An argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor traffic / by Frederic Richard Lees.

  • Frederic Richard Lees
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor traffic / by Frederic Richard Lees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    parliamentary report. by Sea from Shipwrecks, founderings, fires, and innumerable other accidents, whioh, according to the evidence of the most experienced shipowners and nautical men, are clearly traceable to drunkenness.— The comparative Inefficiency of the Navy and Army, in each of which intemperance is [as] a canker-worm that eats away its strength, and its discipline to the very core ; it being proved that one-sixth of the effective strength of the Navy, and a much greater proportion of the A rmy, is as much destroyed by that most powerful ally of death, intoxicating diinks, as if the men were slain in battle; and the greatest number of accidents, seven-eighths of the sickness, invaliding and discharges for incapacity, and nine-tenths of all the acts of insubordination, and the fearful punishments and executions to which these give rise, are to be ascribed to drunkenness alone.— The Increase of Pauperism, in its more fearful shape, divested of that sense of shame which would disdain to receive relief whilst honest industry could secure the humblest independence, and associated with a recklessness of all obligations, domestic or social, which, according to the evidence of witnesses from the agricultural districts, has converted the pauper from a grateful receiver of aid under unavoidable calamity, to an idle and disorderly clamorer for the right of being sustained by the industry of others, or a profligate and licentious parent of illegitimate offspring.—The Spread of Crime in every shape and form, from theft, fraud, and prostitution in the young, to burnings, robberies, and more hardened offences in the old; by which the gaols and prisons, the hulks and convict transports, are filled with inmates, and an enormous mass of human beings are transformed into excrescences of corruption and weakness [in the body politic, and constituting our troublesome and ‘dangerous classes’].—The Retardation of All Improvement, inventive or industrial, civil or political, moral or religious.—That the mere pecuniary loss to the nation, from the several causes already enume- rated, may be fairly estimated at little short of fifty millions of pounds sterling per annum.” It must be evident, therefore, that a system engendering such varied ‘consequences’ and ‘costs’ is deeply and distinctly inimical to the real interests of Individuals and the State, endangering the lights of the one, and rendering impossible the aims and purposes of the other. Twenty years have elapsed since this deliberate con- viction was enrolled upon the records of the British Parliament, and yet we shall find in the sequel, that notwithstanding ‘ the march of improvement,’ the progress of education, the spread of knowlege, and, above all, the specific efforts to combat this vice of Intemper- ance by moral appeal, every word of that Report remains literally true. The explanation of the fact is simply this:—The Traffic has ex tended its machinery of mischief\ and its net-worh of seduction, contempor- aneously with these efforts ; and it is of the nature of narcotic stimu- lants to generate a tendency to excess, by increasing appetite and lessen- ing moral control. § 8. Foreign nations, and those blessed with almost universal education, both moral and religious, have instituted Legislative