremities of the frame ; and has been thence rolled back 
 again in a torrent of such wide-spreading devastation, that it has 
 scarcely left a single spot uninundated by its overwhelming waves. 
 {Hear, hear.) 
 
 Let us seriously ask ourselves what have been the effects of 
 all this ? Alas ! Sir, the answer is indeed a melancholy one. 
 Deterioration of the public health, to such a degree, that our hos- 
 pitals and asylums are liiled with the victims of intemperance. 
 Increase of pauperism in every parish, so that the poor-rates bid 
 fair to exceed the rental of the land. Destruction of pubhc 
 morals, by the brutalization of the old, and the prostitution of 
 the young ; the extinction of all honest pride of independence in 
 the men, and the annihilation of all sense of decency in the women ; 
 ihe neglect of vavcs by tlieir husbands, of children by tlijir parents ;
 
 24 CAUSES AND KKI' LCTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 and the breaking in sunder all those soft and endearing ties which 
 heretofore were recognised as sacred among the humblest classes 
 in society. These are but the outlines of this great chart of misery 
 and degradation which Drunkenness has traced out for our survey. 
 The details are too full of sickening honor to be painted by any 
 pen, or uttered by any tongue ; they must be seen to be credited, 
 and witnessed before they can be felt in all their force. 
 
 As a matter of public economy, (the lowest and narrowest light 
 in which it can be viewed,) let a calculation be made of the national 
 cost of all this evil, and it will be seen, that if the revenue derived 
 from it were ten times its present amount, it would be far out- 
 balanced by the tremendous loss which it inflicts on the nation. 
 It is estimated, on carefully collected data, that not less than 50 
 millions stei-ling is expended in a single year, in England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, in spirits, wine, beer, and other intoxicating and fer- 
 mented drinks ; not a single drop of which is necessary, either for 
 the health or strength of man, but every glass of which is, in its 
 degree, absolutely prejudicial to the consumer. Here, then, is 50 
 millions of capital wasted — a sum equal to the revenue of the whole 
 kingdom, as much thrown away as if it were sunk in the depths of 
 the Atlantic. Nay, worse than that ; for then it would be merely 
 lost, and no more ; but, from its being expended in intoxicating 
 drinks, it gives rise to a long train of expenses besides. Of these 
 the hospitals and lunatic asylums may be put down at 2 millions ; 
 the county jails and town prisons, river hulks and convict transports, 
 with all the machinery of police and criminal jurisdiction, whether 
 military or civil (for both are used), may be reckoned at 5 
 millions more; and the absolute destruction of property, in the 
 burning of houses and their contents, the shipwreck of vessels, and 
 the spoiling and rendering useless goods of various kinds, destroyed 
 by neglect, may be estimated as at least 3 milhons more. 
 Let us add to this, the immense loss of time and productive 
 labour, and it will e(;ual the 60 millions already enumerated. 
 In a calculation that was made in the Times, of the loss of 
 wages, and consequently of productive labour, sustained by the 
 members of the Trades Unions when they devoted a single day 
 only to a procession through London, it was estimated that 
 the loss in wages by the whole number of those who either 
 formed part of that procession, or lost their day by the sus- 
 pension of business in all the parts through which they passed,
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 25 
 
 and the absence from their homes of those who accompanied it, 
 was, at the least, £50,000. Now, from the great prevalence of 
 the habit of congregating to drink in parties on the Sunday, the 
 Monday, and sometimes even on the Tuesday in each week, it may 
 be safely calculated that there is one such day as this lost in every 
 town in the kingdom every week in the year. Supposing London 
 alone, then, with its 1,500,000 inhabitants, to lose £50,000 by the 
 very partial suspension of its trade and productive labour in one 
 week, 52 sucli weekly losses would exceed two millions and a half 
 per annum ; and reckoning London as one-twentieth part of the 
 whole kingdom, this would be 45 millions for the whole. It may 
 be therefore asserted, without fear of contradiction, that the aggre- 
 gate expenses entailed, and losses sustained, by the pernicious 
 habit of drinking, exceed 100 millions annually ; so that, in a mere 
 pecuniary and economical sense, it is the greatest blight that ever 
 cursed our country ; and, like the cankerworm, it is eating out its 
 very vitals. {Hear.) 
 
 There is another consideration connected with the economical 
 part of the question, which ought not to be overlooked. Among 
 the various public questions which deeply engage the minds of 
 all classes, there is not one, perhaps, of more general interest than 
 that of the importance of increasing the quantity and lessening the 
 price of food to the labouring classes. Let us see for a moment 
 how this increased use of ardent spirits and intoxicating drink 
 operates in that particular. The quantity of British-made spirits 
 (quite exclusive of foreign importations) has greatly exceeded 20 
 millions of gallons on the average of several years past, and now 
 exceeds 27 millions, having increased more than one-third within 
 a very short space of time. This increased consumption of spirits 
 I remember to have heard cited, on one occasion, by the right 
 hon. the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Spring Rice) as a proof 
 of the increased prosperity of Ireland ! so exclusively is the Trea- 
 sury idea of prosperity confined to the proof of money coming into 
 the Exchequer ; though that may be caused by the very impove- 
 rishment and misery of the people. But let us see how this in- 
 creased consumption of ardent spirits decreases the supply of 
 human food. It requires one bushel of grain to make two gallons 
 of spirits ; so that, taking the legally-distilled spirits made at 
 home at 27 millions of gallons, and the illegally-distilled spirits at 
 half that quantity — and in Scotland and Ireland it is much more —
 
 2(3 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DUUNKENNESS. 
 
 these 40 millions of distilled spirits would consume 20 millions of 
 bushels of grain in a year. Here, then, is not merely a waste and 
 destruction of that very food, of which the labouring classes of 
 England have not enough, and which they are demanding to be 
 admitted from foreign countries, duty free ; but it is a conversion 
 of one of the best gifts of Providence, a wholesome and nutritious 
 article of sustenance, into a fiery flood of disease, of crime, and of 
 physical and mental destruction. We hang, by the hands of the 
 common executioner, the ignorant rick-burner who destroys the hay 
 or straw laid up for the winter food of cattle; while we encourage 
 and enrich the distiller and the vender of that far more destructive 
 fire, which consumes 20 millions of bushels of the best food of 
 man. which spreads its exterminating lava over the whole surface 
 of society, which kills the body, which destroys the soul, and leaves 
 no one redeeming or even palliating trace behind it. 
 
 That the use of these drinks is not, in the slightest degree, 
 necessary to health or strength, may be proved by the habits and 
 condition of the people in other lands, and by the testimonies of 
 personal experience and professional eminence in our own. In 
 Turkey, in Persia, in Bokhara and Samarcand, which, though 
 Mahomedau countries, have snow and ice during a large part of 
 the year, and a climate more severe in many parts during the 
 winter even than our own, the people use no stronger drinks than 
 water, milk, and sherbet, a kind of pleasant lemonade, without the 
 least admixture of fermented or spirituous ingredients ; and in 
 health, strength, and beauty, they rank the first among tlie nations 
 of the world. The pelilevansy or athletcB^ of Persia, as well as 
 the wrestlers and quoit-players of Upper Hindoostan, are among 
 the most muscular and powerful men that I have ever seen, before 
 whom the strongest European would quail ; and these drink nothing 
 stronger than water. In my own journeys, during one of which 
 I rode upwards of 800 miles on horseback in ten successive days, 
 or more than 80 miles a day, in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, 
 with the thermometer at the burning heat of 125 degrees in some 
 parts of the journey, and below the freezing point in others, I 
 drank only water, and still continue that pure and wholesome 
 beverage, in the enjoyment of a health and strength, and capacity 
 to sustain fatigue, such as, if my beverage were either beer, or wine, 
 or spirits, I could not possibly enjoy. Nor am I a singular in- 
 stance ; for I have the pleasure to know many, who, having made
 
 CAUSl'S AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 27 
 
 the same experiment, and finding its benefit, have had the courage 
 and the firmness to persevere in its practice, amidst the scoflis and 
 sarcasms of the woild. On this subject, however, the follow- 
 ing^ testimony, signed by no less a number than 589 medical men 
 of the first eminence, in the principal towns of the kingdom, is at 
 once conclusive and irresistible : — 
 
 " We, the undersigned, do hereby declare, that, in our opinion, 
 Ardent Spirits cannot be regarded as a necessary, suitable, or 
 nourishing article of diet ; that they have not the property of pre- 
 venting the accession of any complaints, but may be considered as 
 the principal source of numerous and formidable diseases, and the 
 principal cause of the poverty, crime, and misery, which abound 
 in this country ; and that the entire disuse of them, except under 
 medical direction, would materially tend to improve the health, 
 amend the morals, and augment the comfort of the community." 
 
 Let me add to this, the individual opinions of the following 
 eminent members of the Medical profession, in London, Edinburgh, 
 and Dublin : — 
 
 Sir Astley Cooper, Bart., Principal Surgeon to the King, says, 
 " No person has a greater hostility to dram-drinking than myself, 
 insomuch that I never suffer any ardent spirits in my house, think- 
 ing them evil spirits ; and if the poor could witness the white livers, 
 the dropsies, the shattered nervous systems which I have seen, as 
 the consequences of drinking, they would be aware that spirits and 
 poisons were synonymous terms." 
 
 William Harty, Physician to the prison of Dublin, says, 
 " Being thoroughly convinced, by long and extensive observation 
 amongst the poor and middling classes, that there does not exist a 
 more productive cause of disease, and consequent poverty and 
 wretchedness, than the habitual use of ardent spirits ; I cannot, 
 therefore, hesitate to recommend the entire disuse of such a poison, 
 rather than incur the risks necessarily connected with its most 
 moderate use," 
 
 Robert Christison, Professor of Materia Medica in the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh, says, " The useful purposes to be served by 
 spirituous liquors are so trifling, contrasted with the immense mag- 
 nitude and variety of the evils resulting from their habitual abuse 
 by the working classes of this country, that their entire abandon- 
 ment as an article of diet is earnestly to be desired. According to 
 my experience in the Infirmary of this city, the effects of the abuse
 
 28 CAUSES AND EFFKCTS OF DUUXK i:\NESS. 
 
 of ardent spirits in impairing health, and adding to the general 
 mortaUty, are much increased in Edinburgh, since the late changes 
 in the Excise Laws, and the subsequent cheapness of whiskey." 
 
 Edward Turner, Professor of Chemistry in the London Uni- 
 versity, says, " It is my firm conviction that ardent spirits are 
 not a nourishing article of diet ; that in this climate they may be 
 entirely disused, except as a medicine, with advantage to health 
 and strength ; and that their habitual use tends to undermine the 
 constitution, enfeeble the mind, and degrade the character. They 
 are one of the principal causes of disease, poverty, and vice." 
 
 I cannot forbear adding to this, the fact of two experiments 
 having been recently tried, one among the anchor-smiths in one of 
 the King's dockyards, and another among the furnace-men, or 
 smelters of tin ore, in Cornwall. As in each of these occupations 
 the heat of the fires is excessive, and the labour great, it had been 
 always hitherto considered necessary to grant an unlimited supply 
 of beer to the persons engaged in it. But a party of each were 
 prevailed upon, for a sum of money divided among them, to try 
 the experiment of working a gang of water-drinkers against one of 
 beer-drinkers, each equal in number and average strength ; and 
 the result of both the experiments went to prove that the water- 
 drinkers could sustain the greatest degree of heat and labour with 
 the least exhaustion or inconvenience. This is the case in England. 
 I will add only a short paragraph from the valuable testimony of a 
 well-known authority, Henry Marshall, Esq., Deputy Inspector- 
 General of Army Hospitals. In a valuable paper on the impolicy 
 of issuing ardent spirits to the European troops in India, he says : — 
 
 " The first error with respect to the use of ardent spirits which 
 I mean to oppose, is, that they contribute to enable men to under- 
 go great fatigue. This is, I beheve, a very common error. Spirits 
 never add permanent strength to any person. In all climates the 
 temperate livers are the fittest to endure fatigue. Dr. Jackson 
 travelled 118 miles in Jamaica in four days, and carried baggage 
 equal in weight to the common knapsack of a soldier. He says, 
 ' In the journey which I have just now mentioned, I probably owe 
 my escape from sickness, to temperance and spare diet. 1 break- 
 fasted on tea about ten in the morning, and made a meal of bread 
 and salad after I had taken up my lodging for the night. If I 
 had occasion to drink through the day, water or lemonade was my 
 beverage.' He concludes his observations on this topic by stating,
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 29 
 
 ' I have introduced my own experience on the present occasion, 
 because it enables me to speak from conviction, that an English 
 soldier may be rendered capable of going through the severest 
 military service in the West Indies, and that temperance will be 
 one of the best means of enabling him to perform his duty with 
 safety and effect.' Personal experience has taught me that the 
 use of ardent spirits is not necessary to enable a European to 
 undergo the fatigue of marching in a climate whose mean tempe- 
 rature is between 'JS and 80 degrees, as I have often marched on 
 foot, and been employed in the operations of the j&eld with troops 
 in such a climate, without any other beverage than water and 
 coffee. So far from being calculated to assist the human body in 
 enduring fatigue, I have always found that the strongest liquors 
 were the most enervating, and this in whatever quantity they were 
 consumed ; for the daily use of spirits is an evil habit which retains 
 its pernicious character through all its gradations. Indulged in at 
 all, it can produce nothing better than a more diluted or mitigated 
 degree of mischief." 
 
 Let the following short testimonies of three eminent physicians, 
 Dr. Rush, in America, Dr. Trotter, physician to the Fleet, and 
 one of the most experienced medical men ever possessed by the 
 navy of England, and Dr. Paris, a gentleman of extensive practice 
 in London, be added, and the evidence on this branch of the sub- 
 ject will be complete. 
 
 Dr. Rush says, " Since the introduction of spirituous liquors 
 into such general use, physicians have remarked, that a number of 
 diseases have appeared amongst us, and have described many 
 new symptoms as common to all diseases.'' Dr. Trotter says, 
 " Amidst all the evils of human life, no cause of disease has so 
 wide a range, or so large a share, as the use of spirits." " Spiri- 
 tuous liquors (he adds) destroy more lives than the sword; war 
 has its intervals of destruction, but spirits operate at all times and 
 seasons upon human life." And Dr Paris says, that " The art of 
 extracting alcholic liquors by distillation, must be regarded as the 
 greatest curse inflicted on human nature." 
 
 Notwithstanding this, with an infatuation most blind and be- 
 sotted, and too much, I regret to say, fostered and encouraged by 
 those of their superiors, who talk of the " comfort and refresh- 
 ment" which these deadly poisons afford to the labouring classes, 
 "we see the town and country population, with sickly countenances
 
 30 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 — sunken eyes — pallid cheeks — livid lips — enfeebled knees — pal- 
 sied heads and tremulous hands — absolutely diminishing in stature, 
 and becoming uglier in feature — begetting a progeny which, be- 
 sides partaking of the diseased constitution of their parents, are 
 initiated into the use of the insiduous poison in their very infancy 
 by their wretched mothers, and are growing up more feeble in 
 bodily strength, more weak in mental power, and more vicious and 
 degraded in moral conduct, than even their parents themselves, to 
 whom they are inferior in physical stamina, but whom they exceed 
 in self-abandonment and dissipation. 
 
 There are some, however, who, though they admit the injurious 
 effects produced by the general habits of intemperance, deny that 
 the habit itself has increased; and for their conviction, I venture 
 to adduce the followino; remarkable facts, taken from a very valu- 
 able little work, published only four years ago, entitled "An In- 
 quiry into the Influence of the excessive use of Spirituous Liquors, 
 in producing Crime, Disease, and Poverty in Ireland ;" compiled 
 from the most authentic and official documents, and exhibiting 
 most remarkable results. On the subject of the increased preva- 
 lence of intemperance at present, as compared v.'ith former periods, 
 the writer says : — 
 
 •' But there is, in the collection of London Bills of Mortaliiy, an 
 item which enables us to judge, with some degree of correctness, 
 of the alteration which had taken place in the habits of the popu- 
 lation of the metropolis. The item to which we allude is that of 
 ' deaths by excessive drinking/ Examining the London Bills of 
 Mortality we find, that with one exception, there is no record of 
 death by excessive drinking until the year 1686; nor did the 
 average exceed one annually for thirty years, after that date. But 
 we find that when, by Legislative encouragement to distillation 
 for home use, spirits became the general beverage, deaths by ex- 
 cessive drinking so rapidly increased, that their average for the 
 thirty years between I72I and 1750, exceeded thirty-three annu- 
 ally ; that is, that there were nearly as many deaths from intoxica- 
 tion in one year when spirits were used, as there were in the entire 
 thirty years between 1686 and 1715, when Ale was the chief drink 
 of the citizens. 
 
 " The Dublin Bills of Mortality show that the effect in that city 
 was the same. In twenty years, between 1726 and 1745, there were 
 but three deaths by excessive drinking recorded, Ale being, during
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 31 
 
 that time, the principal drink of the labouring classes ; but when 
 the encour.'igement to distillation for home use rendered spirits the 
 more general drink, that is, between the years 1746 and 1757> 
 there died from intoxication (on an average) in each year, more 
 than double the number that had died in the entire of the pre- 
 ceding twenty yearSc 
 
 *' Nor is the effect of prohibitions to distillation, in producing 
 sobriety, less remarkable. In the three years prior to the restric- 
 tion on distillation in England, in 1751, the annual average of 
 deaths by 'excessive drinking' in London, was fiventy-oue ; in 
 the three years after that partial restriction, the deaths averaged 
 only ttvelve ; but in the three years between 1757 ^nd 17^0, when 
 distillation was totally prohibited, the annual average of deaths was 
 but three. 
 
 Let this be compared with the fact of 13 deaths in 10 days, 
 from 'excessive drinking,' as reported by the coroner, in the district 
 of Sheffield alone, and the contrast is frightful. {Hear, hear.) 
 
 To show that in England, up to the latest date, the same effects 
 are produced by the same causes, let me add the following short 
 but convincing testimony from the most authentic source : 
 
 *' Mr. Poynder, the sub-sheriff of I^ondon, states, that he has 
 been so long in the habit of hearing criminals refer all their misery 
 to the habit of dram-drinking, that he has latterly ceased to ask 
 them the causes of their ruin ; nearly all the convicts for murder 
 with whom he had conversed, had acknowledged that they were 
 under the influence of spirits at the time they committed the 
 acts for which they were about to suffer. Many had assured him, 
 that they found it necessary, before they could commit crimes of 
 particular atrocity, to have recourse to dram-drinking as a stimulus 
 to fortify their minds to encounter any risk, and to proceed to all 
 lengths ; and he mentions the cases of several atrocious offenders, 
 whose depravity was by themselves attributed to, and was on in- 
 vestigation found to have originated in, such habits of intoxication." 
 
 I ask the House, as a body of intelligent English gentlemen, 
 as husbands and fathers, as legislators and guardians of the public 
 weal, ought such a state of things as this to continue ? I ask, 
 whether the picture I have drawn is not literally and painfully 
 true ? And I equally ask, whether the time is not fully come, to 
 demand that we should apply a remedy ? It will be said, perhaps, 
 by some, though I think there will be few, that the evil is beyond
 
 32 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 the province of legislation, and can only be met by prospective 
 measures of education, moral training, religious instruction, and 
 other aids of this description. Sir, 1 am far from undervaluing 
 these powerful and benign agencies in human improvement. But 
 the evil requires present checks, as well as remedies more remote. 
 If the public health is injured — nay, if it is even threatened with 
 only a probable injury, do we not estabhsh quarantines, and inter- 
 dict commercial intercourse, at immense sacrifices of property, be- 
 cause we will not endanger the life of even one of the King's sub- 
 jects, by permitting the crew to land, or the cargo to touch the 
 shore, till every ground of apprehension has been removed ? If 
 the cholera should appear in any of our towns, notwithstanding 
 every precaution suggested by individual prudence and self-pre- 
 servation, do we not compel certain reoulations of cleanliness and 
 police.^ — do we not arm medical boards with power to impose qua- 
 rantine, and to guard the public health, at whatever sacrifice of 
 other objects, if the removal of these be necessary to attain their 
 end.'' What, then, is this, but legislative interference with the free- 
 dom of intercourse and the freedom of trade ? It is as much our 
 duty to maintain the public peace as to save the public health, and, 
 therefore, we have a yeomanry, a militia, a body of watchmen and 
 police. We recognise the propriety of preserving the public 
 morals, by the institution of our courts of law, by the suppression 
 of gambling-houses and brothels, the prevention of prize-fights, 
 and the apprehension and punishment of pickpockets and thieves ; 
 and in doing all this, we but do our duty. If, then, Drunkenness 
 be equally injurious to the public health, destructive of the public 
 peace, and dangerous to the public morals of the community — and 
 who will venture to deny that all these effects are produced by it .^ 
 — why should it not be equally subjected to legislative interference 
 and checked by legislative control ? Drunkenness is in itself a 
 crime, as much so as adultery, or lying, or theft. As such it is 
 denounced by religion, in terms which no man can misunderstand ; 
 and the drunkard is especially declared to be unworthy of inherit- 
 ing the kingdom of God. But, in addition to its being a crime in 
 itself, it is either the parent and source, or the most powerful 
 auxiliary, of almost every other crime that exists. In proof of 
 this assertion, let me adduce the following testimony from the last 
 lleport of that admirable institution, " The British and Foreign 
 Temperance Society,'' of which the Bishop of London is the pre-
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 33 
 
 sident, and of which many eminent men of all professions are now 
 become members. That Report says, 
 
 *' The quantity of spirits which pay duty for home consump- 
 tion in this kingdom, has more than doubled within a few past 
 years. According to the Parliamentary returns, made in 1833, it 
 amounted to 25,982,494 gallons at proof, which, with the addition 
 of one-sixth for the reduction of strength by retailers, amounted 
 to .£'13,429,331 5s. lOd.; and this sum does not include any 
 part of the many millions of gallons known to be illicitly distilled, 
 or imported without paying duty. 
 
 ** Four-fifths of all the crimes in our country have been esti- 
 mated to be committed under the excitement of liquor. During 
 the year 1833, no less than 29,880 persons were taken into cus- 
 tody by the metropolitan police for Drunkenness alone, not includ- 
 ing any of the numerous cases in which assaults or more serious 
 offences have been committed under the influence of drinking ; and 
 it should be observed, that this statement relates only to the 
 suburbs of London, without any calculation for the thousands of 
 cases which occurred in the city itself. 
 
 *' Our parochial expenses, which have been nearly doubled since 
 1815, are principally occasioned by excessive drinking. Of 143 
 inmates of a London parish-workhouse, 105 have been reduced to 
 that state by intemperance; and the small remainder comprises all 
 blind, epileptic, and idiotic, as well as all the aged poor, some of 
 whom would also drink to intoxication if opportunity offered. 
 
 " More than one-half of the madness in our country appears to 
 be occasioned by drinking. Of 495 patients admitted in four 
 years into a lunatic asylum at Liverpool, 257 ^^re known to have 
 lost their reason by this vice. 
 
 " The poor's rate and county-rate, for England and Wales only, 
 amount to ^£'8,000,000. The proportion of this expenditure, 
 occasioned by drinking, may be most safely estimated at two- 
 thirds, say £5,333,333 ; which, added to the cost of spirits alone, 
 £13,429,331, gives the sum expended by this nation, in the last 
 five years, on these two objects only, at ^£'93,813,321 ; amounting, 
 in only twenty years, to three hundred and seventy-five million 
 pounds sterling ; without including any computation for the enor- 
 mous sums consumed in the use of wine and beer, the expenses 
 of prosecutions, the injury done to our foreign trade, the loss of 
 
 D
 
 34 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 shipping, and the notorious destruction of property in various other 
 ways." 
 
 Are these evils of sufficient magnitude to demand legislative 
 interference, or are they not ? I hear every one instinctively answer, 
 Yes ! And after the recent admission in this House, that the 
 smaller evils of the beer-shop required a legislative remedy, it is 
 impossible that the same assembly can refuse its assent to the pro- 
 position that the greater evil of the gin-palace requires equal cor- 
 rection and cure. It is not, Sir, I am well aware, a very popular 
 topic to quote America as an example in this House ; but as the 
 conduct of her legislators in this respect arises in no degree from 
 their republican principles, it may be cited without alarming any 
 political opponent, and will be approved, I think, on all sides, by 
 the moralist and Christian at least. My chief reason for doing so, 
 is, however, to show that a Government can do much, even to 
 improve the public morals, by its judicious interference ; and that, 
 too, without the slightest violation of rational liberty, or without 
 risking popular dissatisfaction. 
 
 Public opinion having been strongly awakened to the evils of 
 intemperance in America, private societies were first formed for 
 preventing, as far as their influence could effect it, the further 
 spread of this evil ; and when they had acquired a strength in the 
 country, by the niunber and respectability of their members, the 
 Legislature voluntarily came forward to second their efforts by 
 their powerful aid. The first step taken by the American govern- 
 ment was to issue the following order, which was dated from the 
 War Department of the Army, November 2, 1832 : — 
 
 " Hereafter no ardent spirits will be issued to the troops of the 
 United States ; but sugar, coffee, and rice shall be substituted 
 instead. No ardent spirits will be allowed to be introduced into 
 any fort, camp, or garrison of the United States, nor sold by any 
 sutler to the troops, nor will any permit be granted for the pur- 
 chase of ardent spirits." 
 
 About the same period, the Secretary of the Navy was in- 
 structed to select one of the ships of war, for the purpose of trying 
 the experiment of abolishing the use of spirits by the seamen; 
 which succeeded so well, and was so soon adopted by the mercan- 
 tile marine, that at the present moment there are no less than 'JOO 
 American vessels sailing, without a single gallon of ardent spirits
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 35 
 
 on board, and this too, to all parts of the world, amid the icy seas 
 of the arctic and antarctic circles, and in the burning regions of 
 the torrid zone. One of the most striking proofs that could be 
 adduced perhaps, of the acknowledged value of this abandonment 
 of the use of spirituous drinks at sea, is to be found in the fact, 
 that these American vessel? find freights, from a public confidence 
 in their greater safety, when English ones cannot obtain them at 
 all ; and but recently, when the eminent house of Baring, Brothers, 
 and Company, of London, wrote to their agent in Amsterdam, to 
 know how it was that freights were not obtainable for their vessels, 
 the reply returned by the agent was, that there were American 
 ships in port, in which the captain, officers, and crew, alike 
 abstained from the use of ardent spirits ; and that till these were 
 all supplied with freights, no English ship would be engaged. 
 Still more recently, and as a consequence, no doubt of this com- 
 munication, the same distinguished merchants have lately launched 
 a noble vessel in the river Thames, destined for the newly-opened 
 trade to China, which is to take no ardent spirits for the use of 
 any one on board, except a small quantity in the medicine chest, 
 as arsenic or laudanum, or any other poisonous drug, to be ad- 
 ministered by the skilful hand of the surgeon ; and the public 
 opinion in favour of the wisdom and safety of such a step, is abun- 
 dantly expressed by the simple fact, that the insurance upon her 
 voyage has been effected at 5 per cent, premium, instead of 6, paid 
 by vessels taking spirits ; and considering the risks incurred by 
 the possible drunkenness of any of the officers or men at sea, and 
 the risk of fires from the same cause, the difference in the premium 
 is fully justified by the diminished danger of the case. [Hear.) 
 
 Let no one imagine, that discontent among the seamen would be 
 the probable result of such an arrangement. The most experi- 
 enced of our naval commanders know well that drinking is the 
 chief cause of all the disobedience and discontent ever manifested 
 at sea. The excellent Captain Brenton, of His Majesty's navy, 
 who takes so deep an interest in the improvement of the service, 
 has again and again declared, that if ardent spirits were withheld, 
 flogging would never be necessary ; and the gallant Captain Ross 
 has proved, by the good health, and perfect discipline of his 
 intrepid little band, who were buried amidst the polar snows for 
 many months, without a single drop of ardent spirits, that it is 
 neither necessary to health nor contentment : but comparing their 
 
 d2
 
 36 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 own condition with that of other crews, in far less perilous situa- 
 tions, they have good grounds for concluding that ardent spirits 
 are detrimental to both. 
 
 Nor is it in the navy only that the absence of ardent spirits 
 leads to improved discipHne, and its use produces insubordination; 
 as the testimony of Mr. Marshall, the Army Physician, whose 
 authority I quoted before, will show. He says, 
 
 " Military discipline, in all its branches, becomes deeply affected 
 by habits of intemperance. To the generally prevailing vice of 
 drinking are to be attributed almost every misdemeanour and crime 
 committed by British soldiers in India. The catalogue of these, 
 unhappily, is not a scanty one ; for, by rapid steps, first from petty, 
 and then more serious, neglects and inattentions, slovenliness at, 
 and absence from, parades, follow disobedience of orders, riots and 
 quarrels in barracks, absence from guards and other duties, affrays 
 with the natives, theft, and selling of their own and their com- 
 rades' necessaries, robberies, abusive language, and violence to 
 non-commissioned officers, insolence to officers: and, last of all, 
 desertion, mutiny and murder may be traced to this source. This 
 frightful picture is not exaggerated. I have seen thirty-two 
 punished men in a regimental hospital at one time. Perhaps not 
 not a single individual of that number suffered for a crime which 
 was not a direct or indirect consequence of the immoderate use of 
 spirits. I recollect attending at the punishment of seven men of the 
 same regiment, who received among them 4200 lashes. They had 
 been all tried for crimes arising from intemperance." 
 
 The Duke of Wellington, in the Regimental Orders issued to 
 the Grenadier Guards, in October of the last year, 1833, dwells 
 at large on the fact of increased crime in the Army resulting from in- 
 creased drunkenness ; and attributes all the breaches of discipline and 
 other offences principally to this cause : a fact also which has been 
 tacitly admitted by the Secretary at War, who recently expressed 
 his apprehension at the abolition of military flogging, because 
 insubordination and crime had latterly increased in the British 
 army. The cause of that increase was clearly seen by the Duke 
 of Wellington, as arising from increased drunkenness ; and this 
 increased drunkenness arose from those increased facilities created 
 by the gin-shops, staring the passenger in the face at every step of 
 his way through almost every part of the great thoroughfares of 
 the metropolis.
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 37 
 
 Passing from the American army, navy, and mercantile marine, 
 we find that the Legislature has not been indifferent to the subject 
 in the interior towns. In the state of Vermont, an animated 
 debate occurred on the question, whether the corporations of the 
 towns in that state should have the power to grant any licences at 
 all for the sale of ardent spirits : and the result of the discussion 
 was, a withholding of that rigiit, on the ground that ardent 
 spirits were a deadly poison ; a sentiment already quoted from Sir 
 Astley Cooper, who, for that reason, would never permit any to be 
 kept in his house ; and that therefore the state ought not to sanc- 
 tion, by their licence, any traffic in it at all, except as other 
 poisons, under the care of a discreet and prudent dealer in medi- 
 cines. The state of Ohio soon after imitated this example. In 
 the state of New York the towns have been empowered, by an 
 annual meeting of the inhabitants, to determine, by a majority of 
 householders"* votes, whether any, and how many retailers of spiri- 
 tuous liquors, shall be licensed in their respective communities. 
 In the whole county of Plymouth, in the state of PJassachusetts, 
 where there are 40,000 inhabitants, not a single person is now 
 licensed to sell spirits. In the month of February, 1833, a society 
 was formed, composed entirely of members of the National Con- 
 gress, and officers of the public service, civil, naval, and military, 
 for the progressive abolition of the use and sale of ardent spirits ; 
 so as to give to this object all the weight of the highest Govern- 
 ment influence. Their first meeting was held in the Senate Cham- 
 ber — the Honourable William Watkins, one of the members of 
 the Senate, being called to the chair, and the Honourable Walter 
 Lowrie, the Secretary to the Senate, acting as secretary to the 
 society thus formed. The House of Representatives entered as 
 cordially into this association as the House of Assembly, and the 
 local legislatures of the several states have almost wholly followed 
 their example. The result of all this united power of public 
 opinion, and Government authority and example, cordially operat- 
 ing together, has been this : that in America, within the last few 
 years only, more than 2000 persons have voluntarily abandoned 
 the distillation of ardent spirits, and invested their capital in more 
 wholesome and useful pursuits; and upwards of 6000 persons 
 have abandoned the sale of ardent spirits, and converted their 
 houses and their stock in trade to better purposes. 
 
 Sir, these are facts, which speak so loudly, that they need no com- 
 mentator to expound their meaning. They show what the force of
 
 38 CAUSES AND EFFKCTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 public opinion has effected, in America, in enlisting the Legislature 
 to engage in the work of moral and social reform ; and they prove 
 how extensively that reform may be safely and usefully carried, 
 when a people and their rulers cordially co-operate together for 
 the accomplishment of one common end. I ask myself, then, has 
 public opinion yet expressed itself in England, with sufficient 
 power and sufficient intelligence, to deserve legislative aid ? Let 
 the answer be seen in the following extract from an official report : 
 
 " The first European Temperance Society was established in 
 1829, by the exertions of Mr. G. W. Carr, at New Ross, in the 
 south of Ireland ; and others were early formed in the north of 
 that island, and in Scotland. Their principles have been spread 
 with much zeal and perseverance, and with most cheering success, 
 among the manufacturing population of the north of England ; 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire alone, where the earliest efforts were 
 made, containing above 30,000 members. Above four hundred 
 Temperance Societies and Associations have been formed in 
 England, including the interesting islands of Guernsey, Jersey, 
 and Man ; the whole comprising, according to the latest returns, 
 more than 80,000 members. Scotland, under the direction of the 
 vigorous Committee of the Scottish Society, numbers about 400 
 Societies, and 54,000 members. In Ireland, notwithstanding 
 numerous disadvantages and difficulties, about 20,000 persons 
 have joined the standard of Temperance Societies." * 
 
 At the head of the great Metropolitan Society stands the name 
 of the Bishop of London ; followed by nine other prelates of the 
 Established Church, and eight members of the House of Peers. 
 Among the Vice-Presidents of the Society are six members of the 
 House of Commons, ten Admirals, four Generals, three Physicians, 
 and many more of the clerical, legal, and other liberal professions. 
 At their last Anniversary, held only a few days ago, the Bishop 
 of Winchester in the chair, not less 4000 persons were present, 
 who manifested the most intense interest in the proceedings. 
 Already have a great number of petitions been laid upon the table 
 of the Llouse during the present session only, signed by persons of 
 the highest respectability, praying the House to institute at least 
 an inquiry into the subject : so that by collecting and arranging 
 the evidence on this notoriously prevalent evil, a Committee might 
 be enabled to suggest for mature consideration, and if approved, 
 
 • These are now increasecl to 5,000,000 ! in 1846.
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 39 
 
 for ultimate adoption, such legislative measures as might to them 
 seem best calculated to arrest its future progress, and, if possible, 
 lessen its present amount. 
 
 Sir, it is for such a Committee that I now ask ; in order that the 
 Legislature, by giving its sanction to the inquiry which is proposed 
 as its first step, may strengthen that public opinion, which, though 
 already loudly expressed Dn this subject, will be more than doubled 
 in its force by the approbation of the senatorial voice. In that 
 Committee the various suggestions that may arise can be calmly 
 and patiently discussed. The House acceded to the motion of the 
 noble Marquis, the Member for Buckinghamshire (Lord Chandos), 
 during the last Session, for an inquiry into the operations of the 
 Beer Bill, with a view to ascertain whether any and what measures 
 could be devised for the better regulation of the beer-houses in 
 the rural districts : and upon the evidence so obtained, the hon. 
 member for Kent (Sir Edward KnatchbuU) has framed, and passed 
 through a second reading, supported by an immense majority, a 
 Bill for further restricting their privileges, and lessening the 
 amount of the evils they have produced. Will the House then 
 say, that though the sale and consumption of beer among the 
 thinly-scattered population of the agricultural districts is a fit and 
 proper subject for legislative inquiry and legislative restraint, 
 yet the sale and consumption of ardent spirits in the thickly- 
 peopled towns is too harmless to be disturbed ? This would indeed 
 be " straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel." But of such 
 an absurdity I will not believe the House to be capable. {Hear.) 
 
 The objection that is urged against any legislative interference 
 in such a matter as this, I have already partly anticipated and 
 answered, when I have shown that we interfere, and properly 
 so, to prevent, by legislative measures, the spread of disease, 
 poverty, and crime ; and if we believe Drunkenness to be injurious 
 to society as a powerful instrument in producing all these, we are 
 perfectly justified in interfering to stay the progress of its devas- 
 tating influence. The author of the inquiry, whom I quoted before, 
 has a passage, however, so appropriate to this subject, that I quote 
 it as strengthening greatly the argument in my favour. He says, 
 
 " We are aware, that there are many who may object to this 
 sjiecies of monopoly as a restriction on the freedom of trade ; some 
 who consider that the occupation of a publican should be as un- 
 fettered as that of a shoemaker, or a tailor, and that the man who
 
 40 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DUUNKENNESS. 
 
 has a desire for drink, and the money to pay for it, should have 
 every opportunity of getting drunk, if he has the misfortune to 
 wish it. But let it be recollected, that the very first law of society 
 is, that individuals shall not be permitted to do that, which, 
 although considered beneficial to themselves, may be injurious to 
 the community at large. The statute-book is full of restrictions 
 founded on this principle. No man can continue to work a factory 
 if it be injurious to the health of those around him. A butcher is 
 not permitted to expose for sale unsound meat. A baker is not 
 permitted to sell unwholesome bread, because it is held criminal 
 to place within the reach of any man that, the use of which is in- 
 jurious to him. No man is permitted to keep a public gaming- 
 house, because it is considered criminal even to tempt a man to 
 risk his property, or to provide him with the means of squandering 
 the substance of his family. Nor is any one permitted to have in- 
 delicate exhibitions, or to use other temptations to vice. Why 
 then should the sale of ardent spirits be unrestricted, when 
 their baneful influence on health and morals is acknowledged ? 
 And should it be considered less criminal to tempt a mechanic or 
 a labourer to squander his wages, and to destroy his morals and 
 his health, by the excessive use of spirits, than to do it by any 
 other means ?" 
 
 As it may be expected of me, however, that I should state more 
 specifically some of the few remedies that I should venture to 
 suggest to the Committee when granted, though their adoption 
 would of course depend on their subsequent approval by them 
 for their support, and by the House itself before any enactment 
 could give them the force of law, I will venture to enumerate the 
 principal ones. 
 
 J^irst — I should recommend the payment of all wages to be 
 made before ten o'clock in the morning of Saturday, instead of any 
 later period of that day, or even on Friday evening, because the 
 transition from the pay-table to the regular labour of the day, 
 instead of the entertainment of the evening, would in itself be a 
 powerful lessening of the temptation to drink. 
 
 Secondly — That workmen should never be paid at any pubhc- 
 house, or place where intoxicating drinks of any kuad were sold, 
 whether by their employer or any other person. 
 
 Third — To permit no new spirit shops to be established, or old 
 ones to have their Ucences renewed, but by the requisition of a
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DllUNKENNESS. 41 
 
 considerable number of householders residing within the immediate 
 vicinity of the shop itself, and even then only on large securities 
 for the good conduct of its keeper. 
 
 Fourth — To close all those that do exist, the entire day on 
 Sunday, and at an earlier hour than at present on other days ; and 
 otherwise so to regulate them as to combine the two objects of 
 giving great openness and publicity to their proceedings, and of 
 preventing any protracted stay of the visitors on the premises. 
 
 Fifth — To make it imperative on the police, or other officers 
 exercising the duty of guardians or watchmen during the day or 
 night, to apprehend and take to some appointed station for that 
 purpose, all persons found either in the spirit-shops, or in the 
 streets, in a state of intoxication, there to be confined for a limited 
 period, nor to be released until restored to sobriety. 
 
 The tendency of these restrictions would be to lessen the num- 
 ber of spirit-shops, and, consequently, the number of spirit- 
 drinkers ; and these I should consider the most effective of the 
 immediate checks. If there be any who think that lessening the 
 number and the force of the temptations to crime of any kind, 
 will not lessen the amount of crime committed, it would be in 
 vain to hope for their acquiescence in my views ; though, to be 
 consistent with themselves, they should remove all the restraints 
 of law and police on robbers, murderers, and incendiaries. It 
 has been well said, that there are effects which in their turn be- 
 come causes, and this is the case with the increased number of 
 spirit- shops: they are, perhaps, at first, the effects of an increased 
 desire for intoxicating drinks, but they soon become causes of 
 increasing the propensity they seek to gratify. Rival establish- 
 ments endeavour to outvie each other in the number and strength 
 of their allurements ; and thousands are every day seduced into 
 the vortex of drunkenness, who, but for these allurements and 
 temptations, would never have fallen victims to its destructive 
 power ; so that, every new licence granted by a Government to a 
 retailer of ardent spirits, is in reality a commission given to that 
 individual, by the supreme authority of the State, to use every 
 art and every stratagem to tempt others of his fellow-men to their 
 ruin ! {Hear, hear.) 
 
 And let it not for a moment be supposed that the lessening the 
 number of the spirit-shops, or the abatement of the consumption
 
 42 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 of ardent spirits, would be an invasion of the poor man's rights or 
 comforts, or would abridge his pleasures, or lessen his enjoyments. 
 Not to cite the evidence with which American official documents 
 abound, as to the large increase of happiness to the people who 
 had been reclaimed from spirit-drinking, by the diminution of 
 spirit- sliops, the cessation of distilleries, and the suspension of the 
 vast machinery of poverty, disease, and crime, I content myself 
 with citing a single passage from the well-known work of Mr. 
 Colquhoun, in his Treatise on the Police of London, the last 
 authority I shall quote. That careful and accurate observer of 
 the condition of the people in this metropolis says, at p. 328 of his 
 able work, — 
 
 "It is a curious and important fact, that during the period 
 when the distilleries were stopped, in 1796 and 1797» although 
 bread, and every necessary of life, was considerably higher than 
 during the preceding year, the poor, in that quarter of the town 
 where the chief part reside, were apparently more comfortable, 
 paid their rents more regularly, and were better fed, than at any 
 period for some years before, even although they had not the 
 benefit of the extensive charities which were distributed in 1795. 
 This can only be accounted for by their being denied the indul- 
 gence of gin, which had become, in a great measure, inaccessible 
 from its very high price. It may fairly be concluded, that the 
 money formerly spent in this imprudent manner, had been ap- 
 plied in the purchase of provisions, and other necessaries, to the 
 amount of some hundred thousand pounds. The effects of their 
 being deprived of this baneful liquor, was also evident in their 
 mure ordcrli/ conduct, rjuarrels and assaults %cere less frequent, 
 and they resorted seldomer to the pawnbrokers' shops ; and yet, 
 during the chief part of this period, bread was \5d. the quartern 
 loaf, and meat higher than the preceding year, particularly pork, 
 which arose in part from the stoppage of the distilleries, but 
 chiefly from the scarcity of grain." 
 
 The Chancellor of the Exchequer may, perhaps, feel some appre- 
 hension for the revenue at present derived from so prolific a source 
 as the consumption of ardent spirits, and he may fear to arrest the 
 torrent of drunkenness that desolates the land, lest pecuniary 
 defalcation to the Treasury should result. But let me calm the 
 anxieties of the noble lord on that score. I shall neither propose 
 to increase the duty suddenly and greatly, and so encourage
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DllUNKEMMESS. 43 
 
 smuggling ; nor lessen it in the slightest degree, and so encou- 
 rage consumption ; though I should be disposed to recommend a 
 reduction of the duties on malt, on light French wines, on tea, 
 coffee, and other comparatively wholesome beverages, to substitute 
 for the pernicious poison of spirits in every shape, the imposts on 
 which might be gradually heightened as the duties on the former 
 were progressively decreased. My object would be^ first, to pre- 
 vent any further increase to the number of houses now devoted to 
 this guilty and destructive traffic ; next, gradually to reduce the 
 number as well as the strength of the auxiliary temptations with 
 which they now abound ; and lastly, to put those that may remain 
 under such wholesome regulations, as shall at least abate, if not 
 wholly extirpate the disease and crime of which they are the pre- 
 sent dens. In addition to such present remedies as may be added 
 to meet the present evil, I shall be prepared to show that we 
 might greatly prevent its further spread, by establishing adult as 
 well as infant schools, aided by humble museums, and collections 
 of works of nature and of art, so exciting to rational curiosity, and 
 and so powerful in refining the tastes and feelings of the least 
 informed ; as well as by instituting instructive and entertaining 
 lectures on popular branches of knowledge, and encouraging the 
 establishment of parish libraries and district reading-rooms, pro- 
 vided with cheaper and more innocent refreshments than the 
 liquid poison now consumed ; so as to afford to the labouring popu- 
 lation that opportunity of social meeting, and cheap exhilaration, 
 which their daily toils entitle, as well as prepare them to enjoy ; 
 and afford them opportunities for the development of their mental 
 faculties and moral feelings, by that colhsion of opinion and inter- 
 change of sentiment, which, under sober exercise, is a fruitful 
 sourceof attachment and esteem, but which, under the influence 
 of intoxication, degenerates into bitterness and strife. 
 
 All this. Sir, I feel assured, if the Committee for which I ask 
 be granted, we may do, even for the present generation, who 
 deserve our earliest and most immediate care. And when we have 
 stayed the inundating flood, and prevented it from ingulphing 
 in its devouring waves, the strength and virtue of our land — then 
 may we turn to that rising generation whose tender years call 
 loudly for our paternal care, and providing for them a system of 
 national and universal instruction, — teach them that it is their 
 interest to be sober, industrious, and well-in formed, leaving them,
 
 44 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DllUNKENNESS. 
 
 prepared with the elements of knowledge at least, to work out this 
 problem for themselves, and to enjoy its demonstration in their 
 own improved condition and augmented happiness, produced by 
 the national tuition wisely and well apphed. From such a state 
 of renovated health in the now diseased portion of society, what 
 wealth might we not anticipate ? The Exchequer, instead of 
 being fed on the one hand, as it now is, by a revenue of 4 or 
 5 millions, from the consumption of intoxicating drinks, and 
 drained on the other of 15 or 20 millions for our poor-rates, and 
 hospitals, and jails, and hulks, and armies, and police, would be 
 receiving from the consumption of more wholesome and nutritious 
 articles, and from the profits of productive industry, now utterly lost 
 and cast away, a revenue of 15 or 20 millions on the one hand, and 
 on the other be drained of 4 or 5 miUions only, for the mainte- 
 nance of an army of schoolmasters ; an ordnance department of 
 books and materials of instruction to assist the conquests of know- 
 ledge over ignorance. These, Sir, are but a portion of the 
 advantages which anticipation shadows forth in the future, if we 
 have but the courage and the virtue to reclaim our unhappy coun- 
 trymen from the two debasing influences which now weigh them 
 down — ignorance and demoralization. And if we believe that the 
 Supreme Being, whose blessing we invoke on every occasion of 
 our assembhng in this House to pursue the solemn duty of legisla- 
 tive improvement, does really hear our prayers, and regard our 
 actions with pleasure or disapprobation, let us be assured that the 
 most acceptable, because the most effective manner in which we 
 can evince our gratitude to Him for the blessings of health, in- 
 struction, and happiness which we enjoy, is to extend those bless- 
 ings to the greatest number of our fellow-beings, and spread the 
 sunshine of comfort, in which we ourselves are permitted to bask, 
 over those who are now buried in the chilly gloom and deadly 
 darkness of ignorance and intemperance combined. 
 
 Believing, therefore, that Parliamentary investigation and legis- 
 lative measures founded thereon may greatly accelerate the accom- 
 plishment of this desirable end, I beg leave. Sir, to move in the 
 words of the original resolution, 
 
 " That a Select Committee be appointed, to inquire into the 
 extent, causes, and consequences of the prevailing vice of intoxica- 
 tion among the labouring classes of the United Kingdom, in order
 
 CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 45 
 
 to ascertain whether any legislative measures can be devised to 
 prevent the further spread of so great a national evil." 
 
 The motion was opposed by Lord Althorp, on the part of the 
 Government, and several others; but, on a division, after Mr. 
 Buckingham's reply to the various objections that were urged, it 
 was carried against the Government, by 64 against 47 ; the un- 
 expected majority being received with loud cheers ; and the follow- 
 ing Committee, in which almost every part of Great Britain and 
 Ireland was represented, was appointed : — 
 
 J. S. Buckingham, Sheffield, Chairman 
 
 Lord Althorp, Chancellor of Exchequer 
 
 Sir Robert Peel, Bart, Tamworth 
 
 Alexander Baring, Hampshire 
 
 Colonel Williams, Askton 
 
 Sir George Sinclair, Bart., Caithness 
 
 Emerson Tennant, Belfast 
 
 Philip Howard, Carlisle 
 
 Sir George Strickland, Bart., Yorkshire 
 
 Joseph Brotherton, Salford 
 
 Sir Robert Bateson, Bart., Londonderry 
 
 J. P. Plimiptre, Kent 
 
 Henry Halford, Leicestershire 
 
 Admiral Fleming, Greenwich 
 
 Daniel Gaskell, Wakefield 
 
 Sir Edward Knatchbull, Bart., Kent 
 
 W. F. Finn, Kilkenny 
 
 J. H. Lloyd, Stockport 
 
 Benjamin Hawes, Lambeth 
 
 Mr. Alderman Wood, London 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Lefroy, Dublin 
 
 J. Ewing, Glasgmo 
 
 Lord Sandon, Liverpool 
 
 Mark Philips, Manchester 
 
 Sir Charles Burrell, Bart., Sussex 
 
 Andrew Johnston, Cupar, Scotland 
 
 John Fenton, Rochdale 
 
 Hall Dare, Essex 
 
 Ivatt Briscoe, Surrey 
 
 Joseph Pease, Durham 
 
 Thomas Marsland, Stockport 
 
 Edward C. Lister, Bradford 
 
 Edward Baines, Leeds 
 
 E. Cayley, Yorkshire 
 
 Frederick Shaw, Dublin University 
 
 B. L. Lester, Poole 
 
 Sir John Maxwell, Baxt.,- Lanarkshire 
 
 Sir Andrew Agnew, Bart., Wigton 
 
 The List of Witnesses is given in the next page, and will be found 
 to embrace men of various ranks, professions, and localities, so that 
 their experience was gathered over an extensive range of countries and 
 occupations ; and on the Evidence elicited from them, after many days 
 patient examination, extending from the 9th of June to the 28th of 
 July, both inclusive, the following Report was agreed to by the Com- 
 mittee, and printed among the Records, by a Vote of the House of 
 Commons.
 
 LIST OF WITNESSES. 
 
 Arnold, Lieutenant, lloyiil Navy, serving in many Climates 
 
 Bagshaw, Rev. C. F., Chaplain of Salford Gaol, Lancaster 
 
 Braidley, Benjamin, Boroughreeve of Manchester 
 
 Brenton, Pelham, Capt. R. N., Founder of the Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents 
 
 Brooke, David, Cloth- Dresser, Leeds 
 
 Brougiiton, Robert E., Police Magistrate of London 
 
 Campbell, Alexander, Sheriff-Substitute of Renfrewshire 
 
 Capper, Sam., Secretary of the British and Foreign Temperance Society, London 
 
 Carr, George Whitmore, Founder of the First Temperance Society in Ireland 
 
 Chadwick, Edwin, Secretary to the Poor-Law Commissioners 
 
 Chambers, Robert Joseph, Police Magistrate of London 
 
 Cheyne, John, Doctor of Medicine, late Physician-General in Ireland 
 
 Collins, William, Founder of Temperance Societies in Scotland 
 
 Davis, Thomas Hart, Captain in the Army 
 
 Dous, Robert Greig, Doctor of Medicine, in England and India 
 
 DtJNLOP, John, Author of a Work on the Drinking Usages of England and Scotland 
 
 Ellis, Abraham, Working-Weaver, of Spitalfields 
 
 Ellis, M.D., Resident Physician at the Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum 
 
 Edgar, Rev. John, D.D., Founder of the First Temperance Society in Belfast 
 
 EsTE, Michael Lambton, Surgeon to the First Regiment of Life Guards 
 
 Farke, John R., MD., Practising Physician in London, Charterhouse Square 
 
 Fearon, H. B., Keeper of one of the largest Gin-Shops in London, on Holborn Hill 
 
 Finch, John, Proprietor and Manager of large Iron-Works, at Liverpool 
 
 Fox, George Townshend, Magistrate of the County of Durham 
 
 Gordon, M.D., Physician to the London Hospital 
 
 Gell, John Henry, Coroner for Westminster 
 
 Hartley, Thomas, Honorary Secretary to the Temperance Society of London 
 
 HiNTON, John, Eating-House Keeper, London 
 
 Herepath, Samuel, Working-Hatter, London 
 
 LivESEY, Joseph, Founder of the First Total Abstinence Society at Preston 
 
 Lister, Ellis Cunliffe, M.P. for Bradford, extensive Manufacturer 
 
 Moore, LIark, Agent and ]\Iissionary of the London Temperance Society 
 
 Murray, William, Iron and Coal Llaster, Glasgow 
 
 Ousby, Rev. Robert, Curate of Kirton Lindsey, Lincoln 
 
 Poynder, John, one of the Dkectors of the Middlesex Hospital, London 
 
 Place, Francis, one of the leading men among the Electors of Westminster 
 
 PuRNELL, Charles, Dock-Master, and Director of Sliipping from Liverpool 
 
 Roberts, Thomas, Mahogany Broker, London 
 
 Roberts, Owen Owen, Surgeon, Carnarvon, North Wales 
 
 Rowan, Charles, Colonel in the Army, and Head of the Metropolitan Police 
 
 RuELL, Rev. David, Chaplain of the New Prison, Clerkenwell 
 
 SisiPsoN, John, Insurance Broker and General Agent, London 
 
 Scoresby, the Rev. William, one of the early Navigators of the Arctic Seas. 
 
 Stanhope, the Hon. Leicester, Colonel in the King's Army, serving in India 
 
 Saunders, Charles, Working-Coal Whipper in the River Thames, London 
 
 Turner, James, Operative, Dresser of Cotton Yarn, Manchester 
 
 TwELLS, John, Esq., Highbury, Magistrate of the County of Jliddlesex 
 
 White, Robert Guest, Army Accoutrement Maker, Dublin 
 
 White, William Archibald Armstrong, Police Magistrate of London 
 
 Wilson, George, Grocer, Overseer of the Poor, Westminster
 
 47 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 
 
 THE SELECT COMMITTEE appointed to inquire into the 
 Extent, Causes, and Consequences of the prevailing vice 
 of Intoxication among the Labouring Classes of the 
 United Kingdom, in order to ascertain whether any Legisla- 
 tive Measures can be devised to prevent the further spread of 
 so great a National Evil, and to whom the several Petitions 
 presented to the House were referred, and who were empowered 
 to report the Minutes of Evidence taken before them from 
 time to time : — Have, pursuant to the Order of the House, 
 proceeded to examine a great number and variety of witnesses 
 from different parts of the United Kingdom, and in various 
 ranks and professions of life, and have agreed to the following 
 REPORT : 
 
 I. Extent of the Evil. 
 
 1. That it appears to your Committee, from the evidence taken 
 before them, that the vice of intoxication has been for some years 
 past on the decline in the higher and middle ranks of society ; but 
 has increased within the same period among the labouring classes, 
 and exists at present to a very great extent in the population of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, and in the seaport and manufac- 
 turing towns, as well as in the agricultural districts, including in 
 its victims, men, women, and even children. 
 
 II. Remote Causes of its Production. 
 
 2. That among the remote causes of the intemperance which 
 still prevails, may be enumerated, the influence of example set by 
 the upper classes of society, when habits of intoxication were more 
 frequent in such ranks than among their inferiors in station ; and 
 the many customs and courtesies still retained from a remote 
 ancestry of mingling the gift or use of intoxicating drinks with 
 almost every important event in life, such as the celebration of 
 baptisms, marriages, and funerals, anniversaries, holidays, and fes- 
 tivities, as well as in the daily interchange of convivial entertain- 
 ments, and even in the commercial transactions of purchase and 
 sale.
 
 48 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 
 
 III. Immediate Causes of its Extension. 
 
 3. That among the immediate causes of the increased prevalence 
 of this vice among the humbler classes of society may be men- 
 tioned, the increased number and force of the temptations placed 
 in their daily path, by the additional establishment of places at 
 •which intoxicating drinks are sold, the number now being consi- 
 dered, from the average of several districts in England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland, to be not less than one such place to about every 
 twenty families throughout the United Kingdom ; and the increased 
 facilities of obtaining the dangerous gratification of the moment 
 which these afford, by the reduction in the duty on legally distilled 
 spirits ; by the reduction in the price, occasioned by admixtures 
 with this of illegally distilled spirits ; by the additional allurements 
 presented by every new competitor who seeks to present more 
 powerful attraction to visitors ; and by the very small sums, less 
 even than a penny, for vi^hich drams of intoxicating drinks can now 
 be procured. 
 
 IV. Consequences to Individual Character. 
 
 4. That the consequences of the vice of intoxication among the 
 humbler classes, and the prevalence of intemperate habits, and 
 pernicious customs encouraging such habits, among the middle and 
 higher ranks, are so many and so fearful to contemplate, that it is 
 as difficult as it is painful to enumerate even the outlines of them; 
 and to pursue them in all their melancholy and fatal details would 
 require a volume. 
 
 5. That the following are only a few of the evils directly spring- 
 ing from this baneful source : 
 
 6. Destruction of health; disease in every form and shape; 
 premature decrepitude in the old ; stunted growth and general 
 debility and decay in the young ; loss of life by paroxysms, apo- 
 plexies, drownings, burnings, and accidents of various kinds; 
 delirium tremens, one of the most awful afflictions of humanity; 
 paralysis, idiotcy, madness, and violent death, as proved by numer- 
 ous medical witnesses, who have made this the subject of their 
 long and careful investigation. 
 
 7. Destruction of mental capacity and vigour, and extinction of 
 aptitude for learning, as well as of disposition for practising any 
 useful art or industrious occupation.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 49 
 
 8. Irritation of all the worst passions of the heart : hatred, anger, 
 revenge ; with a brutalization of disposition that breaks asunder 
 and destroys the most endearing bonds of nature and society. 
 
 9. Extinction of all moral and religious principle; disregard of 
 truth, indifference to education, violation of chastity, insensibility 
 to shame, and indescribable-degradation ; as proved by clergymen, 
 magistrates, overseers, teachers, and others, examined by your 
 Committee on all these points. 
 
 V. Consequences to National Welfare. 
 
 10. That in a national point of view, as affecting the wealth, 
 resources, strength, honour, and prosperity of the country, the 
 consequences of intoxication and intemperate habits among the 
 people, are as destructive of the general welfare of a community 
 as they are fatal to the happiness of individuals. Among others, 
 the following evils may be distinctly traced : 
 
 11. The destruction of an immense amount of wholesome and 
 nutritious grain, given by a bountiful Providence for the food of 
 man, which is now converted by distillation into a poison ; the 
 highest medical authorities, examined in great numbers before your 
 Committee being uniform in their testimony that ardent spirits are 
 absolutely poisonous to the human constitution; that in no case 
 whatever are they necessary, or even useful, to persons in health ; 
 that they are always, in every case and to the smallest extent, 
 deleterious, pernicious, or destructive, according to the proportions 
 in which they may be taken into the system ; so that not only is 
 an immense amount of human food destroyed, whilst thousands are 
 inadequately fed, but this food is destroyed in such a manner as to 
 injure greatly the agricultural producers themselves, for whose 
 grain, but for this perverted and mistaken use of it, there would be 
 more than twice the present demand, for the use of the now 
 scantily fed people, who would then have healthy appetites to 
 consume, and improved means to purchase nutriment for themselves 
 and children, in grain, as well as in all the other varied produc- 
 tions of the earth. 
 
 12. The loss of productive labour in every department of occu- 
 pation, to the extent of at least one day in six throughout the 
 kingdom (as testified by witnesses engaged in various manufac- 
 turing operations), by which the wealth of the country, created as it
 
 50 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 
 
 is chiefly by labour, is retarded or suppressed to the extent of one 
 million out of every six that is produced ; to say nothing of the 
 constant derangement, imperfection and destruction in every 
 agricultural and manufacturing process, occasioned by the intem- 
 perance, and consequent unskilfulness, inattention, and neglect of 
 those affected by intoxication, producing great injury in our 
 domestic and foreign trade. 
 
 13. The extensive loss of property by sea, from shipwrecks, 
 founderings, fires, and innumerable other accidents, many of which, 
 according to the evidence of the most experienced shipowners, 
 nautical men and others, examined by your Committee, are clearly 
 traceable to drunkenness in some of the parties employed in the 
 navigation and charge of such vessels, whose vigilance, had they 
 been sober, would have been sufficient safeguaids against their 
 occurrence. 
 
 14. The comparative inefficiency of the Navy and Army, in both 
 of which J according to the testimony of eminent naval and military 
 officers examined by your Committee, Intemperance is a canker- 
 worm that eats away its strength and its discipline to the very core; 
 it being proved beyond all question, that one-sixth of the effective 
 strength of the navy, and a much greater proportion of the army, 
 is as much destroyed as if the men were slain in battle, by that 
 most powerful ally of death — intoxicating drinks ; and that the 
 greater number of accidents occurring in both branches of the 
 service, seven-eighths of the sickness, invalidings and discharg;es 
 for incapacity, 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, 
 
 15. The injury to national reputation abroad, by the intempe- 
 rate habits of our soldiers and seamen, the excesses committed by 
 them in foreign ports, where they form the largest class of British 
 subjects usually met with, and from whose conduct erroneous and 
 injurious impressions are formed of the character of the nation to 
 which they belong, as testified by the evidence of shipmasters, 
 merchants, and others given before your Committee, as well as the 
 direct and immediate contaminatioii and injury of sober races of 
 men in new and uncivilized countries visited, for the first time, by 
 our ships, many of which leave no traces of their visit behind them 
 but the vice of drunkenness, first introduced there by their crews.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 51 
 
 16. The diminution of the physical power and longevity of a 
 large portion of the British population, by the destructive effects 
 already described, as produced on individuals, the loss of personal 
 beauty, the decline of health, and the progressive decay of the 
 bodily and mental powers; which evils are accumulative in the 
 amount of injury they inflict, as intemperate parents, according to 
 high medical testimony, give a taint to their offspring, even before 
 its birth, and the poisonous stream of ardent spirits is conveyed 
 through the milk of the mother to the infant at the breast ; so that 
 the fountain of life, through which nature supplies that pure and 
 healthy nutriment of infancy, is poisoned at its very source, and a 
 diseased and vitiated appetite is thus created, which grows with its 
 growth, and strengthens with its increasing weakness and decay. 
 
 17. The increase of pauperism, in its most fearful shape, divested 
 of that sense of shame which would disdain to receive relief whilst 
 honest industry could secure the humblest independence, and 
 associated with a disregard of consequences, and a recklessness of 
 all obligations, domestic or social, which, according to the evidence 
 of witnesses from the agricultural districts examined by your Com- 
 mittee, has converted the pauper, from a grateful receiver of aid ' 
 under unavoidable calamity (which was once the general character 
 of those receiving parish relief), to an idle and disorderly clamourer 
 for the right of being sustained by the industry of others, or a pro- 
 fligate and licentious parent of illegitimate offspring. 
 
 18. The spread of crime in every shape and form, from theft, 
 fraud, and prostitution in the young, to burnings, robberies, and 
 more hardened offences in the old ; by which the gaols and prisons, 
 the hulks and convict transports are filled with inmates ; and an 
 enormous mass of human beings, who, under sober habits and 
 moral training, would be sources of wealth and strength to the 
 country, are transformed, chiefly through the remote or immediate 
 influence of intoxicating drinks, into excrescences of corruption and 
 weakness, which must be cut off' and cast away from the commu- 
 nity to prevent the gangrenous contamination of its whole frame, 
 leaving the body itself in a constant state of that inflammatory 
 excitement, which always produces exhaustion and weakness in 
 the end ; and thus causing the country to sacrifice every year a 
 larger portion of blood and treasure than the most destructive wars 
 occasion ; the innocent population thus made criminal, being, like 
 the grain subjected to distillation, converted from a wholesome 
 
 e2
 
 52 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 
 
 source of strength and prosperity, into a poisoned issue of weakness 
 and decay. 
 
 U). The i-etardation of all improvement, inventive or industrial, 
 civil or political, moral or religious ; the hindering of education, 
 the weakening of good example, and the creation of constant and 
 increasing difficulties in the propagation of the sound moraUty 
 and sublime truths of the gospel, both at home and abroad, accord- 
 ing to the testimony of teachers, pastors, and others examined by 
 your Committee : the sum expended in intoxicating drinks in the 
 city of Glasgow alono; being stated by one of the witnesses from 
 that neighbourhood to be nearly equal to the whole amount 
 expended on public institutions of charity and benevolence in the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 20. That the mere pecuniary loss to the nation, from the seve- 
 ral causes already enumerated, namely, the destruction of art 
 immense amount of grain subjected to distillation ; the abstraction 
 of productive labour from the community ; the property destroyed 
 by sea and land ; the diminished efficiency of the navy and army ; 
 the disease and deterioration of the physical and mental powers of 
 the population ; the increase of pauperism ; the spread of crime ; 
 and the retardation of improvement caused by the excessive use of 
 intoxicating drinks, may be fairly estimated at little short of fifty 
 millions sterling per annum. 
 
 VI. Remedies to be applied. 
 
 21. That the remedies to be applied to the cure of evils so 
 deeply rooted, so long established, so widely spread, and so strongly 
 supported by selfish indulgence, ignorance, prejudice, custom, and 
 pecuniary interests, are two-fold ; first legislative, and secondly 
 moral ; and these again divide themselves into immediate and 
 prospective. 
 
 22. That the right to exercise legislative interference for the 
 correction of any evil which affigcts the public weal, cannot be 
 questioned, without dissolving society into its primitive elements, 
 and going back from the combined and co-operative state of civili- 
 zation with all its wholesome and lawfully imposed restraints, to the 
 isolated and lawless condition of savage and solitary nature. 
 
 23. That the power to apply correction by legislative means, 
 cannot be doubted, without supposing the sober, the intelligent,
 
 PARLIAMKNTARY REPORT. 53 
 
 the just and the moral portion of the community unable to control 
 the excesses of the ignorant and disorderly, which would be to 
 declare our incapacity to maintain the first principles of Govern- 
 ment by ensuring the public safety. 
 
 24. That the sound policy of applying legislative power to direct, 
 restrain, or punish, as the cases may require, the vicious and con- 
 taminating propensities of the evil-disposed, cannot be disputed, 
 without invalidating the right of Government to protect the inno- 
 cent from the violence of the guilty, which would in effect declare 
 all government to be useless, and all lawful authority to be without 
 any intelligible object or end ; an admission that would undermine 
 the very first principles of society. 
 
 VII. Immediate Remedies, Legislative and Moral. 
 
 25. The remedies which appear to your Committee to be desir- 
 able and practicable to be put into immediate operation may be 
 thus enumerated . 
 
 26. The separation of the houses in which intoxicating drinks 
 are sold, into four distinct classes : 1st. Houses for the sale of beer 
 only — not to be consumed on the premises : 2d. Houses for the 
 sale of beer only — to be consumed on the premises, and in which 
 refreshments of food may also be obtained : 3d. Houses for the 
 sale of spirits only — not to be consumed on the premises : 4th. 
 Houses for the accommodation of strangers and travellers, where 
 bed and board may be obtained, and in which spirits, wine, and 
 beer, may all be sold. 
 
 27. The limiting the number of such houses, of each class, in 
 proportion to population in towns, and to distances and population 
 in country districts : the licences for each to be annual, and granted 
 by magistrates and municipal authorities rather than by the Excise; 
 to be chargeable with larger sums annually than are now paid for 
 them, especially for the sale of spirits ; and the keepers of such 
 houses to be subject to progressively increasing fines for disorderly 
 conduct, and forfeiture of licence and closing up of the houses for 
 repeated offences. 
 
 28. The closing of all such houses at earlier hours in the even- 
 ing than at present, and uniformly with each other, excepting only 
 in the last class of houses for travellers, which may be opened at 
 any hour for persons requiring food or beds in the dwelling.
 
 54 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 
 
 29. The first and second class of houses in which beer only is 
 sold, to be closed on the Sabbath-day, except for one hour in the 
 afternoon and one hour in the evening, to admit of families being 
 supplied with beer at those periods : the third class of houses where 
 spirits only are sold to be entirely closed during the whole of the 
 Sabbath-day ; and the fourth class, as inns or hotels, to be closed 
 to all visitors on that day, excepting only to travellers and inmates 
 of the dwelling. 
 
 30. The making all retail spirit-shops as open to public view as 
 other shops where wholesome provisions are sold, such as those of 
 the baker, the butcher, and the fishmonger, in order that the 
 interior of such spirit-shops may be seen from without, and be 
 constantly exposed to public inspection in every part. 
 
 31. The refusal of retail spirit licences to all but those who 
 \A ould enti^age to confine themselves exclusively to dealing in that 
 article : and consequently the entire separation, in England, Scot- 
 land, and Ireland, of the retail sale of spirits from groceries, pro- 
 visions, wine or beer, excepting only in the fourth class of houses, 
 as inns or hotels, for travellers and inmates or lodgers, as before 
 described. 
 
 32. The discontinuance of all issues of ardent spirits (except as 
 medicine, under the direction of the medical officers) to the navy 
 and army, on all stations, and to every other body of men 
 employed by or under the control of the Government, and the 
 substitution of other articles of wholesome nutriment and refresh- 
 ment instead. The abolition of all garrison and barrack canteens, 
 at home and abroad, and the substitution of some other and better 
 mode of fining up the leisure of men confined within military forts 
 and lines : the opinions of most of the military oflBcers examined on 
 this point by your Committee being, that the drinking in such 
 canteens is the most fertile source of all insubordination, crime, and 
 consequent punishment inflicted on the men. 
 
 33. The withholding from the ships employed in the merchant 
 service the drawback granted to them on foreign spirits, by which 
 they are now enabled to ship their supplies of that article at a 
 reduced scale of duty, and are thus induced to take on board a 
 greater quantity than is necessary, to the increased danger of the 
 property embarked, and to the injury of the crew. 
 
 34. The prohibition of the practice of paying the wages of work- 
 men at public-houses or any other place where intoxicating drinks 
 are sold.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 55 
 
 35. The providing for the payment of such wages to every indi- 
 vidual his exact amount, except when combined in families : so as 
 to render it unnecessary for men to frequent the public -houses, and 
 spend a portion of their earnings to obtain change. 
 
 36. The payment of wages at or before the breakfast hour in the 
 mornings of the principal warket-day in each town, to enable the 
 wives or other providers of workmen to lay out their earnings in 
 necessary provisions at an early period of the market, instead of 
 risking its dissipation at night in the public-house. 
 
 37. The prohibition of the meetings of all friendly societies, 
 sick clubs, money clubs, masonic lodges, or any other ])ermanent 
 as«;ociations of mutual benefit and relief at public-houses, or places 
 where intoxicating drinks are sold; as such institutions, when not 
 formed expressly for the benefit of such public-houses, and when 
 they are bondjide associations of mutual help in the time of need* 
 can, with far more economy and much greater efficacy, rent and 
 occupy for their periodical meetings equally appropriate rooms in 
 other places. 
 
 38. The estabUshment, by the joint aid of the Government and 
 the local authorities and residents on the spot, of public walks, and 
 gardens, or open spaces for athletic and healthy exercises in the 
 open air, in the immediate vicinity of every town, of an extent and 
 character adapted to its population ; and of district and parish 
 libraries, museums, and reading rooms, accessible at the lowest rate 
 of charge ; so as to admit of one or the other being visited in any 
 weather, and at any time ; with the rigid exclusion of all intoxi- 
 cating drinks of every kind from all such places, whether in the 
 open air or closed. 
 
 39. The reduction of the duty on tea, coffee, and sugar, and 
 all the healthy and unintoxicating articles of drink in ordinary use ; 
 so as to place within the reach of all classes the least injurious 
 beverages on much cheaper terms than the most destructive. 
 
 40. The encouragement of Temperance Societies in every town 
 and village of the kingdom, the only bond of association being a 
 voluntary engagement to abstain from the use of ardent spirits, as 
 a customary drink, and to discourage, by precept and example, all 
 habits of intemperance in themselves and others. 
 
 41. The diffusion of sound information as to the extensive evils 
 produced to individuals and to the State, by the use of any beverage
 
 yO PAKLIAMENTARY REPOUT. 
 
 that destroys the hcallh, cripples the industry, and poisons the 
 morals of is victims. 
 
 42. The institution of every subordinate auxiliary means of pro- 
 moting the reformation of all such usages, courtesies, habits, and 
 customs of the people, as lead to intemperate habits ; more espe- 
 cially the exclusion of ardent spirits from all places where large 
 numbers are congregated either for business or pleasure, and the 
 changing the current opinion of such spirits being wholesome and 
 beneficial (which the fiequent practice of our offering them to 
 those whom we wish to please or reward so constantly fosters and 
 and prolongs) into the opinion of their being a most pernicious 
 evil, which should on all occasions be avoided, as poisoner of the 
 health, the morals^ and the peace of society. 
 
 43. The removal of all taxes on knowledge, and the extending 
 every facility to the widest spread of useful information to the 
 humblest classes of the community. 
 
 44. A national system of education, which should ensure the 
 means of instruction to all ranks and classes of the people, and 
 which, in addition to the various branches of requisite and appro- 
 priate knowledge, should embrace, as an essential part of the in- 
 struction given by it to every child in the kingdom, accurate 
 information as to the poisonous and invariably deleterious nature 
 of ardent spirits, as an article of diet, in any form or shape; and 
 the inculcation of a sense of shame, at the crime of voluntary de- 
 stroying, or thoughtlessly obscuring that faculty of reasoning, and 
 that consciousness of responsibility, which chiefly distinguish man 
 from the brute, and which his Almighty Maker, Avhen he created 
 him in his own image, implanted in the human race to cultivate, 
 to improve, and to refine — and not to corrupt, to brutalize, and to 
 destroy. 
 
 VIII. Ultimate or Prospective Remedies. 
 
 45. The ultimate or prospective remedies which have been 
 strongly urged by several witnesses, and ^hich they think, when 
 public opinion shall be sufficiently awakened to the great national 
 importance of the subject, may be safely recommended, include the 
 following : — 
 
 46. The absolute prohibition of the importation from any foreign 
 country, or from our own colonies, of distilled spirits in any shape. 
 
 47. The equally absolute prohibition of all distillation of ardent
 
 « PARLIAMENTARY REPORT. 5'] 
 
 spirits from grain, the most important part of the food of man in 
 our own country. 
 
 48. The restriction of distillation from other materials, to the 
 purposes of the arts, manufactures, and medicine ; and the con- 
 fining the wholesale and retail dealing in such articles to chemists, 
 druggists, and dispensaries alone. 
 
 IX. Examples of other Countries. 
 
 49. Your Committee have, in the course of their investigations, 
 directed their inquiries as to the steps taken and effects produced 
 by legislative and by moral means, in America more especially, and 
 they have been gratified to learn the following facts : — 
 
 50. That in the American navy and army, the issue of spirits 
 by the Government has been discontinued, and nutritious articles 
 of equal value substituted, with benefit and contentment to all 
 parties. 
 
 51. That no less than 7OO vessels in the merchant service now 
 sail from different parts in America, and to all climates, arctic and 
 tropical, with no ardent spirits on board, excepting only a small 
 quantity in the medicine chest for occasional medicinal use. 
 
 52. That of the American ships entering the port of Liverpool, 
 nine out of every ten are navigated on what are denominated 
 Temperance principles, the captain, officers, and crew, agreeing to 
 abstain from the use of spirits, except as medicine, and no supply 
 beyond the very limited quantity used as such being taken for the 
 voyage. 
 
 53. That such ships obtain freights in preference to English 
 vessels not navigated on those principles, in consequence of the 
 public conviction of their greater safety, from the sobriety of those 
 on board. 
 
 54. That some English vessels have recently been fitted out and 
 sent to sea from London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Greenock, in 
 imitation of the Americans ; that they have been insured at a 
 lower rate of premium than that paid on other vessels not so ab- 
 staining from taking spirits on board ; and that experienced mer- 
 chants, shipowners, insurance brokers, and others, examined before 
 your Committee, express their conviction that such abatement in 
 the rate ol insurance in such ships is fully warranted by the actual 
 diminution of the risk of injury and loss.
 
 o8 PAllLIAMENTAKY REPORT. « 
 
 55. That in the metropolis of the United States, the highest 
 encouragement has been given to the promotion of Temperance 
 Societies; and from the conjoint efforts of pubHc and private in- 
 dividuals so great a reformation has been effected, that throughout 
 the Union, no less than two thousand persons have voluntarily 
 abandoned the distillation of ardent spirits, and vested then: capital 
 in other and more wholesome pursuits ; and upwards of six thou- 
 sand persons have abandoned the sale of ardent spirits, and em- 
 braced other and more useful occupations. 
 
 X. Concluding Suggestions. 
 
 56. Your Committee, deeply impressed with the long catalogue 
 of evils which they have endeavoured thus briefly and faintly to 
 describe, and feeling the strongest and most earnest desire to lessen 
 their immber and amount, humbly venture to suggest to the 
 House the importance of drawing the attention of His Majesty's 
 Government to the immediate introduction of such improvements 
 as your Committee have respectfully recommended in the navy 
 and army, and in the ships employed in the merchant service ; to 
 the causing such other ameliorations to be made in this respect, as 
 can be effected by their autliority, wherever that may exiend ; and 
 to the public declaration of their determination to introduce, early 
 in the ensuing Session, some general and comprehensive law, for 
 the progressive diminution and ultimate suppression of all the 
 existing facilities and means of intemperance, as the root and 
 parent of almost every other vice. 
 
 57. As your Committee are fully aware that one of the most 
 important elements in successful legislation is the obtaining the 
 full sanction and support of public opinion in favour of the laws, — 
 and as this is most powerful and most enduring when based on 
 careful investigation and accurate knowledge as the result, they 
 venture still further to recommend the most extensive circulation 
 during the recess, under the direct sanction of the Legislature, of 
 an abstract of the evidence obtained by this inquiry, in a cheap 
 and portable volume, as was done with the Poor Law Report, to 
 which it would form the best auxiliary; the national cost of in- 
 toxication and its consequences being ten-fold greater in amount 
 than that of the poor-rates, and pauperism itself being indeed 
 chiefly caused by habits of intemperance, of which it is but one 
 out of many melancholy and fatal results.
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 From the IVorld's Temperance Convention, held in London in the 
 mouth of Augnst, 1846, 
 
 TO THE MONAROIIS AND RULERS OF ALL NATIONS. 
 
 Deeply impressed witli the conviction, that it is in the power 
 of those whom the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe hath permitted 
 to exercise dominion among the nations of the earth, to increase 
 the happiness of the people over whom the rule is extended,— and 
 perceiving, that under every form of government established among 
 men, the leading object professed by each is a desire to lessen the 
 amount of human ill, and augment the sum of public good, by 
 whatever lawful and honourable means it may be accomplished, — 
 we venture to draw your attention to some of the prominent evils 
 that unhappily afflict a large portion of the human race, and to ask 
 your beneficent and powerful aid towards eJBTecting their removal. 
 
 Through every period of history, sacred and profane, the use of 
 stimulating drinks has more or less prevailed, and in all countries, 
 and at all times, have been found to be productive of a great 
 amount of injury to the individuals and communities by whom 
 they were most freely consumed. The Scriptures of the Old and 
 of the New Testament equally agree in describing the intoxication 
 produced by them as an evil of the greatest magnitude, and in 
 warning mankind against their pernicious effects. And the history 
 of all nations, from the downfall of the great empires of Assyria 
 and Babylon, up to the recent extinctions of whole tribes of the 
 aborigines of America, show how frequently and how powerfully 
 the use of wine and ardent spirits have been instrumental in 
 hastening the greatest National Calamities that have been brought 
 upon themselves by the ignorance and imprudence of mankind. 
 
 Nor is the history of individuals less prolific than that of nations, 
 in examples of the evils produced by stimulating drinks, from 
 the assassination of his bosom friend Chtus, by the hand of 
 Alexander of Macedon, in a fit of drunken frenzy, at a Persian 
 banquet, down to the two unhappy instances occurring while this 
 Convention holds its sitting, namely, the death of a British soldier 
 by flogging, for an act of insubordination committed by him 
 while intoxicated, at Hounslow, near London ; and the condemna- 
 tion to death, by a court-martial, of a British marine, in a ship of 
 war, in the harbour of Cork, for resisting his superior officer, in a
 
 60 TO TilK MONARCIIS AND IIULEKS OF AtL NATIONS. 
 
 fit of drunkenness ! So extended, indeed, has the evil become, 
 that there is scarcely a family in Europe or America who cannot 
 call to their painful recollection instances within their own degrees 
 of kindred, near or remote, in which some individuals, beginning 
 life witli every prospect of honour and happiness, have become 
 wrecked on the rocks and shoals of intemperance, and have sunk 
 to a premature and dishonoured grave. 
 
 As, in many other cases, so in this, the extent of the evil 
 became at length so alarming, that the attention of philanthropic 
 men, in America and England at first, and subsequently in 
 Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and in nearly all 
 the British Colonies, from the snow-clad hills of Canada and 
 Labrador to the burning plains of Africa and Hindoostan, has 
 been drawn to the subject, as one of the most important that can 
 engage the attention of the patriot, the Christian, the statesman, 
 and the Monarchs and Rulers of the earth. 
 
 In consequence of this impression, inquiries have been instituted 
 and investigations made into all matters connected with the causes 
 and effects of the habits of intemperance in all ranks and classes of 
 mankind. Societies have been specially established to promote, 
 by precept and example, the practice of entire abstinence from the 
 use of all stimulating drinks ; and there are now numbered, as 
 practically and totally abstaining members of such Societies, in the 
 different countries named, not less than 18 millions, of whom there 
 may be counted 7 millions in America, 5 millions in Ireland, 3 
 millions in England and Scotland, and 3 millions on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe and in the British Colonies in both hemispheres. 
 And in every locality in which such Societies have been planted, 
 the almost universal testimony of the inhabitants is borne, as to 
 the beneficial effects they have produced on the health, means, 
 manners, condition, morals, and religious conduct of the members 
 belonging to them. 
 
 Never, it is believed, in the history of the world, has there 
 before been an example of so rapid and widely-spread an extension 
 of a simple truth, and the adoption of a uniform rule of action for 
 its practice and propagation as in the present case, where a 
 doctrine, or a principle, first publicly announced and professed 
 about fifteen years ago, is now so extensively appreciated and 
 embraced, and so faithfully acted upon by milhons in every 
 quarter of the globe, that the sun in his course is never at any 
 hour of the day passing over a space in which his benign rays do
 
 TO THE MONARCHS AND RULERS OF ALL NATIONS. 6l 
 
 not illumine and bless some spot in which a Temperance Society is 
 reflecting his glorious light, and spreading in its humbler sphere 
 the blessings of intelligence and good example within the circle of 
 its more limited horizon. 
 
 Notwithstanding this cause of just congratulation and thanks 
 to the Giver of all Good^for the triumph with which he has 
 hitherto crowned the efforts of those who have endeavoured to 
 promote the happiness of their fellow-men through these means, 
 there yet remains a vast amount of sickness, lunacy, poverty, 
 crime, and suffering, clearly attributable to the use of intoxicating 
 drinks in every country inhabited by man : for, unhappily, even 
 the uncivilized tribes of barbarian lands are supplied with the 
 poison by the traders and adventurers of Europe and America. 
 Thus, besides the misery which it creates among them by its use, it 
 renders abortive all attempts to civilize or elevate them in the 
 scale of being, or to bring them under the blessed influence of 
 Christianity: the uniform testimony of the missionaries of every 
 denomination of the Christian church, concurring in the expres- 
 sion of their belief, that nothing operates so powerfully to prevent 
 their adding converts to the truths of the Holy Gospel, as the use 
 of strong drinks, introduced among the native tribes by their more 
 civilized European visitors ; while some, indeed, of their chiefs or 
 leaders, have implored the British and American Governments 
 not to permit the traffic in this '* fire-water," as they call the de- 
 structive poison, seeing that its use has already led to the entire 
 extinction of some tribes, and the deterioration and corruption of 
 all into which it has ever been introduced. 
 
 K these were the opinions of this Convention only, they might 
 apprehend some difficulty in their ready acceptance, by those 
 high Potentates and Rulers to whom they presume to offer tliis 
 Address ; but they are enabled to cite an authority of the most 
 unquestionable kind, one emanating from the British Legislature 
 itself, and, therefore, clothed with all the securities against error or 
 misrepresentation with which the severe scrutiny and impartial 
 examination of a large body of intelUgent and upright men sur- 
 rounds it. 
 
 On the 3d of June, 1834, a Select Committee was appointed 
 by the British House of Commons, " to inquire into the extent, 
 causes, and consequences of the prevaiHng vice of intoxication, 
 among the labouring classes of the United Kingdom, in order to 
 ascertain whether any Legislative measures could be devised to 
 prevent the furtlier spread of so great an evil."
 
 62 TO THE MONARCHS A\D RULERS OF ALL NATIONS. 
 
 This Committee was composed of thirty-eight members, and 
 included Lord Althorp, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
 Leader of the House of Commons ; Sir Robert Peel, the lare 
 Prime Minister of England ; Admiral Fleming, of the Royal 
 Navy ; Colonel Williams, of the King's Army ; Mr. Alexander 
 Baring, the most eminent of British merchants ; and Representatives 
 of the agricultural, manufacturing, and maritime counties of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland ; so that every interest in the em- 
 pire was represented in its composition. It extended its daily 
 sittings from the 9th of June, to the 28th of July, 1834 : in the 
 course of which, no less than fifty-eight witnesses were examined 
 at great length, and these included physicians and surgeons of the 
 greatest eminence, magistrates and ofiicers of justice, ministers of 
 religion and education, officers of the navy, the army, and the 
 mercantile marine, large landed proprietors, opulent merchants, ex- 
 tensive manufacturers, chemists, distillers, keepers of hotels and 
 taverns, and labouring men in several departments of industry. 
 Never, perhaps, in the Annals of Parliament, was a Committee 
 composed of more eminent or more impartial members — never was 
 there a greater variety of witnesses from all classes of society, and 
 all professions in life, carefully examined — and never was there 
 greater unanimity than in the conclusions to which the Committee 
 came in the Report which they ultimately founded on this e\'i- 
 dence, and which was adopted and printed by order of the House of 
 Commons, as well as the large body of evidence itself, forming a 
 folio volume of several hundred pages. 
 
 The Convention propose to append to this Address, a copy of 
 the Report only, apart from the evidence, the bulk of which alone 
 precludes its presentation ; but in this place it will be their duty 
 to mention a few at least of the more prominent facts which this 
 evidence proved. 
 
 1. That intoxicating drinks produce these painful consequences 
 to individuals — disease in every variety of form, stunted growth in 
 the young, premature decay and death in middle age, apoplexy, 
 paralysis, idiotcy, madness, suicide, and violent death ; by all 
 which, more lives are wasted and destroyed in a single year — than 
 in all the great battles of the last century. 
 
 2. That intoxicating drinks are the chief cause of the pauperism, 
 prostitution, and crime, which fill the workhouses, asylums, prisons, 
 hulks, and penitentiaries ; and whlcli require an enormous expense 
 in the maintenance of a police, and the machinory of criminal 
 justice to restrain and repress.
 
 TO THE MONARCHS AND RULERS OF ALL NATIONS. 63 
 
 3. That the greatest hindrance to the education of youth, the 
 promotion of morality among adults, and to the propagation and 
 reception of Christian truths, in all ranks at home and abroad, is 
 the general and extreme use of intoxicating drinks. 
 
 4. Tliat many millions of quarters of grain, given by a bountiful 
 Providence for the food gf man, in wheat, barley, rye, oats, rice, 
 &c. are not merely destroyed as food, by being used for distillation. 
 
 5. That the loss of productive labour (the chief source of na- 
 tional as it is of individual wealth) in consequence of the idleness, 
 sickness, debility, and incapacity, occasioned by the drinking 
 usages of the labouring classes, may be fairly estimated at not less 
 than one-sixth of their whole disposable time, or amounting in 
 value to many millions annually. 
 
 6. That the destruction of property, by sea and land, in ship- 
 wrecks, fires, incendiary or accidental, robberies, plunderings, and 
 waste or spoiling of goods in every department of industry is 
 almost incalculable, amounting to many millions more. 
 
 It would be easy for the Convention to add much more upon 
 this painful subject ; but they trust they have said enough to 
 justify the step they take in endeavouring to awaken the attention 
 and enlist the sympathies of those entrusted with Sovereign Power 
 in this great subject. If these Rulers, at least, to all those who 
 are desirous of purifying the respective countries subject to their 
 dominion from the greatest of all moral pestilences that ever afSicted 
 the earth, sweeping annually to dishonoured graves more victims 
 than ever were destroyed by war — visiting with disease a larger 
 number of persons of all ages than either plague, pestilence, or 
 famine combined. 
 
 To such chiefly we address ourselves, in the spirit of Christian 
 regard and Christian frankness, when we say, Rulers of Nations, 
 and Protectors of the people committed to your care ! if you desire 
 to prevent their labour-created wealth from being destroyed — to 
 see the resources of their industry fully developed — their golden 
 harvests of grain husbanded for the food of man — your population 
 preserved in vigorous health and industry — the youths well in- 
 structed and morally trained — the men sober — the women chaste 
 — the public authorities just and temperate — your subjects happy 
 and obedient, and the great duties of morality and rchgion cheer- 
 fully and wilHngly performed, under the influence of love for their 
 excellencies,and a hearty participation in their enjoyments, rather 
 than from a fear and terror of the punishments that await their
 
 64 TO THE MONARCHS AND RULERS OF ALL NATIONS. 
 
 neglect. — If these be tlic objects of your bigh and noble ambition, 
 O ! Rulers and Potentates of the Earth ! Ave entreat you, in the 
 name of the World's Convention, now assembled together in 
 friendly union from the varied countries that have sent us here to 
 represent their feelings, hopes, and desires, that you imite with 
 us in doing whatever in your wisdom may seem best calculated 
 to arrest the progress of Intemperance in your respective domi- 
 nions — to encourage all Societies, institutions, and measures for 
 abolishing the drinking usages and customs of your people — to 
 honour by your august presence, as well as patronage, (as their 
 Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden have recently done, 
 attending in their royal persons the great Temperance Convention 
 at Stockholm, held in that city during the last month only), 
 similar gatherings together, for the same purpose, of the subjects 
 of your own realms ; — and while you will thus draw down 
 upon your crowned and anointed heads the blessings of all your 
 people, and the grateful homage of the heart from milHons yet un- 
 born, your dying moments, whenever they may come, — as in the 
 course of time must happen to us all, — will be soothed with the 
 remembrance that you have endeavoured to discharge the high 
 trust and responsibility committed to your rule, by encouraging 
 within your dominions a new Moeal Reformation for the 
 improvement of mankind, — the great end and aim of which is to 
 promote " Glory to God ! on earth peace ! and good- will to man I" 
 
 In the name, and under the authority of the Convention. 
 
 (Signed) 
 
 J. S. BUCKINGHAM. 
 
 London, Aug. 10, 1846. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 [As these preceding Documents are intended to be circulated far and wide, to be 
 sent to every Court in Europe, and to be spread as extensively as possible wherever 
 the English language is known, it is due to the numerous readers before Avhom they will 
 be laid, and to many of whom the subject will, perhaps, be introduced for the first 
 time, that they should be made acquainted with the lengthened and varied experi- 
 ence and abundant opportunities which the writer of them has enjoyed in all parts 
 of the globe, and among all conditions of men, for forming accurate "opinions on the 
 subjects discussed in them ; inasmuch as the testimony of every witness, and the de- 
 cision of every judge, must receive more or less of credibility and acquiescence, in 
 proportion as it can be shown that the parties from wh^-m these opinions or judg- 
 ments proceed possess a competent knowledge of the subject on which they deli- 
 berate, and are perfectly free from any mterested motive either to blind their per- 
 ceptions or to warp their judgments. With this view, the following Biographical 
 Sketch, drawn up for a Public Journal about five years ago, is appended to these 
 sheets for the reader's perusal and consideration.]
 
 1 
 
 [F7-om the Colonial Magazine for April, 1811.] 
 
 MR. BUCKINGHAM'S TRAVELS IN THE EASTERN AND 
 WESTERN WORLD. 
 
 •i 
 There are few men, even in this travelling age, whose excursions have 
 taken a wider range over the earth's surfece than those of Mr, Buck- 
 ingham ; and as the field of his public labours has embraced most of 
 our Colonial possessions in the East and in the West, a brief notice of 
 them comes strictly within the scope of our publication. As accuracy 
 is only to be secured, however, by access to authentic sources for the 
 facts which this notice will contain, we have gone at once to the foun- 
 tain head ; and from two original memoirs, drawn up at different 
 periods — one narrating Mr. Buckingham's movements in the Oriental 
 and the other describing his journies in the Occidental world — the fol- 
 lowing extracts are taken. The first is from an autobiographical sketch, 
 in which Mr. Buckingham says : — 
 
 At the early age of nine years, I embraced, with the most enthusiastic ardour, 
 the maritime profession, and embarked in one of His Majesty's packets for a foreign 
 station. Before I had completed my tenth year, I was captured, and, as a prisoner 
 of war, passed several months in confinement at Corunna ; and before I had attained 
 my eleventh year, I had been marched, with the rest of the officers and crew of 
 the ship in which I sailed, a distance of many hundred miles barefoot through Spain 
 and Portugal, from Corunna, through St. lago di Compostella, Vigo, Oporto, 
 Coimbra, and Santarem, to Lisbon. 
 
 Subsequent to this, I visited other countries in the same profession, and obtained 
 a maritime command at the early age of twenty-one. In this capacity I performed 
 several voyages to the West Indies, the two Americas, and the Mediterranean Sea, 
 including Gibraltar, Malta, the Greek Islands, and Smyrna in the Levant ; in 
 which, uniting as I did the occupation of seaman and merchant, and conducting 
 not merely the navigation, but the commerce of the voyage, I had abundant oppor- 
 tunities of becoming acquainted with all the facts and circumstances bearing in 
 any degree upon either, of which I very sedulously availed myself. 
 
 In the year 1813, having formed the intention of resigning my command, and 
 settling at Malta, as a general-merchant, I sailed from London with that view. 
 The attractions of Malta, as a place of settlement for that purpose, consisted in 
 its being the great central magazine or depot, from which the continent of Europe, 
 then under a rigorous blockade against all British manufactures, by the decrees of 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, was supplied with every description of merchandize, both 
 in English goods and colonial produce, and also in its being the great prize-port, 
 into which all vessels were brought for adjudication and sale, by decrees of the 
 Vice- Admiralty Court, of which Malta was the chief station. 
 
 Uniting, as I did, in my own person, a thorough knowledge of all mercantile 
 matters, connected either with colonial produce or British manufactures ; being 
 equally well acquainted with the value of ships and marine stores : and speaking 
 familiarly the several languages of which Malta was the seat (viz. Arabic, Greek, 
 French, and Italian) there was every prospect before me of a successful mercantile 
 career, by a settlement in that island, at that particular period. 
 
 On arriving off the port of Valetta, however, it was found that the plague, 
 which had not-been known there for upwards of a century, raged with such vio-
 
 'J MR. BUCKINGHAM S TRAVELS IN THE 
 
 leiice as to induce the governor to prohibit the landing of any individuals, and 
 indeed to prevent any personal communication with the shore. The cargoes 
 destined for this depot were accordingly landed in magazines near the sea, and the 
 ships proceeded to other ports ; the one in which I was embarked going to 
 Smyrna. 
 
 I remained there a sufficient period to be a considerable loser by the calamitous 
 events that occurred at Malta, in consequence of the long-continued and devas- 
 tating pestilence which afflicted that island, and at length proceeded to look 
 around that country for fresh sources of enterprise. The cordial reception given 
 to me by the British residents there, soon obtained me the notice and attention 
 of the Egyptian Pasha, Mohammed Ali, the present ruler of that interesting 
 countiy. He was at this period just beginning to perceive the advantage of 
 encouraging the settlement in Egypt of all persons of skill and capital from every 
 quarter of the globe, for the purpose of improving the resources of his dominion ; 
 and, extending his views also to external commerce, I had the pleasure of passing 
 many successive evenings with him in his Divan, after all his public officers, 
 excepting only his confidential secretary, were dismissed; and there, with a set 
 of Arrowsniith's charts, which I exhibited ♦'o him, explaining the relative positions 
 and productions of various countries, the winds, seasons, monsoons, currents, 
 rocks, shoals, &c. as well as the theory and practice of navigation and hydrography ; 
 all of which afforded him such delight, that we often sat together until near the 
 dawn of the following morning ; and I at length succeeded in having transcribed, 
 upon a duplicate set of Arrowsmith's charts, traced by my own hand for the pur- 
 pose, all the information of importance, written in the Arabic language and cha- 
 racter. 
 
 One of the undertakings that I subsequently proposed to accomplish for him, 
 was the re-opening of the ancient canal which formerly connected the Red Sea 
 with the Mediterranean ; and another was the transporting across the Desert of 
 the Isthmus, before the canal should be opened, two beautiful American brigs, 
 then lying in the harbour of Alexandria, which he was anxious to get into the 
 Red Sea, but feared the East India Company would prevent him sending them 
 round the Cape of Good Hope. At this period, the war against the Wahabees 
 occupied almost the exclusive attention of all parties in Egypt, and ultimately 
 compelled the Pasha himself to repair to the seat of hostilities in Arabia ; while 
 those to whom he confided the government of the country in his absence, were 
 far less able than himself to appreciate the value of such works as these. 
 
 From Alexandria I proceeded to Cairo, and from thence ascended the Nile int» 
 Nubia, beyond the Cataracts, being prevented from penetrating farther, in conse- 
 quence of an almost total blindness, occasioned by a long and severe ophthalmia — 
 one of the plagues that still afflict Egj-pt. On my descent I halted at Keneh, and 
 crossed the Desert to Kosseir, on the shores of the Red Sea. In the course of 
 this journey, I encountered, nearly in the middle of the Desert, a party of the 
 mutinous soldiery of the Egyptian army, returning in a state of revolt from Kos- 
 seir, by whom I was stripped, plundered, and left entirely naked on the barren 
 waste, at a distance of sixty miles, at least, from any any habitation or supply of 
 food or water. The narrative of this disastrous journey would alone make a 
 volume, if extended to all its details. I must here content myself with saying, 
 however, that by perseverance 1 succeeded in reaching Kosseir, though under 
 circumstances of the most painful and distressing nature, and that, to add to my 
 sufferings, I was obliged to retrace all my steps, and return again to Keneh on the 
 Nile, from the impossibility of prosecuting my route further in that direction. 
 
 I descended the Nile to Cairo, from thence traversed the Isthmus of Suez, 
 explored all the surrounding country, and visited every part of Lower Egypt and 
 the Delta, habited as an Egyptian, speaking the language, and mixing freely with 
 the people of the country. 
 
 It was at this period that a proposition was made to me by the English mer- 
 chants then resident m Egypt, to undertake, on their account, a voyage to India, 
 by way of the Red Sea — first, to survey its hydrography, till that period most 
 inaccurately known, and thus to judge of the practicability of its coasting naviga-
 
 EASTERN AND WESTERN WORLD. 6 
 
 tion by English ships ; and next, to ascertain how far the merchants of India — 
 but those at Bombay more especially — might feel disposed to renew the commer- 
 cial intercourse which formerly existed between India and Egypt, for the supply 
 of all the higher parts of the Mediterranean. 
 
 I readily acceded to this proposition, and set out for Suez accordingly, profiting 
 by the departure of a large caravan, then conveying the pilgrims of Africa, collected 
 at Cairo, to the great temple at Mecca, and bearing also the harem of Mohammed 
 All Pasha, consisting of fifty or sixty of the most beautiful women of Asia, to his 
 camp in the Holy Land. The voyage was continued, under most disastrous cir- 
 cumstances, to Jedda, from thence to Mocha, and ultimately to India. 
 
 The merchants of Bombay being, however, unwilling to resume the commerce 
 with Egypt, except under securities which it was hardly probable they could 
 obtain, 1 considered my mission at an end ; and, after communicating the result to 
 the proper quarter, my attention was turned to some maritime or mercantile occu- 
 pation in India itself. This was soon obtained ; for I had scarcely been a week 
 on shore, before I was appointed to the command of a fine new frigate, just 
 launched, for the Imaum of Muscat, an independent Arab prince, who had com- 
 missioned her for a voyage to China. I was invested with the command, and was 
 actually engaged in rigging and fitting her out, when, not less to my regret than 
 surprise, I received a letter from the government of Bombay, informing me, that 
 as I was not licensed by the East India Company, I could not be permitted to 
 hold this command, or even to remain in India. 
 
 I then returned to Egypt, in company with Dr. Benjamin Babington, by a 
 second voyage through the Red Sea, in which I collected ample materials for a 
 new hydrographical chart for all its coasts, and communicated the result of my 
 expedition to the British merchants at Alexandria. It was then resolved to obtain 
 from Mohammed Ali the securities which the Indian merchants desired ; and 
 accordingly, a commercial treaty was entered into between the Pasha, the British 
 consul, and myself — each of whom pledged himself to certain engagements, cal- 
 culated to afford reciprocal protection and profit. 
 
 As this was considered to clothe me with a new character, and invest me with 
 new powers, it was agreed that I should proceed again to India, as the ambassador 
 or envoy of Mohammed Ali, the viceroy of Egypt ; being made the bearer of 
 letters and commissions from him to the government of India, as well as of this 
 tripartite treaty to its merchants. I accordingly left Alexandria in the close of 
 the year 1815, for the coast of Syria, landed at Beyroot, proceeded to Tyre, Sidon, 
 Acre, and Jaffa, to Jerusalem ; was compelled, by various circumstances, but more 
 especially the disturbed state of the country, to traverse nearly the whole of 
 Palestine, and the countries east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, the Hauran, and 
 the Decapolis ; reached Damascus ; passed several weeks in the agreeable and 
 hospitable society of Lady Hester Stanhope ; visited Baalbeck, Lebanon, Tripoly, 
 Antioch, Orontes, and Aleppo. From thence I proceeded into Mesopotamia; 
 crossed the Euphrates at Bir ; visited Orfah, near Haran, the Ur of the Chaldees, 
 the birth-place of Abraham the patriarch, and Edessa of the Greeks; journeyed 
 to Diarbekr, or the Black City, in the heart of Asia Minor ; from thence to 
 Mardin on the mountains ; and by the Great Desert of Sinjar to Moosul on the 
 Tigris ; inspected the ruins of Nineveh, Arbela, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia ; made 
 extensive researches on the ruins of Babylon, identified the hanging gardens and 
 the palace, and discovered a portion of the ancient wall ; ascended to the summit 
 of the Tower of Babel, now still erect in the Plain of Shinaar, and at length 
 reposed in the celebrated city of Bagdad, on the banks of the Tigris. 
 
 After a short stay here, I proceeded into Persia, crossing the chain of Mount 
 Zagros, and going by Kermanshah to Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana ; Ispahan, 
 the most magnificent of all the Oriental cities ; the ruins of Persepolis ; and by 
 Shiraz and Shapoor, to Bushire. At this port I embarked in an East India Com- 
 pany's ship of war, bound on an expedition against the Wahabees, the Arab pirates 
 of the Persian Gulf; visited their port at Ras-el-Khyma ; went on shore with 
 the commodore of the squadron, and acted as an Arabian interpreter ; assisted 
 afterwards in the bombardment of the town ; and finally reached Bombay at the 
 
 A 2
 
 4 MK. IJUCKINGUAM S TRAVELS IN THE 
 
 end of 181(5, having been nearly twelve months in performing this long and 
 perilous journey. 
 
 That such a succession of voyages and travels should be full of danger, as well 
 as incident, may be easily imagined ; but I purposely abstain from a recital of 
 them, which would lead, indeed, to a volume of itself. It may be sufficient to 
 say, that storms, plagues, shipwreck, battle, imprisonment, hunger, thirst, sick- 
 r.ess, nakedness, and want, had been my frequent portion; and that there was 
 scarcely any form under which human misery could present itself, in which I had 
 not encountered it, or scarcely any pomp, pleasure, honour, or distinction, which 
 mortal could enjoy, that I had not witnessed, and occasionally shared in. 
 
 Having, however, by this time, through the intervention of my friend and fellow- 
 traveller from India, Dr. Babington, who left me in Egypt, and proceeded to 
 England, obtained the Company's license to remain in tlieir territories (which was 
 sent out tome in Bombay), I resumed the command of the Imaum of Muscat's 
 frigate, from which I was before dis[)laced ; his Mohammedan .agent having been 
 indignant at what even he considered the tyraimy of the Indian government, and 
 pledged himself to reinstate me in the command, if I ever returned to India to 
 accept it. But the three lucrative voyages to China, which I was to have per- 
 formed, had in the mean time been accomplished by another, and his fortune 
 made. The ship was now destined for the Persian Gulf, whither I sailed in her, 
 and after visiting Muscat and Bussorah, 1 returned with a successful result to 
 Bombay. 
 
 From hence I proceeded down the coast of Malabar, touching at Tellicherry, 
 Calicut, Mahee, and Cochin ; Colombo and Point de Galle, in Ceylon ; up the 
 coast of Coromandel, visiting Covelong, Madras, Vizagapatam, and Bimlipatam ; 
 and at length reached Calcutta, in Juno, 1818, 
 
 Here I found that orders had reached from the Imaum of Muscat, to whom the 
 frigate under my command belonged, directing her to proceed to the coast of Zan- 
 zibar, in Africa to give convoy to several of his vessels there employed in pro- 
 curing slaves, as well as to convey some of those unhappy beings in my own ; a 
 service in which, had the prospect of fortune been ten times as brilliant as it was, 
 my abhorrence of slavery would not permit me to engage ; and accordingly, rather 
 than acquire riches from such a source, I resigned the command, and with it all 
 the prospects of competency and ease which it had hitherto promised me. 
 
 At this period I became acquainted with Mr. John Palmer, of Calcutta, who was 
 designated, with great justice, the Prince of Merchants in the East, who held the 
 same rank in India as the Barings in England, and whom no man ever knew with- 
 out loving as well as revering. He it was who first suggested the idea of my 
 having talents for literaiy and political life, for which I ought to relinquish that of 
 the sea ; and this impression receiving considerable strength from the very tlat- 
 tering attention paid me by the Marquis of Hastings, the late Lord Bishop of Cal- 
 cutta, and indeed all the men distinguished for their rank or learning in India, I 
 yielded to the general solicitation, and consented to undertake the editorship of a 
 public journal in Calcutta, to be conducted on the liberal principles which then 
 characterized the brilliant administration of the Marquis of Hastings, and which 
 with every feeling of my heart was in perfect accordance. 
 
 The history of Mr. Buckingham's labours in India, his banishment 
 from thence by the temporary Governor-General, Mr. Adam, and his 
 subsequent efforts to obtain redress for the destruction of his property, 
 to the amount of £40,000 sterling, must be familiar to every reader of 
 the public journals, and need not be repeated here. It may be suffi- 
 cient to say, that his just claims to compensation, for the injuries so 
 undeservedly heaped upon him, for advocating the very measures since 
 admitted to be right, and since sanctioned by law, were recognized
 
 EASTERN AND WESTERN WORLD. O 
 
 and defended by the late Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Lord 
 Denraan, and other distinguished men in parliament ; by Sir Charles 
 Forbes, Sir Henry Strachey, Mr. John Smith, and other proprietors at 
 the Lidia House ; and by Lord William Bentinck, the late Governor- 
 General of India, at a public meeting in London ; but with all this 
 powerful array of talent and influence in his favour, and with the 
 almost universal sympathy of the press and the public throughout 
 Great Britain and the Colonies in his behalf, he is to this hour without 
 that redress which two Committees of the House of Commons recom- 
 mended, but which the Lidia Company and the Whig Ministry have 
 equally refused to grant to him. 
 
 Mr. Buckingham's labours, after his return from India, were chiefly 
 directed to the dissemination of accurate information respecting our 
 Indian possessions, through the press, in connexion with several public 
 journals established by him in London for that purpose ; after which 
 he made an extensive tour through England, Scotland, and Ireland, 
 holding public meetings, delivering lectures, and forming auxiliary 
 associations, to carry forward his views for abolishing the trading mono- 
 poly of the East India Company, and for procuring a revision of the 
 laws and mstitutions of the country under their rule 
 
 After some years of labour devoted to this object, Mr. Buckingham 
 was returned to parliament, as one of the first members for Sheflield, 
 under the Reform Bill in 1832, and sat for five years, in two successive 
 parliaments, as representative for that borough. In this capacity, he 
 had the good fortune to originate and carry through several measures 
 of public good, independently of the influence exercised by his advocacy 
 of the interests of the Hindoos in the Eastern and the Africans in the 
 Western portions of the British empire. Among these may be enu- 
 merated, the virtual abolition of the cruel practice of Impressment for 
 seamen, and the substitution of a general Registry for mariners, with 
 an act for the encouragement of voluntary enlistment, by bounties for 
 entering, limited periods of service, and pensions for age and good 
 conduct to seamen ; — Committees for inquiring into the best means of 
 preventing the destruction of life and property, occasioned by Intem- 
 perance on shore and by Shipwrecks at sea ; with a large body of Evi- 
 dence, and valuable Reports on each, drawn up by Mr. Buckingham, as 
 Chairman of both the Committees named. While thus pursuing 
 what may, in some respects, be called his professional labours for 
 the benefit of the class to which he originally belonged — namely the 
 Seamen of the empire — he was not indifferent to the interests of another 
 class, among which he subsequently became enrolled, namely, authors 
 publishers : — for one of the bills carried through parliament succesisfully
 
 b ME. BUCKINGHAM S TRAVELS IN TlIE 
 
 by him was to give the protection of Copyright to the publishers of 
 engravings in Ireland, which did not before exist ; and another was to 
 reduce the heavy tax imposed on authors and publishers, by the neces- 
 sity of their delivering no less than eleven copies of every published 
 work, however costly, to eleven of the public libraries and institutions 
 of the kingdom. Mr. Buckingham's bill reduced these to five, which 
 are all that can now be claimed ; by which both authors and pub- 
 lishers have been benefitted to the extent of many thousand pounds 
 per annum. 
 
 Mr. Buckingham's bills for the establishment of public walks and 
 gardens, for the recreation of the working classes in all our large 
 towns ; and of literary and scientific institutions, for the diffusion of 
 entertaining and useful information among the same classes, as much 
 for the purpose of improving their morals, as of cultivating their 
 understandings, were not carried through to completion, because of the 
 great pressure of other business, that prevented their receiving the 
 attention to which they were entitled ; but the public, out of doors, 
 have long since done justice to the excellent intention of these mea- 
 sures, and the time is not very remote when the Parliament itself will 
 enact them, as the leading men of both political parties are at length 
 become persuaded of their public utility and importance. 
 
 The period now arrived in which Mr. Buckingham, having long con- 
 templated an extensive tour through the Western World, resigned his 
 seat in Parliament for that purpose, after taking leave of his consti- 
 tuents at Sheffield, who honoured him with a public entertainment, 
 as a mark of their approbation and confidence. At the close of his par- 
 liamentary career, he embarked in this new undertaking, carried it 
 successfully through, and has but recently returned from its accom- 
 plishment. He was welcomed back to his native land by a large public 
 meeting of his friends and admirers at Exeter-Hall in December last, 
 and has since responded to the wish there expressed, by drawing up a 
 condensed narrative of his Western Tour ; from which, as from the most 
 authentic source, we make the following extracts. After some intro- 
 ductory matter, which we pass by, Mr. Buckingham says : — 
 
 It is now little more than three years since I left England, in September, 1837, 
 with the intention of visiting the United States, the IBritish Provinces in North 
 America, and proceeding from thence through Mexico to the Isthmus of Darien, 
 to cross the Pacific to China, and from thence to return home, by India and the 
 Mediterranean Sea. At that period, such a voyage of circumnavigation appeared 
 to bo perfectly practicable — as Mexico was then in comparative tranquillity, and 
 China was accessible at several points : and if no untoward events had occurred to 
 mar the execution of this project, it would most probably have been accomplished, 
 as no change took place in my own resolutions or intentions, until necessity com- 
 pelled it. In Mexico, the civil war that now rages fiercely within its borders, and 
 the hostile attacks oftheTexans and Cumanches which occasionally press upon it
 
 EASTERN AND WKSTEKN WOULD. 7 
 
 from without, render all travelling so difficult and dangerous, and make the public 
 mind so indifferent to every thing beyond the pressing exigencies of the moment, 
 while life and property are everywhere so insecure, that it would have been the 
 height of indiscretion to have entered upon it ; while, at the same time, Cliina.by 
 the recent unhappy war upon its coasts, has been rendered unapproachable to Euro- 
 peans : and as a consequence of this, all maritime intercourse, and opportunities 
 of conveyance from Mexice to that countiy, by ships across the Pacific, have 
 ceased. But for these reasons, I should now, most probably, have been in the 
 capital of the Montezumas ; at the commencement of the ensuing year, on the 
 coast of China ; and on the following or fifth year after my departure from Eng- 
 land, have been returning home. It has been othenvise ordered, however, and I 
 yield to the influence of those events which I could not control, with some regret, 
 it is true, but with that resignation which the recognition of a Higher Power 
 makes at once a duty and a consolation. 
 
 When I set forth upon this projected tour, I adopted, for the motto of my 
 expedition, the words " Temperance — Education — Benevolence — and Peace ; " 
 desiring to keep before me constantly these high and important objects, the 
 interests of which I should feel it my happiness steadily and zealously to promote. 
 To this I have endeavoured faithfully to adhere ; and the narrative of the opera- 
 tions, in which 1 have had the privilege to be engaged, will best show the degree 
 of success with which my labours have been crowned. 
 
 It was in the month of October, 18.37, that I first landed in New York ; and the 
 object of my visit soon becoming known, I was speedily surrounded by some of 
 the most philanthropic and influential individuals with which that city happily 
 abounds. The period of my first stay there embraced about four months — from 
 October, 1837, to February, 1838 ; and during that time I devoted the mornings 
 of my days to the careful investigation of every thing of interest that tliis enter- 
 prising and opulent city contained, in which I was most cordially assisted, by the 
 ready access with which I was favoured to every kind of information that I sought. 
 My evenings were partly devoted to the delivery of my public Lectures on the 
 Scriptural and Classical Regions of the Oriental World, which were repeated in 
 six separate and successive courses, in six different quarters of the city, and 
 attended by nearly all the most respectable and educated classes of the com- 
 munity ; while these public duties were agreeably relieved by the interchange of 
 visits and participation of private entertainments, with the numerous friends 
 which those literary labours brought around me ; and these again were hallowed 
 by the devotion of other evenings, in conjunction with the friends thus formed, 
 to the advocacy, at large and overwhelming public meetings, in some of the 
 most spacious buildings of the city, of the great objects I was most anxious to 
 promote. 
 
 Among these, at which I assisted, may be named : the New York Temperance 
 
 Union — the State and City Temperance Societies and their several Auxiliaries 
 
 the Infant School Society — the Sunday School Union— the Society for promoting 
 Education— the City Tract Society — Bible and Missionary Societies — the Sailors' 
 Home Society — the Widow and Orphan's Society — and the Society for Promoting 
 a Congress of Nations, to dispense with appeals to arms, for the settlement of 
 national disputes, and to substitute, for the barbarities and cruelties of war, the 
 decisions of such a Congress, adequately organised, and competent, by their united 
 powers, to enforce and secure Universal Peace. 
 
 From New York I proceeded to Philadelphia ; and here the kindness and hos- 
 pitality of the inhabitants was manifested towards myself and my family, by whom 
 I was everywhere accompanied, in a manner at once new, brilliant, and effective. 
 The friends of temperance in this " City of Brotherly Love," determined to honour 
 us with a public welcome ; and, to give it increased popularity, the day chosen 
 for this purpose was February 22, the anniversary of the birth-day of their great 
 hero and statesman — to whom the whole world now pays the homage of admira- 
 tion — General Washington. It was conceived, that as his glory rested chiefly on 
 the delivery of his country from the yoke of political oppression, his birth-day 
 would be an appropriate moment on which to do honour to the advocates of the 
 great moral reform, that seeks to deliver, not a nation merely, but the human 
 family at large, from the still heavier and more oppressive yoke of intcmperarce,
 
 8 MU. BUCKINGHAM S TRAVELS IN THE 
 
 which first reduces men to the ulcst of all slaveries — that of complete subjection 
 to their appetites and passions — and after depriving them of reason, consigns its 
 victims to an nntimely and unhallowed grave, sinking them below the level of tlie 
 brute, and killing at once both body and soul. 
 
 For this festival of welcome, one of the largest theatres in Philadelphia was 
 engaged, and the pit being Hoorod over on a level with the stage, this united 
 space was converted into a saloon, in which were placed tables, covered \vith an 
 ample supply of the most elegant and agreeable refreshments, that the culinary 
 and confectionary arts could supjjly, but with an entire absence of all intox- 
 icating drinks. The visitors occupied the three tiers of boxes and galleries ; the 
 stewards of the entertainment superintended the tables in the saloon ; while 
 the directors of the festival, with the speakers and musical choir, occupied the 
 stage. The price of admission was limited to a dollar each, but long before the 
 hour of opening came, the full number of tickets that the theatre would contain 
 was issued ; and such was the eagerness to join the party, that those who were 
 too late could only purchase tickets of early buyers, which was done at premiums 
 of five and ten dollars in advance — sums that were freely given. The result was 
 far beyond the expectations of the most sanguine. Never had there been before, 
 within the walls of the building, so large a number of persons — 2,000 was the 
 lowest estimate of those present ; and they were said to include among them 
 members of nearly all the first families in the city. The scene was brilliant and 
 animating in the highest degree ; the proceedings evidently in accordance with the 
 feelings of those present ; the expressions of pleasure enthusiastic ; and the order 
 and decorum of the meeting never for a moment disturbed ; while, at the same 
 time, three great and important ends had been achieved : — First, It had been 
 proved, by this experiment, that a large assembly might be entertained, for many 
 hours, with great elegance, and unflagging interest and cheerfulness, without the 
 use of wine. — Secondly, A mass of useful information, connected with the tem- 
 perance reform, had been spread before the most intellectual and influential por- 
 tion of the community ; which, through the agency of their personal communica- 
 tions, and the still more extended agency of the public press, could hardly fail to 
 produce a large amount of good. — And, thirdly, by the voluntary contributions of 
 those who paid for their admission to this festival, and the donations subsequently 
 given — an amount of 2,300 dollars, or ^GoOO sterling — was raised to be added to 
 the temperance funds. 
 
 From Philadelphia I proceeded to Baltimore, and there also a very crowded 
 assembly greeted my arrival, at a great temperance meeting held in the Methodist 
 church, at which most of the leading families of this beautiful and hospitable city 
 were present, and where several of the clergy, of different denominations, rendered 
 the aid of their valuable services to the cause. 
 
 The next scene of my labours was the City of Washington, the legislative capital 
 of the Union, where the Congress of the United States was then in session. To 
 the President, as well as to the members of both houses, the senators and repre- 
 sentatives, my labours in the British Parliament were not unknown. Many of them 
 had read, and all had heard of, the investigations of the Committee appointed by 
 the House of Commons in 1834, to inquire into the extent and causes of Intem- 
 perance in England ; and some had carefully perused the evidence and report, 
 which, as chairman of that committee, I had drawn up and laid before the House. 
 But instead of having to encounter the difficulties by which I was surrounded and 
 opposed, when bringing this question before the Parliament of my own country, 
 I received here every assistance that I could desire ; the spacious and beautiful 
 Hall of the House of Representatives was freely granted to us for the purpose of a 
 temperance-meeting ; and from the Speaker's chair, I had the honour to deliver 
 an address on this occasion. It was listened to for about two hours, with the 
 most profound attention, by a large assemblage of the members of both Houses of 
 Congress, several of whom moved and spoke in favour of resolutions connected 
 with the cause ; and a great accession of members was made to the temperance 
 rank«. At present, there exists at Washington a Congressional Temperance 
 Society, formed wholly of members of Congress ; the sale of intoxicating drinks 
 is prohibited by law within the precincts of the Capitol ; and a growing feeling \n
 
 EASTERN AXD VVESTEBN WUUI.D. 9 
 
 favour of legislative measures, to co-operate with moral means, for the promotion 
 of the temperance reform, is manifested by the rulers of the nation. 
 
 A fatal duel having occurred between two members of the Congress, during 
 our stay at Washiiigton, I availed myself of the occasion of the public funeral 
 of the unhappy victim of this barbarous practice, to address, to both Houses in 
 session, some observations on the importance and necessity of abolishing this 
 relic of feudal times ; and submitted to them the provisions of a bill for this pur- 
 pose, of which I had given notice while a member of the House of Commons, and 
 twice ineffectually attempted to introduce into the British Parliament ; but was 
 more successfid here, as before we left Washington, a bill was prepared and 
 ultimately carried through Congress, for the suppression of Duelling among its 
 members, under penalties and disabilities, which have been found sufficiently 
 powerful to prevent the recurrence of any hostile conflict between any of the 
 members ever since. 
 
 From Washington, after a stay of several weeks, I retraced my steps through 
 Baltimore and Philadelphia, to New York, delivering my lectures and attending 
 several public meetings, for philanthropic purposes, in each ; visiting, at the same 
 time, the asylums, hospitals, jails, penitentiaries, and collecting information on all 
 the various subjects of interest that presented themselves continually to my mind. 
 From hence we ascended the romantic and beautiful Hudson, or North River — 
 passed a few days on the summit of the Catskill Mountains — remained some 
 weeks at Albany, the capital of the State of New York— enjoyed the hospitality 
 of the great apostle of temperance in America, IVlr. Delavan, whose advice and 
 co-operation I had always the pleasure to find freely and cheerfidly given, in 
 every benevolent work ; and after mingling for a short period in the gay and varied 
 throng that assemble from every part of the Union, to enjoy the pleasures of 
 Saratoga Springs, we made a visit to the towns of Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, 
 Geneva, Canandaigua, Rochester, and Buffalo, delivering lectures and attending 
 jniblic meetings in each ; and then reposed for a short period, amidst the wonders, 
 beauties, and sublimities of the splendid and glorious Falls of Niagara. 
 
 From thence we returned across the country, from the borders of Lakes Erie 
 and Ontario, to those of Lakes George and Champlain, by which we entered the 
 State of Vermont ; and after traversing its green hills, and visiting the White 
 Mountains in New Hampshire, we proceeded by Concord, the river Merrimack, 
 and the great manufacturing town of Lowell, the Manchester of America, to 
 Boston. 
 
 In this noble city, the early abode of some of the pilgrim fathers, the cradle 
 of American liberty, and the Athens of the West, we passed several months, and 
 those full of interest and pleasure. My lectures were delivered here, in four 
 successive courses, morning and evening, to crowded and brilliant audiences ; 
 and here, as in all the other cities we had yet visited, every source of informa- 
 tion as to matters of public interest was freely opened, without reserve, and of 
 this advantage I availed myself fully. Among the public meetings that I had 
 the pleasure to attend in Boston, were two splendid assemblages, called toge- 
 ther for the purpose of forming and supporting establishments for Seamen, to 
 protect them from the intemperance, dissipation, and consequent want and desti- 
 tution into which they are drawn, by the arts of those who beset them on their 
 landing, lure them to the brothel and the tavern, and there plunder them in a 
 few days of all the hard-earned wages of months, and sometimes years. These 
 meetings were among the most effective of any that I remember to have 
 addressed, both in the feeling created on behalf of the object proposed, and the 
 large amount of funds raised to sustain the " Sailors' Homes," for which this aid 
 was required. 
 
 The interesting cities of Salem, New Bedford, and Providence, were next visited 
 in succession, and in each, lectures were delivered and public meetings held, to 
 promote the great objects of my tour ; those at New Bedford, on behalf of the 
 seamen of the port, ending in the adoption of a plan to raise a fund of several 
 thousand dollars, by a small tax of a penny per ton on all the shipping belonging 
 to the port, which was readily acquiesced in by the ship-owners, to be devoted to
 
 10 
 
 MR. BUCKINGHAM S TRAVELS IN THE 
 
 tlie building and support of a Sailors' Home ; and the meetings at Providence, 
 leading to an animated and protracted discussion, before the most crowded assem- 
 blies, on the great question of how far it was proper to call in the aid of legisla- 
 tion, to restrain men from the indulgence of intemperance and the commission of 
 crime, — a triumphant majority being obtained in favour of such legislation, on the 
 just and humane principle, that " prevention is better than cure." 
 
 Our next visit was to the ancient and interesting city of Plymouth, founded 
 more than two centuries ago by the Pilgrim Fathers, who sought an asylum of 
 religious freedom in the new world, from the intolerance and persecution of the 
 old. We attended here the whole of the festivities observed on the occasion of the 
 anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, Dec. 22 ; and here also I was invited 
 to deliver a tempeiance address, which was given in one of the churches, and 
 attended by large numbers. My lectures were given in the Pilgrim Hall ; and 
 this ancient seat of the learning and i)iety of the first founders of the British colo- 
 nies on the American continent could boast, during m.y stay in it, that it did not 
 contain a single dram-shop, or place where ardent spirits are sold ; that it had not 
 had a dwelling destroyed by fire for nearly a century past ; that it had no poor to 
 sustain, and not a single occupant in its jail, which had been empty many months, 
 and was soon about to be let for some other purpose. 
 
 This concluded my first year's labours in America, which were confined to the 
 Atlantic and New England States. In the second year, a new sphere of observa- 
 tion and occupation was opened to us in the South. We made our voyage from 
 New York to Charleston, in South Carolina, by sea, in January, 1838 ; and the 
 reception I met with here was even still more enthusiastic than in the cities of the 
 North. My lectures on Egypt and Palestine were attended by the largest audiences 
 that had ever been known to be assembled in that city — literary and intellectual 
 as it is, in a very high degree — since its first settlement ; larger, indeed, than one 
 of the largest of its many spacious churches would comfortably contain. I had 
 expected that my known opinions on the subject of Slavery, and the part 1 had 
 taken in the British House of Commons, on the question of Emancipation in the 
 West Indies, would have made many persons cold towards me here. But I found 
 this stain on my character — as some would consider it in the South — almost, if 
 not entirely wiped away, by the share I had taken in opposing the East India 
 Monopoly, and denouncing Impressment, advocating the abolition of tariffs and 
 protecting duties, so as to give Commerce its free scope — unfettered by any legis- 
 lative hindrance or restraints. The motto of " Free Trade and Sailors' Rights," 
 is a popular one throughout the Union, but especially so in the South ; and the 
 share 1 had taken in advocating both, was by many deemed a full equivalent for 
 the heresy, as they deemed it, of my advocating also Slave Emancipation. I'found 
 myself, therefore, far more at ease publicly in this great southern city than I had 
 expected ; while the private hospitalities of the first families were cordially tendered 
 to us, and our stay was rendered as agreeable as those by whom we were sur- 
 rounded could make it. 
 
 On the subject of temperance, I had the pleasure to attend a large and interest- 
 ing meeting at Charleston, where some of the leading merchants, magistrates, 
 clergy, and legal and medical men of the city assisted ; and where, after an 
 address delivered by me, funds were raised for the establishment of a New Tem- 
 perance Journal, to be published at Columbia, the capital of the State ; which 
 was soon put into o])eration, and has since increased in circulation and useful- 
 ness. There, too, the subject of " Sailors' Homes" engaged our attention ; and 
 at a public meeting held at the close of my lectures, to consider the best means of 
 advancing this object, a plan was proposed of raising the requisite funds — partly 
 by immediate donations, partly by annual subscriptions, but chiefly by the volun- 
 tary imposition of a light tax or duty, of one cent, per barrel, on all the rice 
 shipped, and two cents per bale on all the cotton exported — these being the staple 
 articles of the port ; and when I urged the example of New Bedford, a much 
 smaller town, in fixing an impost on the tonnage of its shipping, to accomplish 
 the same object, it was readily assented to, and the opulent ai.d liberal members 
 of Charleston were determined not to be behind their more economical brethren, 
 as they consider them, of the North.
 
 EASTERN AND WESTFRN WOULD. II 
 
 Savannah followed next, in the order of the cities visited ; and being within a 
 day's sail of Charleston, the lire of enthusiasm kindled here, had warmed, by its 
 influence, the kindred spirit of the sister-city before we reached it. My lectures 
 here were crowded to excess. The hospitalities of its elegant and polished 
 society were of almost daily occurrence ; and the flattering attentions we received, 
 were such as to make our stay there agreeable in the extreme. Here, too, the 
 cause of temperance and the formation of Sailors' Homes, were not forgotten. 
 Two meetings were held on these subjects in the church of the Presbyterians — 
 one of the largest and handsomest in the United States ; and at these such a 
 spirit was awakened, as induced the liberal merchants and ship-owners of Savan- 
 nah to determine to follow the example of Charleston, and go beyond it, if neces- 
 sary, in the promotion of both these kindred objects. 
 
 Augusta, Macon, Columbus, and Montgomery, were next visited, in a land- 
 journey of several hundred miles across the States of Georgia and Alabama to 
 Mobile, in each of which, lectures were delivered ; and in the latter — then happy 
 and flourishing, but since afflicted and almost desolate city, scourged by pestilence 
 and fires in continual succession — all the hospitalities and popularity of Charleston 
 and Savannah were renewed ; while in all, some effort was made, publicly and 
 privately, to promote the temperance cause, and in Augusta, the capital of Georgia, 
 with great success. 
 
 From Mobile we passed on to New Orleans ; and here, three public meetings 
 were held in the spacious and beautiful Presbyterian church of that city, at inter- 
 vals of a few days apart, and each succeeding one was more largely attended than 
 its predecessor — the last being as thickly crowded as the building would contain, 
 and the aisles and galleries filled with clean and well-dressed seamen from the 
 various ships then in port ; the captains and ofiicers being specially invited to 
 attend, and bring as many as they could spare of their crews with them. This 
 was indeed a splendid meeting — in its numbers, its brilliancy, its enthusiasm, and 
 its results. 
 
 At the close of my address, a wealthy merchant of the city rose, and stated to 
 the audience, that after the details he had heard of the ravages of intemperance, 
 and of the strong claims of the seamen especially, to the aid and protection of 
 those who reaped their fortunes by their labours, he could not remain a silent 
 spectator of the scene, nor refuse to follow up, and go beyond, the example of 
 New Bedford, Charleston, and Savannah, in providing Sailors' Homes, for the 
 rescue of the ill-used mariner from the snares of his betrayers. He said he had 
 just purchased 600 bales of cotton, and was about to ship them for Europe ; and 
 he would agree to pay five dollars per bale, on his entire shipment, or 3,000 dol- 
 lars in the whole, if all the other merchants and shippers of cotton in New Orleans, 
 would consent to pay one cent per bale on every bale shipped by them for the 
 remainder of the year. This was hailed with general acclamation, when, after a 
 short pause, a gentleman rose to ask whether, in the event of their being any in- 
 dividuals so mean and ungenerous as not to come into the arrangement, the worthy 
 merchant would still adhere to his offer ? on which another inhabitant of the city 
 rose, and said, that to remove all doubi on this subject, he was so satisfied that 
 few or none of this description of persons could be found in New Orleans, that 
 he would undertake to make up the amount of all who should refuse, or be 
 deficient. The spark soon kindled into a flame, and the warm hearts of the 
 Southerners gradually opened and expanded with every successive offer. Some, 
 not dealing in cotton, but shipping sugar largely, agreed to pay five cents per 
 hogshead on all exported for the year. Others, having steam-boats employed in 
 towing vessels in and out of port, agreed to give twenty-five cents for every 
 schooner, fifty cents for every brig, and a dollar for every ship towed up or down 
 the Mississippi by their steam-tugs throughout the season. 
 
 Thus, before the meeting closed, a fund was guaranteed, amply sufficient to 
 accomplish all our wishes ; and to the worthy Collector of Customs at New Orleans, 
 who occupied the chair of the meeting, was confided the task of collecting these 
 sums, which his official situation would so well enable him to do. The officers 
 and saUors in the gallery and the aisles, joined as loudly as the rest ot the
 
 12 MR. duckingiiam's travels in the 
 
 audience in the expression of their joy, at the full tide of benevolence which had 
 been made to flow on that night, not merely on behalf of themselves, but also of 
 all their worthy, though neglected and injured shipmates and brother-seamen, ever 
 visiting the port. 
 
 Leaving New Orleans in May, we ascended the giant river of the Mississippi, 
 the " Father of Waters." as the Indians so appropriately call this magnificent 
 stream, and visited Natchez, since almost entirely destroyed by the whirlwind 
 that swept over it in the following year ; and after some interesting labours 
 there, we retraced our steps, and re- visited all the towns already enumerated, from 
 Mobile, by the land-route to Augusta and Charleston again, repeating my labours 
 in each. 
 
 From hence we made an extensive tour through the interior of the country — 
 going to Columbia, in South Carolina ; thence through Augusta and Athens, to 
 the magnificent F"alls of Tuloola and Tukoa, in the mountains of Georgia ; and 
 after crossing by Greenville and the Flat Rock, over the Blue Ridge, in North 
 Carolina, we penetrated the majestic forests of Tennessee, and went onward by 
 Blountsville to Virginia, entering this noble State at its south-western border by 
 Abingdon, and traversing the whole range of the rich valleys beyond the chain of 
 the Alleghanies, visiting the White Sulphur Springs, the Natural Bridge, Wyer's 
 Cave, Staunton, Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, Monticello, and Rich- 
 mond, the capital of the Old Dominion. From hence, after a stay of a few weeks, 
 we descended by the James River to the mouth of the Chesapeake, visiting Nor- 
 folk, Gosport, and Portsmouth, and returning by Petersburgh, Frederick sburgh, 
 the Warrington Springs, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, to New York — 
 halting in many other places for the purpose of giving lectures, or attending meet- 
 ings in connexion with the principal objects of my tour ; and finding in all, but 
 especially in Abingdon, Richmond, Norfolk, and Baltimore, a ready response to 
 all my views and wishes, and an exercise of private hospitality, as well as public 
 attention, of the most friendly and agreeable nature. 
 
 Our next excursion took us farther to the north and east than we had yet been ; 
 and after a short stay in New York and New Bedford, and the delivery of extra 
 courses of lectures, and assistance at public meetings in each, v/e revisited Boston, 
 and sailed from thence for Augusta, on the river Kennebeck, the capital of the 
 State of Maine. Here, as well as at Holloweil, Bath, and Brunswick, lectures were 
 delivered and temperance meetings held : and after these, at Bangor, on the river 
 Penobscot, still larger assemblies were addressed, and the temperance and seamen'is 
 cause both greatly advanced by the efforts made. 
 
 After some weeks agreeably passed in Maine, we came from Bangor to Portland, 
 thence to Portsmouth, Dover, Newburyport, Salem, and Boston ; and after a 
 second course at Providence, we visited Worcester and Springfield in Massachu- 
 setts, and Hartford and Newhaven in Connecticut, in the last of which, one of 
 the largest temperance meetings ever collected in the city, was convened, to hear 
 an address from me on the Sabbath evening, in the new and elegant church of the 
 Presbyterians, which was crowded to excess, and attended by members of all the 
 other religious denominations, as well as by the professors and students of the 
 ancient and popular college of this city. This terminated our second year's labours 
 in America. 
 
 The first year had been devoted chiefly to the Atlantic Northern States, the 
 second to the Southern, and extreme Eastern States ; and the third was employed 
 chiefly in the Western States, and the British Provinces of the Canadas, Nova 
 Scotia, and New Brunswick. Leaving New York in .January, 1839, after a tenth 
 course of lectures in that city, and visiting again our friends in Philadelphia, where 
 similar labours were repeated, I spent a few weeks in Gcrmantown, Lancaster, 
 Harrisburgh, and Carlisle, in the interior of Pennsylvania ; and there, among the 
 German jjopuhition, by which most of these towns were originally peopled, as 
 well as among the legislators assembled at Harrisburgh for the session — that city 
 being the capital of the State, on the banks of the Susquehannah — I gathered 
 much valuable information as to the state of the agricultural population, the eflfects 
 of intemperance on the health and morals of that portion of the community, and 
 the progress of the reformation made in these districts.
 
 EASTERN AND WESTERN WORLD. 13 
 
 Returning from this interesting excursion, and revisiting Baltimore — in tlie 
 charming society and elegant hospitalities of which I had always found so many 
 attractions, as to induce me to prolong my stay there whenever practicable, and 
 always to leave it with reluctance and regret — T repeated my public labours as 
 advantageously as before ; and after a stay of some weeks, set out across the 
 Cumberland Mountains, for the Western States, visiting Harper's Ferry and 
 Fredericton in the way, and making a short stay at each. After crossing the 
 mountains, we descended the Monongahela river to Pittsburgh, in the great iron 
 and coal district, on the banks of the Alleghany, forming the Birmingham or 
 Sheffield of America. Here I remained some time, engaged in the delivery of 
 my lectures to large audiences, and making excursions in the neighbourhood ; 
 after which, we descended the beautiful Ohio, and on the banks of that roman- 
 tic river, visited the Co-operative Community of the Rappites, at their settlement 
 of Economy. 
 
 On the l)anks of the Ohio, we visited and remained some days at Steubenville 
 and Wheeling ; passed from these into the interior of the country, by Zanesville 
 to Columbus, the capital of the State of Ohio ; then descended the valley of the 
 Scioto, to Circleville, Chillicothe, and Portsmouth ; seeing some of the most 
 exquisite landscape-scenery in the world, delighted with the exuberant fertility, 
 as well as picturesque beauty of the country, and inspecting the highly interesting 
 antiquities of the Indian races now extinct, who have left behind them, in re- 
 mains of cities, forts, and sepulchres, indubitable proofs of a much higher state 
 of civilization and proficiency in the arts of polished life, than now exists among 
 the Indian tribes of the present day. We then embarked at Portsmouth, on the 
 Ohio, and descended the remainder of that most beautiful of rivers, till we 
 reached Cincinnati. 
 
 In this " Queen of the Western Waters," as this surprising and promising city 
 is called — numbering a population of 40,000 persons, though scarcely forty years 
 old. and having more spacious streets, more splendid public buildings, and more 
 elegant private mansions and villas, than perhaps any city of its size or age on the 
 continent of North America — we remained some weeks ; making an excarsion 
 from it, to one of its interior settlements, Dayton, in Ohio, the most flourishing of 
 all the many thriving and beautiful villages we saw in our journey, and returning 
 by the lovely valley of the Miami, to the Queen City again. As this was in the 
 month of May, we saw the green hills and verdant vales that encircle her from 
 behind, and the rich and varied banks of the river that washes her borders in 
 front, under the greatest advantages of season, climate, and temperature, and our 
 admiration was proportionately great. 
 
 From Cincinnati we ascended the river Ohio as far as Maysville, for the pur- 
 pose of making a journey from thence through the interior of Kentucky, which 
 was accomplished by going to Lexington, in the heart of the State, and thence by 
 Frankfort, the capital in the interior, to Louisville, the great commercial mart on 
 the banks of the river. If the rural landscape and glowing verdure of Ohio 
 delighted us, the waving plains and woodland pastures of Kentucky, in the glori- 
 ous month of June, excited in a still greater degree our surprise and admiration. 
 Its grass, its flowers, its shrubs, its forest-foliage, seemed as if possessing the 
 virgin brightness and exuberance of a new-boni world. This " Garden of the 
 Union," as it is deservedly called, enchanted us by its fertility and beauty ; and 
 the freshness, frankness, and hearty cordiality of Kentuckian manners and feelings, 
 scarcely gratified us less. In addition to other labours in this rich and interesting 
 State, we held a forest-meeting of the friends of temperance, under the shade of 
 one of its delicious groves, within a few miles of Lexington, on a Sabbath after- 
 noon, in June — the clergy of the city having deferred their services to admit of 
 their congregations attending ; and thousands from far and near coming on horse- 
 back and in carriages to attend our assembly ; while the united choirs of the 
 several churches, joined on the ground, and filled the air with harmony, in the 
 swelling choruses of temperance odes and hymns. 
 
 From Kentucky we proceeded down the Ohio, by Indiana and Illinois ; and, re- 
 entering the giant Mississippi, ascended its stream to St. Louis, the most populous 
 and flourishing city of the Far West, and the probable future metropolis of the
 
 14 MK. huckingham's travels in the 
 
 New World. From hence we proceeded up the Mississippi as far as the Rapids 
 des Moines, on the frontiers of Iowa, as far, indeed, as the pilots, in that stage of 
 the waters at the close of June, could carry us ; the shallowest and lightest boats 
 drawing only a few inches of water, grounding on the rocks. We accordingly 
 descended again to St. Louis, and entering the State of Illinois, by the mouth of 
 its chief river, above Alton, and opposite the great Missouri, we traversed that 
 State as far as Peru ; from whence we journied to Chicago, across the flower- 
 studded prairies of the west, over boundless seas of verdure, without a tree or a 
 dwelling to intercept the view — delighted with the novelty, and impressed with 
 the sublimity of the scene. 
 
 From hence we embarked on the Lake Michigan, touched at the coast of the 
 Wisconsin Territory, visited the Manitoulin Islands of the Indians, Mackinaw, in 
 the Straits of Michillimackinack ; and descended the transparent Lakes Huron 
 and St. Clair, on our way to Detroit — the capital of the most recently created 
 State of Michigan. Passing a few days here, usefully and agreeably, we em- 
 barked on Lake Erie, touching at Sandusky, and remaining some days at Cleve- 
 land by the way ; and after a second visit to Buifalo, we hastened on to 
 Niagara, to re-enjoy the magnificence and grandeur of its sublime and stupendous 
 Falls. 
 
 This terminated our joumeyings in the United States, as from thence we pro- 
 ceeded across Lake Ontario to Toronto, in Upper Canada— where my public 
 reception was as enthusiastic as if I had been known to its inhabitants for years, 
 and had returned to them after a long absence ; and where the private hospitalities 
 and kindnesses extended to us, were even still more gratifying. My lectures were 
 attended here by the most crowded audiences, including all the official rank and 
 influence of the city — the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir George Arthur, and his stafl^; 
 the judges, and civil and military officers of the highest ranks, with their respec- 
 tive families, all gracing them with their presence and support ; and the tem- 
 perance cause had an impetus given to it, through efforts made here while I was 
 on the spot, which roused it from a state of langour in which it had for some time 
 remained. 
 
 Kingston was the next scene of my labours in Canada ; and meeting both the 
 Governor- General, Lord Sydenham, and the bishop of the province here, each were 
 made interested in the object of my labours ; and from each much personal kind- 
 ness and attention was received. 
 
 Descending the magnificent St. Lawrence, and passing through the Thousand 
 Islands, and by the furious rapids of that unrivalled stream, we arrived at Mon- 
 treal, and found the temperance cause in more health and vigour than we had 
 seen it in the Upper Province. My lectures here, as elsewhere, brought around 
 me the intelligent and influential of all classes ; and their sympathies being thus 
 enlisted in my views, their cordial co-operation was readily obtained to the sup- 
 port of efforts made on behalf of temperance and education — first, in a pleasure- 
 excursion made on the St. Lawrence, visiting the villages of the French Canadians 
 by the way ; and then in a public meeting held in the Methodist church of Mon- 
 treal, for the purpose of assisting with funds the temperance society, and the 
 mechanics' institute of the city. 
 
 From hence we proceeded by the St. Lawrence to Quebec, admiring the 
 romantic and majestic mountain-site of this ancient and picturesque city of the 
 founders of New France, as much as we had done before the softer and more 
 luxuriant beauties of Montreal. Here, too, public attention and private hospi- 
 talities were extended to us in unmeasured liberality. My lectures were delivered, 
 first in the Methodist Church, then in the Supreme Court, afterwards in the 
 Theatre, and lastly in the Parliament House ; where, through the courtesy of the 
 Governor- General, the "Canadian House of Commons was placed at my disposal; 
 and at the close of my lectures there, a public address was delivered by me from 
 the Speaker's chair, on the subject of temperance, to one of the most crowded 
 assemblies ever seen within its walls ; the body of the hall and the members' seats 
 being filled with all the principal families of Quebec and the surrounding seigno- 
 ries, and the galleries being occupied by non-commissioned officers and privates of
 
 EASTERN AND WESTERN WORLD. 
 
 15 
 
 the Coldstream Guards — the commander of the garrison having kindly permitted 
 them to be marched in a body to the Parliament House, and under his sanction to 
 attend. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of this meeting ; and it did not 
 evaporate without leaving behind it the substantial effects of many names being 
 added to the list of the society, many pledges being made to total abstinence from 
 all intoxicating drinks, and large additions being secured to the temperance ftmds ; 
 while one remarkable instance occjirred, of a gentleman of fortune and considera- 
 tion in the province, returning home so deeply impressed with what he had heard, 
 that he ordered all the spirits, wine, and beer in his cellar to be brought up, and 
 immediately destroyed, to prevent its further use, either by himself or others ; and 
 having thus cleansed his bands of all contact with the evil, he then joined the 
 temperance society as a valuable and efficient member. 
 
 From Quebec we proceeded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, first to Pictou, and 
 then by the Gut of Canseau, between Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, to Halifax. 
 In this old naval station of our North American colonies, my lectures were as 
 crowded as at Quebec, and private hospitalities and personal friendships made our 
 stay here delightful in the extreme. Amidst all our pleasures, however, the tem- 
 perance cause was not forgotten ; and accordingly a large public meeting was held 
 in the Masonic Hall, at which I delivered an address to a most respectable and 
 attentive auditory, from whom several additions were made to the members of 
 the society, and funds were secured to carry forward the operations of its advo- 
 cacy, while the higher classes were more interested than at any former period in 
 the promotion of its success. 
 
 From Halifax we journeyed across the interior of Nova Scotia to Windsor ; 
 from thence by the river Avon to the Bay of Fundy. and across that gulf to the 
 city of St. John, the chief sea port of New Brunswick ; amid whose busy popu- 
 lation there were still found some hundreds to take up the flame of enthusiasm 
 kindled at Halifax, and make it burn even brighter here ; for amidst the most tem- 
 pestuous and inclement weather, there was no diminution of interest or numbers 
 in those who attended our assemblages, night after night, in uninterrupted suc- 
 cession. 
 
 Ascending from hence the winding aud picturesque river of St. John to Frede- 
 ricton, the capital of the province, we found a cordial reception at the hands of 
 the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Harvey; and in the lectures delivered here, 
 which, from pressure of time, were obliged to be given hi the mornings and even- 
 ings of the same day; the Lieutenant-Governor, and all the heads office, civil and 
 military, the Lord Bishop of the diocese, with the clergy and ministers of different 
 denominations, and the principal families of the city and neighbourhood, with the 
 higher class pupils of all the schools, were among the auditories. 
 
 From hence we proceeded along the banks of the river St. John to Woodstock, 
 the frontier towTi of the British possessions, and Holton, the frontier town of the 
 Americans, crossing the boundary line in sight of the celebrated Mars Hill, the 
 commencement of the disputed territory ; and from thence onward, by Bangor and 
 Portland, to Boston, in the United States. Some of the ladies of this city, who 
 had desired to testify their approbation of my services on behalf of objects in 
 which they took an interest, here honoured me with the presentation of an elegant 
 silver vase, bearing this inscription : — 
 
 PRESENTED BY SEVERAL LADIES OF BOSTON TO 
 
 JAMES SILK BUCKINGHAM, 
 
 FOR HIS EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF SEAMEN, AND IN THE CAUSE OF 
 
 HUMANITY IN INDIA. 
 
 I record this act of kindness on the part of the ladies of Boston, because it 
 were injustice to them, and ingratitude in vie, to suppress it; nor was it the less 
 acceptable to me from its blending together expressions of gratitude for aiding the 
 cause of humanity in the Eastern world, with thanks for efforts made on the 
 mariner's behalf in the Western. This was, indeed, an unexpected honour ; for 
 who could ever have anticipated that the very labours for which I had been 
 exiled and despoiled by the East India government, and refused redress by a 
 Whig ministry, publicly and solemnly pledged to do me justice at home, should
 
 ](> MR. TIUCKINGUAm's TRAVELS, ETC. 
 
 have found so dilTorent an estimate, and dniwn tortli so difToront a reward, from 
 .those on whom I hud no claim of patriotism or gratitude, on the other side of the 
 Atlantic ? 
 
 This journey terminated our third year in America; at the close of which we 
 embarked in the President steamer, at New York, for Liverpool, and after being 
 obliged to put back for fuel and resume our voyage, we readied home on the 
 28th day after our first starting, or the '29th of November, tliankfiil to a protecting 
 Providence for our preservation, delighted to see our native land again, and still 
 more so to embrace the. relatives and friends whom we had left behind. 
 
 I have thus sketched, as rapidly and briefly as I could, the rough outline of our 
 voyages by sea, and journies by lanl, during tlie three years of my absence from 
 England, in which I gave my gratuitous services at about loO meetings for the 
 promotion of " Temperance, Education, Benevolence, and Peace," and was instru- 
 mental to the raising, by these means, of scarcely less than 100,000 dollars, in col- 
 lections and subscriptions, emanating from these meetings, for various philanthropic 
 purposes, the custody and administration of which were coniided to other hands. 
 The more minute details of all the many varied and interesting scenes and events 
 presented by this extensive tour, will soon be submitted to the public, in the 
 volumes now preparing for the press, and in these, of course, will be embodied 
 all the general observations on other topics which have been thought worthy of 
 record. 
 
 The work alluded to is in a forward state, and will, we understand, 
 be issued from the press within the present or the ensuing month, at 
 the farthest. Of the qualifications of its author, for the task he has 
 undertaken, the preceding narrative of his journeys in the Eastern and 
 Western hemispheres, affords abundant proof : of his opportunities to 
 obtain the most accurate information on all the subjects to which his 
 inquiries were directed, the reader will judge for himself; and of the 
 manner in which the present work will be got up, in its printing and 
 embellishments, which are very numerous, the style of Mr. Bucking- 
 ham's former volumes on Palestine, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Persia, 
 is a sufficient guarantee. 
 
 It may render this brief sketch — in which we have condensed the 
 adventures and labours of nearly half a century within the compass of a 
 single sheet — still more complete, if we mention that Mr. Buckingham's 
 writings have been as voluminous, as his wanderings have been exten- 
 sive ; and that few persons living have produced more by the labours 
 of their pen than the indefatigable subject of this memoir ; as the fol- 
 lowing list of his various works will show. 
 
 1 The Calcutta Journal.... 33 vols. 4to. 6 Travels in Palestine 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 2 The Oriental Herald 24 vols.Svo. 7 Travels in Arabia 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 3 The London Sphynx .... 4 vols. 4to. 8 Travels in Mesopotamia, 1 vol 4to. 
 
 4 The London Athenaeum, 4 vols. 4to. 9 Travels in Persia 1 vol. 4to. 
 
 5 The Parliamentary Revievv,6vols.8vo. 10 Parliamentary Reports... 2vols. fol. 
 
 making a total of seventy-seven volumes, averaging about 600 pages 
 each ; in the writing, correcting, and general superintendence of which, 
 the amount of labom- required must have been such as only the greatest 
 degree of intellectual energy and activity could supply.
 
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