THE GREAT VICE.

Evening Star, Issue 3282, 27 August 1873, Page 3

THE GREAT VICE.

Hie London Times, speaking of the drinking customs of the age, thus forcibly writes :—“ The world, however, cannot be governed by absolute ideas. That there is a great evil among us is patent to all men. It is eating away the life of the people. It is not to be met by any declamation against intemperance. But philanthropists, and even economists, regard its existence as a national danger as well as a public loss. To arrest it in some way or other is an obvious duty, not from any logical standing such as would satisfy the teetotaller, but because it is found to be a source of misery and wretchedness to a great mass of the people. It is found that every low public-house has its surroundings of drunkenness ; that an increase of such public-houses multiplies the number of drunkards; that in every neighborhood where a house of this description is established it demoralises a section of the people; that the inducements offered to consumption daily and hourly destroy the lives of men j that every newspayer shows a victim ; that every gaol delivery shows a criminal, who has been made so by the fatal snare. It therefore becomes necessary to do something. No man has yet propounded an effectual remedy ; but it is thought that by stopping the multiplication of public-houses, and suppressing those that are manifestly unlit, this will be promoted. Men who discard logic as an absolute guide are therefore prepared to acquiesce in some such measure. They say that the evil is so terrible, and increasing so fast, that it must be arrested. If there is no other way of stopping a fire, it must be done by putting a barrel of gunpowder under the adjoining premises. If is a bad thing to interfere with men's liberty or to, adopt doubtful principles in government, but it is so sad to see men dying in hundreds and thousands from drunkenness, that something must be done ; if by confiscation it must be done : if by compensation it must be done; if by creating something which assumes the character of a monopoly, it must be done. The world has pronounced the evil to be intolerable. This is the state of the question at the present moment in England, and next session Parliament will be occupied in discussing it.