Essays. Alcohol.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1905, 20 September 1884, Page 6

Essays. Alcohol.

I am going to take a new view of this very old question, which since Joseph Livesoy sot the temperance movement going in Preston, some fifty years ago, has been debated in every possible aspect. It has so many phases, that in n short article I must necessarily touch, aa it were, but the skin of the great problem. The view I take of alcohol is that liko everything else in nature it is to be used in modeiation, and that its abuse, like the breaking of any other natural law, is sure to result in disaster. But the difficulty is that its abuse is easier than that of anything else that conduces to human pleasure. Beyond a certain point we cannot eat any more ; we have to wait until our food is digested before we start upon another gorge, unless we adopt the hideous means resorted to by the epicures of old. The profligate has a limit set to him by nature. So in nearly every case except that of alcohol. Indulgence in that can oe continued for a long timo, until a diseased state of the body, induced by intemperance, makes us the slave of the vice and leave 3 hardly a loophole of escape. Not only does the body become diseased but, what is far worse, the mind. The moral faculties are lowered, and the man ends lower than the brutes. It is fortunate for him if death comes before the lowest depth is reached. An opinion has been advanced that alcohol is a means to an end ; that it weeds out the weak and criminal and worthless. Undoubtedly it doe?, but so does every other form of intemperance. But I question very much whether alcohol kills the worst. On the contrary, my experience is that drink almost uniformly claims for its viotims the best, the moat desirable of mankind. Let the reader cast his eyes back into his past and reoall the many of his acquaintance who fell by the way through drink. Were they not the handsomest, the most generous, the warmcrft hearted, the most unselfish, the best loved, the brightest ? They were. "He was no man's enemy but himself," is the epitaph we read in newspaper after newspaper, when commenting on the death of men who, when alive, were loved by all and sincerely pitied. To be handsome, generous, unselfish, loveable is to be subjected to temptations of which the ordinary run of men know nothing. The ugly, the disagreeable, the selfish, have few temptations, and they pass unscathed. The homely woman preserves her virtue because no one troubles to assail it. The hard-featured, closefisted, repellant man stands no risk of being drawn into the dangers of good-fellowship. What I disliko in thi3 doctrine of alcohol being a means of weeding out the weak and worthless is that if it be true the world a hundred years hence will not bo worth living in, because then, according to the law of the survival of the fittest, it will be inhabited by the mean, the selfish, and the unlovely. There will be no erring ones, no loving ones. Man will be hard, and cold, and correct as the square block of ice cut by machinery out of Wenham Lake. From such a world one turns with a shudder. It reminds me of the little girl who was being talked to about Heaven. She had an aunt ; a cold, correct formalist, of most forbidding appearance and manners, and an uncle, a free, jovial young fellow, whoso face and form were exquisite, and whose laugh wa3 full of melody and fun. The aunt was always held up to her for imitation ; the uncle, as a dreadful example. One day the little girl heard her father say Uncle Willie would go to the devil if he did not mend. " Mamma," asked the little girl, " will Aunt Prim go to Heaven ?" " Of course she will, my child," was the reply. " Then," said the little girl, "I'll go where Uncle Willie is 1" What alcohol really does is to destroy those who have not sufficient balance and power of will; and these are mostly men and women who otherwise are the best of the human race. There is the one flaw in the beautiful vessel. Then again when such desperate efforts are made to crush out alcohol and to create a race of teetotallers I always ask myself whether such a race would be virtuous and worth having ? And the reply is not always satisfactory. The worst races in the world are teetotallers. The degraded Australian black, the fiendishly cruel American Indian, the hideously sensual Tahitian, the cannibal Maori were teetotallers. The Ohinaman is not a drunkard, neither is the Arab. The Italian and the people of the south of France are among the most temperate races on the earth,but do they compare with the intemperate nations of the north ? They do not. The conquering races of the world have always been hard drinkers, if we excepi the followers of Mahomet, who were, after all, but a flash in the pan. The Danes, the Normans, the Goths, the Germans, the Dutch, the English were all powerful men at the goblet ; powerful beyond what we dream off now. So were the Spaniards when they were men. I have great doubts whether a nation of teetotallers would not prove a very poor one indeed. Aa far as I can remember there is not a great name in history who was a teetotaller. The greatest statesmen, warriors, writers, artists, and distinguished men "looked upon wine when it was red " — to the sorrow of some of them, it must be confessed." Before I take up the second part of my subject — that which makes me write this article — I must refer to one view of the question that I have not seen put by any writer. Are not the effects of alcohol in this age, which we all so much deplore, caused by the changed conditions of life and the class of stimulants ? lam strongly inclined to think these are at the root of the whole evil. The effects of drink to-day are very different to what they were even a hundred years ago. Who now could drink six bottles of wine at night and be up with the lark — in Australia the magpie — in the morning and off to the hunting field? No one. A person who drinks a bottle of wine now over night, will probably remain in bed next day. I take it that so many now lead sedentary lives, that our busy and exciting lives so thoroughly exhaust our nervous power, that drink has quite a different effect to what it had upon our forefathers. (In fact the life of most men now is one long intoxication, and instead of needing stimulants they require something to sober them. Not only have our Jives changed, but our drink is very , different. In the days gone by the wine and spirits were the genuine products of natural fermentation, the ale was made from malt and hops. All this is changed, Our alooholio drinks now

are either made entirely out of chemicals — of the most pernicious charaoter — or partially so. The effects of these chemicals are fearful. We do not .'read of the greatest toper in the old times going mad : half our^insanity is caused by drink. The wine and grog of our ancestors might bring gout to the toeg and blossoms on the nose, and the befer might swell thorn to the semblance of a cask, but tht-y kept their senses to the last. In the novels and plays of the past drinking habits, never supply the tragic materials— they always formed the staple of comedy— but they do now. I look, therefore, upon our changed .habits and the unnatural combinations called liquor, the product of villainous chemicals, as the factors in the present deplorable state of things. To a great extent it is true that the man who drinks now had as well take a dose of poison at once. And now I come to the real point of this article, to what I think should bo done. Tomptation can never ba removed. In my opinion, it would be the greatest calamity that could happen. Man is made perfect by resistance: it is that which build 3up his body and soul, and makes him a man. Attrition is the great law of nature that keeps the world going. But for the incessant motion of water, it would become a corrupt mass. But if we like to work upon common sense lilies, Something can be done. I will divide what can be done into two sections — what can be done by the man himself, and by the State. Much lies with the man himself, if he can only grasp the position and understand his own nature. In the first place, let it be clearly understood there are men who can drink, and who will benefit thereby, and men who cannot drink, to whom drink is sure destruction. The man who has self-respect and eelf-command need never fear drink no more than any other temptation. Men of sluggish temperaments, cold of blood, with ingrained selfishness, have little to dread. The men who should never touch a drop are the hot-blooded, the hot-headed, the generous, the warm-hearted, the social. Men of sanguine temperaments have enough alcohol in their blood without adding more to it. When such men lead sedentary lives, the danger is still greater. They should seek relief in other means of excitement, not alcohol. I think if a man once gets drunk, he should for ever afterwards abjure liquor. That is the warning, the beacon, and he must not disregard it. But, above all things, should a man forever forswear drink when he feels a craving for it, when he looks forward to the moment he will be able to get a glass, if he does not, that man is marked for doom. The man, too, who drinks by himself ia a safe victim — he will go as sure as the sun rises. The State can do a great deal, but not in the way it does now. It has at present a hold of the wrong end of the stick. To lock a man up and fine him five shillings for doing what the State drawa the principal part of its revenue from is ridiculous. The first object should be to get a better class of hotelkeepers ; men of principle and humanity ; men whose business would be so good that they would have no necessity to push their trade illegitimately, or to supply bad liquor. Then an hotelkeeper who is proved to have supplied liquor to a person manifestly in the iksfc stage of intoxication should be heavily fined for the first and second offence, and his license fort'oiEod on the third. Any person soiling liquor of a deleterious quality Bhould, on a secood offence, have his license forfeited, and the stuff should be poured into the gutter. Probably evon gi eater good would be done if officers were stationed in brewers' and wine and spirit merchants' places of business — at leasfc, in the metropolis — and nothing was allowed lo go out except with their seal and certificate affixed. As regards drunkards themselves, a very different treatment is required. Once a person is arrested for drunkenness his portrait should be taken and supplied to every seller of liquor within a certain radius, and they should be prohibited from supplying him or her for a fixed period, on pain of the forfeiture of their license and liquor. Some laws of this kind would, I think, do great good. Unfortunately medical and chemical science have so far done nothing towards solving the great problem. No real cure of dipsomania, the most painful, pitiable, and distressing ot all diseases, has been discovered. It is heartrending to seb good and loveable men fighting, fighting, a vain . battle against the fiend that has possession of them, and the medical profession standing by without power to lift a finger. Many who read this will have been witness to these battles and their inevitable end. Thai great and good man, Dr. Biohardson, the temperance and sanitary reformer, has acknowledged that a man who invents a drink that will cheer and stimulate without intoxicating will be a great benefactor. But chemical and medical science Btand still, and can apparently do nothing. In conclusion, I will say that men of warm temperaments, of generous impulses, and of social instincts, should not touch alcohol, for they do not require stimulants ; and that once a man gets drunk, or feels a longing for drink, he should then and there resolve not to touch in future, no matter how he may be pressed, no matter how he may be tempted, no matter how great the difficulty of abstaining. It his only safety. He iB then on the rt divide." It is for himself to say whether he will live his term, respected by himself and others, and enjoying the comforts God has sent, or turn down the dark road that leads to misery here and hereafter. The drunkard enjoys nothing — does not, in fact, live. Let the man in this position take no note of what others do, of his surroundings. " Come, do have one drink ; it won't harm you ; just keep company," his friends will say. Let his reply be : "I take nothing ; because while to you it may be life, to me it is certain death." Dr. Johnson was a man who, at an advanced stage of life, found wine was becoming his master, and at once cast it away from him. I concede that to mingle in general society in the colonies, in enjoyable and " live " society, and to refuse to take drink, is a terrible task. Wherever we go, wherever we turn, drink meets us. The reason so many, after solemnly determining to abstain, recognising their, danger, give way, is through false, pride and false delicacy. They do not like to acknowledge they are weaker than others ;, they do not like to say, "I cannot do what you can." Their friends ask them to drink because they do not know the real facts of the case, and most people are not game to tell. But the difficulty is easily got over. A month ia enough to let everyone know yon are an abstainer, and once they do they will not trouble you, for most men readily acknowledge it is a good thing not to drink at all, and respect those who do not. Donald Cameron.