The Express.
London, England, 1867-06-11 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE 11, 1867.

THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION IN

AMERICA.

(►EOM OUR RPECIAL 0011REAPONDINT.)

NSW YORK. MAT Z.

1 spoke in my last of the war which is being
waged in various States against drinking. In Mas-
sachusetts, as I mentioned, the " Maine law," as
all these anti-liquor laws are now called, of 1855
has been revived, and the struggle is terrific,
dividing the republican party, which has hitherto
had harmonious possession of the State, into two
hostile camps, and shaking the reputation of some
distinguished politicians to its very centre. In Con-
necticut an old law is being furbished up for use
in the same way, and the clang of tho old tem-
perance weapons, after a silence of many
years, is again heard. In New York a law
of extreme severity against Sunday drinking
has now for some months been enforced with
extraordinary rigour, and Philadelphia, taking
courage by the example of this city, is getting a
bill passed, which promises to outdo its prototypes,
to restrain drinking. The chances are that a
sort of revival on this subject will now run through
the country, and that we shall see temperance
legislation resorted to in most of the Northern
States before another year is over.

The cause of this sudden outbreak of zeal is
nut very far to seek. The generation which,
in the first flush of temperance zeal, attempted
complete prohibition, has either passed away,
or grown less hopeful and less energetic, but
a fresh body of zealous propagandists has
appeared on the scene, and it is fair to
them to add that they find a partial revival of the
drinking habits which their fathers did much to
abolish. Thirty years ago New England was one
of the most tippling countries in the world : ruin
was the favourite liquor, but brandy and Madeira
stood on every sideboard ; nobody ever paid a visit
to a friend without taking " a nip " before ho left
the house. Moreover, even in those days, when
New England towns were really Puritan
towns, which they cannot be said to be
now, before railroads and steamers had
thrown them open to the inroads of the profane,
there was hardly one of any size which could not
boast a set of drunken young men, the despair of
the churches and scandal of the orderly. Minis-
ters drank, more or less ; deacons drank, church-
members drank ; and, in fact, the immorality of
drinking had not dawned upon anybody.
The temperance movement changed all this.
Drinking was made by it not simply disreputable,
but immoral and irreligious, and you are pretty
sure to find now that a pious American family, at
least in the country districts, is also a total absti-
nence family. The young generation has, in fact,
grown up to look upon drinking at all as a form
of immorality. I lighted last winter on a striking
illustration of this in the case of friends of
mine who pass their winters in Boston, but
have a country house on the hills, in one
of those districts which the railroads have
not tapped, and in which old New England is still
found in a tolerable state of preservation. The
family brought back with them as a servant the
daughter of a small farmer living in their neigh-
bourhood, a girl of some education, and with a
good deal of what may be c►lled intellectual ambi-
tion, one of the class, in short, who used thirty
years ago to work in the Lowell Mills. Her main
object, as it afterwards appeared, in wishing to go
to Boston, was to " see picture galleries and im-
prove herself " generally, through the usual aids
offered by a large city. She was, of course, very
soon undeceived as to the amount of time for self-
culture at the disposal of a parlour maid, and she
returned to her home; but it appeared that the
things which had most influenced her in quitting
her place were the moral and religious defect& of her
employers. They had wino on their table every day,
and did not attend church regularly—and probably
she was more shocked by the wine than by the non-
attendance
at church. In fact, I think I may say
that amongst the religious world in the Eastern
States drinking at all, even in moderation, has as-
sumed the rank, I will nut say of a sin, but of an
inconsistency of which a " professor of religion"
ought not to be guilty. I know a gentleman here
whose fame as a philanthropist and reformer has
spread over the continent, and whose name is as-
sociated in everybody's mind with good works and
a really religious spirit, but who retains a taste for
light wines, drinks them, and gives them to his
friends. He receives from time to time strong re-
monstrances—sometimes anonymous and some-
times signed—upon the guilt and shame of
having wine on his table. Moreover—this
is, perhaps, a stronger illustration of the pre-
vailing feeling than any I could offer—the reli-
gious press here, that, is the weekly organs of the
religious denominations, although the morality of
some of them as regards the weightier matters of
the law is lamentably low, will not insert advertise-
ments of wines or liquors. Nay, many of them,
which have no hesitation in printing as conspicu-
ously as may be desired the worst advertise-
ments of quack doctors, will sternly refuse an ad-
vertisement even of table claret, or hock, or small
beer.

Of course you find comparatively little of this
rigid temperance feeling in the large cities. The
growth of luxury there carries everything before
it, and, in fact, I doubt whether the temperance
agitation ever made any impression on the class in
cities which am afford to drink wine. At all
events most people in Now York, and Philadelphia,
and Boston, who can afford to drink wine, drink
it, and here as in England claret has of late years
come more and more into use, although the popular
wine is champagne, which in America, as in Rus-
sia, lam anufactured by the hundred thousand dozen.
The influence of city tastes and city morality has of
course also spread somewhat into the country
round, so that within reasonable distance
even a man of average piety may have
wine on his table without causing very great
scandal. There is, however, outside the religious
world, and almost impervious to its influence, a
large and growing class, recruited every year by
foreign immigrants, to whom the temperance feeling
is a pious humbug, and temperance legislation a
tyrannical interference with their liberty, who
regard, in fact, the right to purchase and consume
as much liquor as he pleases, and where he pleases,
as one of the rights of man. This class has been
growing steadily for twenty years, and its growth
has been stimulated by the development in the west
of what I suppose I may call an enormous whisky
industry. Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Ken-
tucky have become within the lifetime of the

present generation famous for the production
of whisky made from rye or Indian corn, and
which is known as " rye whisky," or " Mononga-
hela," or " Bourbon," from the districts in which
it is manufactured. It is somewhat peculiar in
flavour, is hardly any fiercer than most English
sherry, and when old and good, possesses what I
suppose I might call a " bouquet," unknown in
the Irish or Scotch distilleries. It may be drunk
raw without inconvenience, and is perhaps the best
14 all spirituous liquors for the manufacture of
" grog "—that is, for mixing with cold water. I
have never met with an Englishman, Irishman,
or Scotchman who did not prefer it, for
every day use, to British whisky. It has
had in this country a great and growing
success, so that the distilling interest engaged in it
is now one of the moat powerful,politicallyaswellas
otherwise, to be found in the country. The whisky
has, however, proved the most formidable enemy
that the temperance advocates have yet had to con-
tend with. Its cheapness, its mildness of flavour, and
more than this, the widely-diffused belief, which
the doctors have done much to strengthen, in its
value as a tonic, have caused an enormous con-
'gumption of it everywhere, but especially at the
West. There the men drink it, the boys drink
it, and most of "the delicate women" drink it,
and, as might be expected, the number of people
who drink it to excess increases every year. I say
nothing of its consumption at the South, because
the temperance movement never made any progress
worth mention at the South. All whites there
have drunk strong drink time out of memory,
and cling to the bottle as tenaciously as to " the
nigger." In fact in the South-west whisky has
become the daily beverage of the people, so that
the story of the Arkansas woman who wailed over
her sad condition, as having " six small children
and nary drop of whisky in the house," is not so
much an exaggeration as it seems ; no more is that
other one which describes the luggage of a Ken-
tucky gentleman leaving home for two or three
days as usually consisting of two bottles of whisky
with a clean shirt to put between them to keep
them from breaking in his bag.

Of course the great promoters of whisky drink-
ing, as of all kinds of drinking, are the bar-rooms.
They have done more than anything else to bring
about the revival of drinking, by which the tem-
perance advocates are alarmed, and which has
roused them into a renewal of their crusade
against the liquor dealers. As long as there are
" bars" in every hotel, in every restaurant, in
every billiard-room, in every club, and at every
street corner, in which " drinks" are retailed for
small sums, and to which it is not disreputable for
respectable men to resort, it will be impossible to
break up the drinking habits of the community.
If wine, and whisky, and other liquors could in
respectable places be only had by the bottle, so
that it would not be convenient for anybody,
or possible for most people to order
them whenever the fancy seized them, a
great check would be put on the prevailing
practice. But as long as every man, and, what is
worse, every boy, has at his elbow a shop in which
all kinds of " drinks " are served out at small
prime, and " in quantities to suit purchasers," no
amount of preaching will make much impression
on intemperance. Amongst a large and growing
class of the community every incident of daily life
which involves the meeting of people who are not
met every day is marked by a " drink ;" the means
of getting the drink is never many yards distant. Of
course, as boys grow up, oue of the firstbita of " man-
liness " which they ape is the practice of " swig-
ging "in bars, and as bars are now arranged it is
impossible for the most watchful parent to prevent
a boy from frequenting them, or for the best dis-
posed boy to avoid the temptation. So that I think, if
restraining or prohibitory laws can ever be justi-
fied, those which the temperance party are now
seeking to enforce here may be, at least in so far
as they seek to prevent the retailing of liquor, " in
drinks." Of course the expectation that the sale
of intoxicating liquors can ever be totally pre-
vented is a wild one, and even a prohibition
directed against retailing for consumption on the
premises may be practically evaded. Men may
form "clubs," as they do now in Boston, in whichthe
liquor is purchased wholesale, or served out after-
wards in small doses to members. But then
evasions of this kind never can become general.
Most men will not put themselves to this trouble ;
very few men, indeed, will do so, once the excite-
ment of tricking the police and bailing the pious
reformers is over ; and thousands of young men
who are now on the downward road would un-
doubtedly be saved to society and themselves if
the nuisance of bar-rooms were entirely abated,
and if no " drinks" could be had in places of public
resort. Whisky in glasses might doubtless be long
served out in hotelaand other placesby stealth ; but
if the law were fairly enforced for a short time, pur-
-1 chases of this kind would become disreputable.
Violations of the law in America always in the long
' run get to be considered disgraceful,and I think
it not at all unlikely that a few years of steady
effort would work a vast change in the habits of
the people. The temperance movement has even'
amongst the Irish powerful friends. The spectacle
of thousands on thousands of Irishmen celebrating
St. Patrick's-day in the streets, without a drunken
man to be seen amongst them, is one which may
be witnessed here every year, and a better proof of
the growth amongst them of habits of sobriety
could hardly be offered.

A TOUCHING TRIEUTE.—Booth, the actor, seems
to have developed • new method of testifying the depth
and strength of human affection. A Boston paper records
that while riding in a cur lately, he trod on the toes of a
gouty and stout gentleman, who, naturally enough, broke
out into very vehement expressions of wrathful discon-
tent. Glancing at his tormentor, and recognising him to
be the great representative of Hamlet, he passed at once to
a state of the most ecstatic delight, and humbly requested
him to stand on his top all night, as he felt excessively
proud of the honour be was thus conferring upon him. The
annalist says that a more sincere token of affection has eel-
dom been vouchsafed to any mortal. We should think
not. It was truly a touching tribute to transcendent
genius. But we decline to imitate it. (:mat as is our ad-
miration for Mr. Booth's Hamlet, we prefer that he should
stand on his own feet rather than ours.—New York Times,
Ma z 21.
FRUIT FLAVOURED AT WILL. —A gardener of
Quad has, after many trials, succeeded in giving any kind
of fruit the flavour he pleases while it is still on the tree.
Let us take an apple for instance ; he pricks it rather
deeply in four or five places with a large needle, and then
lets it dip for a while in • bowl containing • liquid pos-
sessing the flavour he wishes to communicate. After a few
seconds this liquid will have penetrated into the pulps;
and this operation being repeated two or three times, at
intervals of eight or ten days, the apple is left to ripen on
the tree, and will subsequently be found to have acquired
the baste either of strawberry, raspberry, cloves,
cording to the liquid employed.— Gahoriani.
DISPENSARY TOR SKIN DISEASES, 56, GREAT
MAILIOROOOII-waxer, BEGINT-sneer, W.—Twohundred
and seventeen patients were relieved at this dispensary
during the week ending Jane 8.