The Commonwealth. — 1866-03-03 (London, England)

THE PERMISSIVE BILL.  (Comityled from our last.) To the Editoe of the Commawealth.  Sts.,—ln the pages of the Totowa/ of Psychological Metlicine and Mental Pathology, many cases are given which show that the drunkard's sins are visited on the children, and that the drunkards propensity is transmitted to them. In No. 9 of the above journal, new series, January, 1858, page 120, 121, it states in an article entitled "Intemperance considered as a Form of Mental Disorder," that "A glance at the statistics of crimes perpetrated under the influence of partial intoxication, would warrant some stringent; means the murders, rapes, suicides, savage assaults, robberies, and so forth, all stand as fearful evidence that intemperance only stimulates the animal impulses, and we cannot bat think that the greatest sticklers for the freedom of the subject must be forced to acknowledge that it is better to prevent the commission of crime by forcibly restraining men who have lost all self-control, and who without such extraneous influence must steep their souls in deeper guilt." The writer further urges the necessity and justifiability of forcible restraint, and asks, "What apology can be made for the national conscience that there is not made some vigorous attempt to prevent the evil consequences by removing the landmarks of temptation to inebriety, by shutting up the palaces' with their glaring lights, which necessarily attract the thoughtless like flies to their certain destruction ?"  And further the policy of the prohibitionists is strengthened and confirmed by the able writers on social and political economy and reviewers. In an article in the Edinburgh Ilevieiv, July, 1861, entitled the "Great Social Problem," page 172, it states, that the net annual addition to the capital of the community by savings out of income is estimated by the best authorities, at not less than 50,000,000/.,— an enormous sum, which goes to augment the earnings of working men as an aggregate class. Now, by whom is this saving effected? Out of the incomes of what class ? Clearly out of the incomes of the middle class—the industrious tradesmen, the enterprising merchant, the manufacturing capital, and the great employers of labour. The upper classes, the nobles, the landed gentry, we know are rarely economisers or accumulators ; their system, as a rule, is to spend their whole income; few among them leave their families richer than they found themselves. The labouring class, those who work for wages, are, with honourable exceptions, by no means given to saving—that is, to accumulation. As a rule, like their superiors at the other end of the scale, they spend their entire income within the year. After various illustrations in support of the above, thewriter says, "That another confirmation of thesame fact—the preponderance among the working classes of the disposition to spend over the disposition to accumulate—is to be found in the vast annual consumption by those classes of needless and noxious luxuries. It was shown by the late G. R. Porter, of the Board of Trade (a most competent authority), that the amount they spend in spirits, malt liquors, and tobacco, is upwards of 50,03'3,0031. a-year. That is to say, theg iv:tste annnally as lcwgely as their employers save. Fifty millions a-year saved out of their earnings by industrious capitalists to increase the fund for the employment of labour; and fifty millions a-year spent out of their earnings by the working classes in smoking and drinking! If the operatives ...aved like their employers, the annual addition to the fund out of which labour is remunerated would be at once  doubled; if the employers spent like the operatives, thero would be no addition to that fund at all.  At page 183, it states, "If the 50,000,0007. now annually expended by the operative classes in drink and tobacco, were—we do not say saved, bat—sp3nt in adding to the comforts of their home, in procuring for their children a good education, in g3tting their wives and sisters instructed in domestic economy and enabling them to stay at home to practice it, in obteining for themselves an hour or two daily leisure for recreation or for books,—what a vast, immediate, and blessed metamorphosis would come over nearly every humble household—a change, amounting in itself, to a complete social revolution. No one can deny this ; no one conversant with facts will doubt it for a moment. In the second place, suppose that only half this sum were saved—accumulated for future use—as it is notorious that it easily and advantageously might be (not by any sacrifice of comfort, but by simple abstinence from impairing their health and lowering their character by intemperance), the hoarded capital of the working classes would in ten years amount to 250,000,090/., even allowing them to spend every year the interest of their previous savings. "Now a capital of this amount would be sufficient to :eflect the universal substitution of cooperative associations of working men for the existing system of employers and employed, to make the !working population their own masters and managers, and thus to set at rest all questions about the rights of labour and capital for ever." I have quoted largely from the above articles, as I feel they are eminently great, and could such writings reach the general body of working men, I believe they would set them thinking on their present c3ndition. And further, until the working classes practise the great truths laid down in writings such as the above—all efforts to ameliorate their condition would be fruitless; and until the working:classes put the millions of pounds now spent to degrade them, to their proper use, and the monster traffic is totally abolished—wages as the writer has stated may advance, and employment be abundant, the majority of the workmen will all be as they now are, morally and socially degraded. It then behoves every lover of humanity, everyone who aims to be a social reformer, to be up and doing; and what can be better than strengthening a movement which has for its object the ultimate suppression of the liquor traffic? The Permissive Bill is a step towards it, it is almost above all others a workman's question ; its objects are good, its provisions just, and as such well worthy of all support. I am, &C.,