Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-10-06 00:00:00

KIR KDALE

DEDICATED TO THE

REV. C. E. TIT i'ERTON,

BY A
LIVERPOOL WORKING MAN.

" Woe unto IVni that give% his ne+ghboar drink, that putieit thy
bottle to him and makest him drunken."—aabak. ii. 15.

(Continued from 23rd September]

CHAPTER

SCCIAL AMIE DOMESTIC EVILS OF D2UNICENNE3B.

I believe no man living, who uses intoxicating drinks, is free from
the da-ger of at least occasional—and, if occasional, of ultimate
habitual—exceis. Young men of the very finest powers hive been led
by them jute vice, ruin, and early death. Such have become virtual
paracides—tradesmen made bankrupts—men of talent discharged
from lucrative situations—Sunday-school teachers led to prisan—
scholars and superintendents dragged to profligacy and shame—men
deserted by relations and friends—ministers of religion, of high
ac.cleinic honours, splendid eloquence, and great usefulness, hurled
over the precipice of public infamy, with their eyes wide open, and
gazing with horror on their fate. Men of the strongest and clearest
intellect and vigour, made walker than children or fools—gentlemen
cf high standing and refined taste made worse than brutes—kind
husbands and fathers into menstars—hmast men into villains—
Christian ladies into bloated seti. " Under the ravages of drunkenness
the land mourns." Drunkenness causes me ,t of the shipwrecks, fires
fatal aceideats,crimes, out ages, murders and suicides; robs numberless
wives of a husband's affections, and hundreds of thousands of children
of a panent's fondness ; strips thousands of homes of every comfort ;
deprives tens of th sesendi of poor children of e tucation, and turns
them into the stre ; empties the House of God and fills gin shops—
the D tempi 3—continually; trains 1,030,030 of oar youths for
some penal settlement ; the prison, poor-: ease, or the asylum, hurries at
the very least, every year, 54,000 immortal being. to premature graves.
Drunkenness expels reason, dro vns the memory, distempers the
body, defaces be suty, diminishes strength, infismes the blood, causes
Internal, external. and incurable dice tees ; , is a witch to the senses, a
devil to the soul, a thief to the purse, a•beggar's companion, a wde's
woe, an I childrens' sorrow; it makes a strong men weak, a wise min
a fool. 113 is worse than a beast, and a se'f-murderer, who d, inks to
oth n good health, and robs himself of his own. He is, I repeat, w srse
than a beast, for no animal will designedly intoxicate itself. By the
effects of this Infamous drink—this brutalising, reason-destroying
drink—his evil passions and tempers are freed from restraint, and
while I s a state of intoxication he commits actione, which, when
sober, he would have shuddere 1 a sly to have thought of. many an
evil deed has been done, many a murder committed, when those
who did these horrid deeis were ander the influence of the cursed
drink. Sca••cely an assize posses without some victim of alcoholic
drink attemptins; to palliate his guilt by the' plea that he was drunk
This excuse the law wisely allows net; for, if men voluntarily
(lewd' e themselves of their reason, surely they ought not to be held
innocent of whatever th-y may do n ider such circumstances.
Indeed, it will be my business to prove that drunkenness is the
source of nearly all the social and domestic evils that afflict the
hn-nan race. It is, I onfess, utterly imeoseible to exaggerate those
evils ; the great diffle, shy is, in being entirely unable, in any fo m, to
paint them in colsurs stunisiently- vivid to produce anything
like an adeonate Impression. Intemperance in nature is a tyrant ;
bat of every species of tyranny, drankenness is the most despotic.
Drunkenness is mite wasting in its rava-vs, more terrible in its
results, more untiring in its destruction, than either famine, pe3ti.
lance, or war. These dire evils have their -easous of repose, but
drunkenness gives no respite, its dread ma :history works night and
day, and multiplies w.th each succeeding ag Drunkenness not
only involves a feed il and sinful waste in its vary being, but Is the
teeming source of want and waste. It Is not only a pest in every
family where it exists, but is the praparer of every other pa t ; in
fine, it biteth like the serpent, and stings like the adder .
To some of the rem sriable extremes and stratagems which the
scorpion bitten victims of drunkenness resort,in order to gratify their
appetites and ape ease the desire for e'rang drink, which drunkenness
creates, I will endeavour to direct attention.
The pawning of clothing, furniture, &c., for money for the purpose
of obtaining intoxicating drink, is carried to an extent of which some
have but little conception.
A witness before a Parliamentary Committee, app sin-ed to inquire
into the cause and extent of crime, deposed that he saw two men come
out of a public-house in London, an -1, after talking awhite togethes,
deliberately tske off their shirts in the open street, and one of them
took them to the pawabreker's for m iney to proc are snore drink.
One Monday morning, about 10 o'clock, I saw three nem in Freda-
sick-street, in this town; they hrd hat drink. When passing them I
overheard one se, ing, My shirt Is so bad, or I would pawn it, but
yours are good, let me pawn them. I halted to nee the upshot of
that &larder business. The two men said very wall, and turned up an
entry, opp)sita the Rona in Catholic Chip rl then bullltng, and deli-
berately took off their shirts and gave them to• the man to pawn for
more drink.

he most singular instance of soheming I ever ha ird of to obtain
intoxicating drink come ac2identally ton:ay knowledge, whilst stair: ing
in a smallware-shop nekiln-lane, a pawnbroker's assistant came
in, just at the moment a drunken mai passed, doubtless reminding
the young man of the el cum, tanee, when he observe I —" the strong at
dodge to raise the wind I ever heard of ottearred to-day at our shop by
a man from Orrnskirk. Thinking I Lnew everybody there, I
felt anxious to h-ar the affair, and urged him to narrate the
circumstance. Ho ob,,e ved that two man from that piece were on
what they termed a spree in the team, and their money being done,
were at their wits end to raise more. One of them. hoirevar, had a
valuable timber leg, which he resolved upon pledging ; t r that end
he came to our shop, and having unshippad the inanimate porti,r,
of himself—his timber limb—and deposited it on the counter, said,
give me las o that. After a minute's ins.,ection, I said there could be
little doubt bat ere long the amputated portion of the inanimate
would be j ,fined to the ani not i portion; of the men, and that they
world perfarrn their united functio 14. I advanced the money, when
the other carried the legless to the public-house, that they might
continue their debau .h.
Mr. ileropath stand to a Parliamentary Committee that he hal
the son of a woman in his emgloy, who sell the teeth out of her he td,
her hair, and positively, on one occasion, so strong was her appetite
fur drink, and not having moans to procure ic, that she oTored her
body, when dead, to the do ;tor, for five shillings, for money to obtan
drink.

I wit here state two circumstances that occurred in the street
where I reside, illustrative of the socia' aad dom !Ale evils re raitin g
from drunkennes,. O the 7ch of March, my wife was retur-ing
home, when she observed two c'll!dren, about font a i• 1 six years of age,
Wtho at shoes and stockings, standing by a public-house door—amid a
rainy night, and a keen, c•itting March win I—tha sliest tin the
door a little open, an 1 crying to its mother inside to come home and
put a fan' coals on the firs. They vera shivering with, cold. Tans,
do mothers spend the money in teat that bring' starvati n sal rein,
instead of those things w:aleh would make their poor children warm
and comfo7table.

On the 9th of the same month I was retarnin; home front a meet.
Ing, abut ten o'clock, whei a person taking off his hat, and callin;;
me by my name, al 'rained in vet; re tpeatfully by saying, " I have
hd no meat t '-da', sir, and I have not wherewi,h t pay my lodg•
ings ; will you assist me ?" Ina few days afterwards I happened to be in
the police court, and saw this individnal arraigned beton) Mr. Mansfield,
charged by hit mistral:ls wire, wi,h tbres lit,le children, for ill-using
her and ne,;.leeting to provide far her and her chilren. Poor man,
he hid no mean,* of provi ling fu his f tmily. Mr. Manstioll com-
mitted him to prison for titres no the, with bard labour, and the
paro Altai aethorities posted his no 113 on the walls of the town as a
rogue aid vogab ind for deserting his timid?, H re is a men who,
whin flat I kilo him, Was re
_;orled an one of tie meet respectable
men in Wigan relied thro agh intedeitin;• drink to this degraded
and humiliating c mditioa. Hit h: been to!d 531733 drtem years az:),
when he kept his horse ant gig, that this sod c drafty voi!d bean
him, he would have sail with 033 of old, " In thy servant a dog th,t
he should do such thingn." "Let him that thinketh he standeth take
heed lest he also fall." rots' abstinence is the only safe shelter from
the avenging power of in'ox;catin drinks.

I know an a brewer, wll3, twenty years since had his
hunter=, and was living at the rate of not less than .£l,OOO per annum,
through drunkenness was so re laced as to ba dependent 11,,0n a few
poor men, to whom ne Was kind ii his palmy days, wh3 sympathised
with him and kept him oat of the w) khluse, and, to their hen tar
be ierec)rde 1, carried him to the grave.

Th -se facts surely need no comment. I simply ask, if that which
produces wretchedness asd beg; try, de Tolls the husband, the wife,
the parent, the son, and the d to Bar of that self-rega d so ess ma!ial
to the good order and alvenccare•it of society, (tura it no: to be
removed ? Bit further. Mr. Poynter sated before a parliamentary
comm....tee that he hat air efficient clerk in h s ecn2ioy, who, after a
Lang deba:ch, took poison, from the effects of which he on'y recovered
through the aid of D.. Clatterbeck ; yet this c rcumst ince did not
deter him from ,:ruakenness ; for, visit n; amen.; the poet for a
charitAb'e purpose, I found his widow and five children is extreme
poverty, ha having committal shield@ while 1 iboar:ng under that
dreadful raala ly of drunkena .ss, the deliriu n trem3ns. I offered
this man, ad led Mr. Poynter, £2O per annum if he would abstain
from intoxicating drink, be . he could nal', and ultimately I had to
discharge