The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-10-09
DRUNKENNESS IN ENGLAND


Cardinal Manning Says 1t Can BE Crushed
Only by Grand Uprising of the PeO-
pie.
What seems to us by far the most
valuable contribution that has yet been
made to the recent discussion of the
subject of Temperance is furnished by
Cardinal Manning in the last number
of the FOrtnightly ReUie0 of London.
lntemperance he treats as the ina
tional vice" of England, agreeing with
Mr.. Gladstone that it is the source of
more evils than war, pestilence and
famine. For upward of a thousand
years the English have had the reputa-
ton of being hard drinkers, but the
vice was a comparatively minor one
until three centuries ago. Then alco-
hol, which previously had been almost
wholly confined to scientific expert
ments and certain trades, was intro
duced to the public, and the dangers
of the drinking habit were multiplied
many fold. 1t not only became of it
self common drink in the form of
distilled liquors, but was also used as
an agent for giving ale and wine "'new
and intenser qualities of intoXication.
Drunkenness increased with frghtful
rapidity, so that at last the barriers
which legislation has essayed to set up
against it by system of licensing laws
have been 'oYerWhelmed and swept
away in the swelling food of intoxicat-
ing drink"
fHha,a hara tho lct oo1a 20
practical reform has been the power of
capital, for $700,000,000 is annually
employed in the supply and sale and
distribution of drink in England; and,
as Cardinal Manning says, although
the manufacturers and sellers do not
intend to get the whole population
drunk, it is for the prosperity of their
trade that the facilities of drunkenness
should be multiplied and the increase
of drunkenness made inevitable.
Therefore the number of drinking
places, which was about so, 900 in 1929,
is now nearly 200, 900, though mean
time the population has hardly doubled.
The capitalists of the drink trade and
their friends, political and business,
have also been strong enough to sway
the elections, the House of Commons
and the Government in the interests of
their tremendous traffic.
But how is the evil to be conquered?
Cardinal Manning answers, as we have
answered, only by an uprising of the
people themselves against the system
which has so long made their homes
| desolate and their lives intolerable. "
''Our national vice." he says further,
with truth and force, twill never be
corrected from above. Governments,
magistrates and police have iabored, or
seemed to labor, for these three hun
dred years to diminish or control the
spread of intemperance. They are too
remote to influence the millions of peo-
PIE" Coercion will not avail, and it
could not be inforced ''short of mar
tial law" But let the people who suf-
fer most from the evils of drink once
learn to recognize and hate their enc
my, and the remedy will soon be found.
1--WE have been told" says the Car
dinal, 'that the people need and wish
for public houses. 1t is strange, then,
that the most popular House of Com
mons should contain nearly three hun
dred members pledged to local option,
and about half of them in favor of a
direct local vote.' The more demo-
cratic England becomes, the louder the
call for the lessening of the temptations
to drunkenness.
The resistless Temperance movement
which will shatteg the political power
of rum will be started by the people to
whom rum has been the greatest curse.
| N. Y. Sun,