The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-27

ing whether it would Be wise for the state
of Washington to enact prohibition. which
il merely . proposed means to desirable
end. While public sentiment which favors
prohibition grows steadily weaker in ali
the states where it il enacted it Is note
worthy that within the last thirty years
there has been great decrease in intern
perate drinking in both England, where
there is no prohibition, and in the United
States where it exists in but six Of forty.
four states.
Forty years ago the annual reports OF the
chief Of police Of New York show that
the saloon evil vos far worse than it is to-
day, the number Of drinking places,
licensed and unlicensed, being twice a.
numerous proportionately as they are to-
day.
Sir Harry verney, who is today upwards
of 80 years of age. and was a man Of middle
life when the reign Of Queen Victoria be-
gan in 1887, is IN optimist, not pessimist.
In his younger days in ladies' society il
was common to see men who could not
walk steadily owing to drink; it was then
very difficult to find sober nurse. Sairey
Camp and Betsey Prig were the tipping
type of nurse when Dickens wrote Martin
Chuzzlewit. nearly fifty years ago. Post
boys, ostlers and hackney coachmen were
all hard drinking set as compared with
tho sober, obliging railway servants Of the
present day. The public house was the
only reading-room.
At the New England funerals liquor was
freely served until the temperance move
ment that began about 1910. At dinner
party in Washington Prentiss tells how
godlike Daniel made a maudlin speech at
dinner one night, his hearers she'd
ding inebriate tears, when q Kentucky
member. in frenzy of whiskey and pa
triotism, jumped up on the table, shouted
Reform or revolution Liberty or death"
and flung an empty champagne bottle at
the head of the great expounder Of the
constitution-who hiccoughed defiance a.
the crystal missile whizzed by him and
crashed against the opposite wall.
Men who drank like Tom Marshall, Nc.
Dougall, Toombs and Salisbury are I'M
known in congress today; there is not
Prohibitionists, in their pious zeal, are
blind to the fact that intemperance is q
decreasing not an increasing evil. The
great majority of men are not addicted to
drunkenness. Every observant man of
the world knows that only small minor
ity of any community are drunkards. The
New York Erening Post says:
The truth 10 that public man cannot AFFORD
to get drunk In these days, so much does it in.
jure his standing with his constituents. There
il nothing which shows more clearly the inn
provement in public morals during the last
thirty or forty years than the change in this
spect In the ante bellum period it did not hurt
a man in the estimation of the people to be over.
come with liquor in public, and some OF the
most famous men OF the generation which was
prominent from 1880 to 1860 repeatedly made
such displays of themselves without being re-.
pudiated by their constituents. Nowadays the
fact that a man is liable to Ego off on a spree''
would be an absolute bar to his appointment to
a supreme court judgeship or to his nomination
to the presidency, however eminent his ability
and however spotless otherwise his character;
while in many OF the states repres tative
who should be exposed as an offender in this re-
spect would be denief a reelection.