THE SEDUCTIVE SLAYER.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1319, 6 November 1880, Page 2

THE SEDUCTIVE SLAYER.

The Argus deserves public thanks for an article on "Drink," by " ,T. (■>.," which it recently published. That and triology of woes—Poverty, Crime, and Madness—which walk for ever in tho steps~of this vice, are illustrated with a wealth of figures that ought to frighten the members of the Licensed Victuallers* Association themselves into good sense, and make them hasten to enrol themselves in the nearest Rechabite Tent. The ordinary reader skips statistics ; arithmetical tigures are symbols that convey no meaning to him whatever ; yet the figures of this article ought to take hold of tho imagination and conscience of the most careless with resistless power. As illustrating the mere money cost of drink, tho poverty created by it, the extent, to which it taxes the sober classes, let these facta be considered :

Out of 800,000 paupers in England and Wales, no less than 600,000 owe their condition, either directly or indirectly to intemperance ; and it is estimated that there are upwards of half a million drunkards in Great Britain, with two millions of women and children depending upon them for support, and exposed to the privations and tho evil treatment to which every drunkard's family is liable. Our countrymen spend L 140,000,000 every year upon intoxicating liquors; 200,000 persons are arrested annually for drunkenness ; and 80,000,000 bushels of corn—a quantity which would suffice to supply two millions of families with bread from one year's end to another—aro wasted, and misapplied to the distillation of spirits in tho mother country, year after year. In the gaols there are 100,QQQ prisoners who have been brought thero by drink, and who have to be fed and clothed by the general public. Thero are 2,500 coroners' inquests held annually upon tha bodies of men and women who have died of alcoholic poisoning, while the detection and punishment of offences ocoasioned by drink necessitates the employment of 20,000 additional policemen. A similar group of facts is supplied by America. Dr. De Mariner writes in tlio Medical Journal of New York :

"For the last ten years tho uso of spirits has—l. Imposed upon the nation a direct expense of 600,000,000 dollars; 2. Has caused an indirect expense of 700,000,000 dollars; 3. Has destroyed 300,000. lives ; 4. Has sent 100,000 children to the poorhouse ; 5. Has committed at least 150,000 people to prisons and workhouses ; 6. Has determinod at least 1000 suicides ; ?. Has caused the loss, by fire or violence, of at least 10,000 dollars' worth of property ; 8. Has made 200,000 widows, and 1,000,000 orphans. Now York has nearly GOOO drinking saloons, Philadelphia 2700, Cincinnati 2100, Baltimore 2000, Chicago 2000, and Boston 1200. San Francisco has a number equally great, if not greater, to its population, and since the Inebriate Asylum was first opened in the last-named city, in July, 1859, 8250 victims of dipsomania have been admitted to the institution."

Passing over the crimes and deaths produced by drink, and taking the single item of madness, we have figures sufiieio.ut justify the " fanaticism " of all tho teetotal orders. Dr. Maudsley says There are at least five distinct varieties of mental derangement which own alcoholic intemperance as their direct and efficient cause.' T:ie ElngUsh Commissioners of Lunacy de*, claro that not less than 00 per cont, of the insanity produced by drink bcQomcs hereditary ; " J.S." multiplies proofs of this, and adds :

"Now, in every case of this kind tlio drunken parent is as much tho murderer of his children as if he had strangled.and poisoned them with hia own hands. Thus ''the evil which men do lives after them, and the drunkard may not only have, the crime of suicide, but also that of having committed many murders, ou hi 3 soul. Nor is it merely ordinary piurderj fov is physical only, v,'l\eve»s the drunkarct who brings into the world a progeny idiots, or of lunatics, has killed thoir minds, and if it be " Most sacrilegious to break ope '! he Lord's anointed temple, and steal thcnco The life of the building,"

What shall we say of him or hor who extinguishes the conscience and tho c Oll, sciuusness ?—Southern Cross,