The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1886-10-01
DRUNKENNESS IN ENGLAND

Cardinal Manning Says 1t Can BE Crushed
Only by Grand Uprising of tho Peo-
pie.
What seems to us by far the most
valuable contribution that has vet been
made to the recent discussion of the
subject of Temperance is furnished BY
Cardinal Manning in the last number
of the Fortnightly ReUiee0 Of London.
Intemperance he treats as the ma
tional vice. of England, agreeing with
Mr.. Gladstone that it is the source of
more evils than war, pestilence and
famine. For upward of thousand
years the English have had the reputa-
ton of being hard drinkers, but the
vice was comparatively minor one
until three centuries ago. Then alec
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 a 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 frightful
rapidity, so that at last the barriers
which legislation has essayed to set up
against it by system of licensing laws
have been overwhelmed and swept
away in the swelling flood of intoxicat-
ing drink"
There, as here, the great obstacle to
practical reform has been the power of
capital, for $500, 100000 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 1000 in 1929,
is now nearly 1000, 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 p"
''OuE national vice. he says further
with truth and force, ''will never be
corrected from above. Governments,
magistrates and police have labored, 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
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 shatter the political power
of rum will be started by the people to
whom rum has been the greatest curse.
N. Y. Sam.