The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-06-01 00:00:00

INTEMPERANCE ON TEMPERANCE.

Whether Burke's famous truism, or paradox,
that vice loses half its evil by losing all its gross-
ness, is or is not true, certain it is that virtue loses
more than half its attractiveness when it dispenses
with truth. Here is the author of the Maine
Liquor-law, the Hon. Neal Dow—whatever the
prefix may mean—coming all the way from America
to lecture us at Exeter Hall, on the virtue of
temperance and the evils of drunkennes.
Now, as far as we understand temperance, or any
other virtue, it has no ethical value, except as the
embodiment of a moral principle. A man is, in
fact, not temperate merely because he refrains from
strong drink, if, at the same time, he abstains from
strong truth. To be really temperate, is to be tem-
perate in all things. Mr. Neal Dow seems to make
up for temperance as to beer and gin by intemper-
ance in assertion. He is a perfect drunkard when
he conies to statistics; and he positively labours
under delirium tremens when he deals with figures.
We have long thought that when a man give the
rein to his passions, it matters little whether it is in

arithmetic or bumpers. Mr. Neal Dow is a down-
right, profligate when he comes to facts and asser-
tions. He tells us what the exact number of one
drunkards is—how many of them die per annum—
how many starving women we have—and how
many " children we have growing up in vice and
crime, on account of the traffic in intoxicating
drinks." Here are Mr. Dow's statistics for England
alone—" The suppression of the liquor traffic
would save 75.000.000/ per annum in money, in
adeition to an equal saving in time, so that the
whole saving would be 150,000,0001. The grog
shops slay 60,000 Englishmen every year ; there
are at this day 600 000 drunkards, more than
600,000 starving women, and more than 1,000,000
children growing up in vice and crime, on account
of ice." These are hard words and round figures
—very round figures. They trip smoothly off the
tongue. Millions and hundred thousands echo
pleas intly in Exeter Hall. Like the oracles of
old, they—
" Run through the arched roof in words deceiving."
Ciphers are cheap. and Mr. Dow uses them
alcordingly. His statement is, that this country
enen•ls 75,000,000/, per anum, in liquor. In 1853.
the gross expenditure of the state was 56,000.0001.,
or nearly so—the estimated expenditure for this
present year, 1857, as calculated by Sir Cornewall
Lewis. is 65,000,000/ , and the revenue is reckoned
at 66,000,0001. The whole rental of the laud of the
United Kingdom is not estimated by economists
much, ii at all, to exceed 40,000,0001. The Crimean
war is said to have cost 76,000,0001 ; and yet Mr.
Dow wants us to believe that the liquor expenditure
of the United Kingdom is very nearly twice
its annual rental Nor is this nonsense
merely a foreign importation, and the customary
rant of Exeter Hall. The judicial bench has been
d.divering itself of a jeremiad, and in Ireland
Judge Crampton has informed us that Father
Mathew's temperance reform is at an end—that a
reactionary movement has commenced—and that
the consumption of spirits is largely on the increase.
As regards the sister country, and comparing
1657 with the violent and exceptional reform of
1840-41, which attended the preaching of
Father Mathew, —when the consumption fell
from eleven to six millions of gallons of spirits
—we are not prepared to deny that drinking may
be on the increase in Ireland ; but it is some con-
solation to know that, as compared with the man-
ners of a century ago, there is a marked
improvement in our general habits. In 1742, the
spirituous liquors consumed in England and Wales
gave 3 I.6th gallons for every individual of the
population—in 1842, the consumption was half.a-
gallon per head. That is to say, it has actually
diminished more than five-sixths. These are facts
familiar to every reader of a book so elementary as
Mr. Porter's " Progress of the Nation." As to Mr.
Neal Dow, we do not wish to be offensive to a
foreigner,who doubtless means well,but we deny that
he has the least authority for his figures. They
are mere inventions. It is as impossible to show
how many "Englishmen the grog-shops slay"every
year, as it is to know what is the proportion of
headaches or fits of the gout to the population.
There are no tables or returns on the subject ; nor
is it in the nature of things to ascertain who dies,
or does not die, of drinking. Mr. Dow very
likely got his number in some temperance maga-
zine ; but it is purely arbitrary. Probably
some fanatical advocate of the Maine Law
found the figure 6 buzzing in his head, and
from the number of the beast, which of
course, he identified with strong drink, he inferred
the number of the beast's victims. The whole
series has a suspicious look. 60,000 men die of drink.
600,000 men are drunkards, 600,000 women are
consigned to misery and starvation. Nor is Mr.
Neal Dow less intemperate with figures of speack
than with figures of arithmetic. His logic is equal
to his statistics. He is one of those cheerful
reasoners who draw equal and indiscriminate con-
clusions from opposite premises. With him, both
progress and retrogression aro equally sure
auguries of victory. Unless the beershops are
suppressed, England will be distanced by Ame-
rica ! Why ? Because America had adopted the
Main Liquor-law ? No ; but " because America
will put down the traffic." But will America
put down the traffic? Nothing, according to this
sanguine gentleman, can be more certain ; because,
having tried the prohibition law, the very State
from which it took its name, has just abolished it.
And here comes in, with great force, Judge Cromp-
ton's testimony He states distinctly that Father
Mathew's reform is not only at an end, but has
been succeeded by a " terrible reaction ;" and that
Cork, which was the scene of the first and greatest
triumphs of the apostle of temperance, has
now a pre-eminence in drunkenness and con-
sequent crime. Of the United States similar
reports reach us. After a trial of the Maine
Liquor-law, the rebound into drunkenness is terri-
ble. And in either case the cause is the same.
People take the pledge, or pass a liquor law, under
the influence of fanaticism, the cause of abstienence
is connected, as in America, with some political,
or, as in Ireland, with with some religious faction
—and at first the thing works well. But the seed
is cast on stony ground. It has no depth in convic-
tion. It is not based on any moral change. In a
word, it has not penetrated, still less permeated,
the whole character. The man may not drink spirits;
but as far as character and principle go, he is
as immoral as ever. His immorality either takes
some other form, or. as soon as the excitement has
passed away, he falls back into his old courses.
And this will always be the case where it is at-
tempted to cultivate the virtues separately. An
anti-liquor pledge, or an anti opera pledge, or an
anti-tobacco pledge, or an anti-melted -butter
pledge, is a mere snare. We cannot be vir-
tuous in separate plots of the field of morals
Not only is it impossible to make men sober by
act of parliament, but it is impossible to make them
sober by inculcating sobriety in drink as a virtue
capable of being practised singly and alone.—
Saturday Review

THE NEW MEMBERS AND THE DOWRY
QUESTION.

Mr. Coningham has made the attempt to reduce
the annuity of the Princess Royal from £B,OOO a
year to £6,000. He has failed very decidedly, for
he could only muster 16, tellers included, against
330. But he has done well and wisely, and so has
Mr. Cox in seconding him. Tha -body of the
professedly liberal members of parliament are
under a moral paralysis. The popularity of the
Premier, and the pen of his " C 0.," the Times, are
the bugbears that " fright," the new members
especially, " from their propriety." They dread the
power of the prevailing cant. As to Lord Palmer-
ston, he affects to consider it quite beneath his
gentility, something indecorous and indecent, to
answer the observations of those who object to the
amount of the dowry. The novices are awe-struck
with the humbug of his pretended courtly horror.
They are appalled at the notion of being thought
vulgar, snobbish, unfit for all tolerable society.
The Premier " dares them with his cup like larks.'
Do they think that the old liberals whom they have
supplanted, and whom Disraeli so meanly rejoices
to get rid of, would have been thus dumb
foundered ? Not a bit of it. And the nation will
soon ask of their successors how it is that they
can find no voice to check an extravagance
founded on the precedent of times notoriously
wasteful and corrupt. This is a matter, we
will say, but of 11.6,0001. too much. But what
an index is it to future extravagance through das-
tardly concession by the fear of being marked as
low-minded, ungenteel, and particular ! What an
index it is to the cajolery that will be brought to
bear during the recess as to the acceptance of an
inefficient, if not altogether a sham Reform Bill !
What a test has been taken of the material that
Mr. Hayter has to work upon ! Well may the two
" parties" revel, like old partners in spoil, at
having all the field left to themselves, without inter-
lopers on their trade. The constituencies, however,
will be on the look out. They do not sit under
the eye of the Premier. They do not care for the
patronage of the Times. They will soon begin to
rub their eyes that they may take a look at affairs
for themselves. We advise the M. P.'s to prepare
on their own part for the scrutiny.--Weekly
Dispaub