A New View of the Temperance Question (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1890 Excerpt: ... The fourth remedy can never reach the dignity of becoming historic. There is much reason, indeed, to fear that the world is going the other way. In several of the wine-producing and beer-drinking districts of Germany, alcohol is gradually supplanting the lighter beverages. In the meantime, the tide of intemperance, a sea "Whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears," is steadily rising at our very feet. Many a Canute, and, alas many a Mrs. Partington, have tried to stay its.destructive waves, but in vain. Since 1840, the consumption of malt and spirituous liquors in this country has increased from four to twelve gallons per capita of the population. From 1878 to 1883, inclusive, the consumption of distilled liquors made an absolute gain of 44.5 per cent., and that of malt liquors 60.2 per cent. At this rate the coming century may well exclaim, with the king of France, "After me, the deluge " In England, the law forbidding solemnization of marriage after twelve o'clock meridian is still retained on the statute-books, on the ground, it is alleged, that the masses of the people are not generally sober enough, after that hour, to enter the bonds of matrimony. The Irish are natural politicians, and therefore easy victims of that strange affinity existing between politics and "perpendicular drinks." The Scotsman is a theologian by birth; his mind delights to soar into the empyrean; but whoever has had the misfortune to spend Saturday night in Glasgow or Edinburgh will carry with him, as long as he lives, a picture of social degradation of which, it is not too much to say, the civilized world furnishes no parallel. It is a curious psychological fact that, in the contemplation of a subject from any point of view, the human mind naturally see...