It wr.04 he !le stela smcivil to receive tills Oa'
}orate lectute
withoitt sume lt ne ;sow lode nw.it.
Fenced at onee te a eswer no. um-selves. Mr. Erten:Nen set sass that tle• niele•Ittluc " Committee" was " easy to ievent." It Ara:, : every one's wit jtenped at it, because it was
apprceriate. It is ee eeed objsetion to an expressive appellation, that it is net felon:He d. Then we are aceused of laughino at the
melancholy details 4,!. &a.; and it is intimate's], that
because we ridieuled ti:e Report, we think drunkenness and its
consieluences ji Bin this is a non sequitur. The most serious sultieets emu Is • nestle ridiculous by the manner of treating them: and it was she droll Ivey in which the subject was handled in the Report in qt.estien which made us laugh. Surely this was evident in the poregraph of five or six lines, which has brought upon us the intlietimi of nearly twenty times as much from Mr. BUCKINGHAM'S prolific pen. Mr. BUCK I NGHANi maintains that the political economy of the Report will bear examination ; and thinks he has vindicated it, when he asserts that intemperate persons do injury to themselves and to society, and that it would be wise to prevent their access to the means of intoxication by excluding it altogether front the country, or at least as much as possible. But this is a partial statement of the political economy of the Report : it asserts that distillation tends to cause a scarcity of grain, and therefore should be prohibited ; that the importasion of fermented liquors should be stopped; that men should only be paid wages on market-days before hi-calif:1st; that no friendly societies should meet at public. houses ; that the amount of the population should determine the 'lumber of spirinslieps; and a great variety of minor measures should be taken, which would annoy almost every class of society, and interfere grievoesiy wills the trading operatimus of the country, domestic and ford:, n. It is very easy to recomthend or enact a series of remedies such as are here indicated; but there is no power in existence strong enough to enforce many of the principal ones. You cannot prevent di' tillation ; you cannot put down smug- gling by prohibitory laws: it is impossible to change the habits and tastes of a People, or to regulate their most private actions, by vexatious fiscal enactments. This species of 'tyrannical interfe- rence has been repeat:elle tried, and uniformly failed. Govern- ment becomes an engine of intolerable oppression when its powers are esereised in this way.
Mr.13 KI NGH A M strangely imagines, that because w e would ex- clude druilkards and gin from our printing-office, therefore we must admit the policy of legislative interference on the vast scale he pro- poses. This very illustration of his argument goes to prove that there is no occasion for Parliament to make laws for the preven- tion of drunkenness. The regulations of society give every man the power to put a far more effectual check upon the groeth of the vice. We need no act of Parliament to enable us to emplos sober and dismiss drunken printers ; and the persons employing work- men in all other pursuits have the same power. But Mr. B set NGIIA at in effect says,let us compel men to be sober for their good : this can be effected by forbidding the distillation and importation of fermented liquors, and a variety of other fiscal
and police regulations reconsmeeded in the Report. Mr. Bum mimes has no excuse fin• supposing any thing of the sort. He has travelled in the East : knows that the severest laws cannot
prevent the use of opium and tobacco, which serve the Eastern nations in the place of soje. ts. Both drug, hlen used in excess,
are elite it injerious as gin. Legislative interference, therefore, that duce not pst a step to the use of opium, tobacco, and other stimulants, as well as gin, Flees nothing at all. The mest efficient cause of' the dmnkenness of the lower classes, is misery. Generally speaking, prosperous men are not intemeerate: the half-starved aol destitute take to ein-drieking
10 excess. The °illy ratie•eal method of preventiog drunl:en- Less( is to improve the con litioti of the lower classes—to supply them with fo sl in intern for their labour, and to instruct them. By instruction, we do no mean infermatims as to the evil consequences efintempmence : every druukard is feelingly alive to them already, end we question whether Ilex is a child ten years old among the
labouring classes who needs information on that point. But it would be well to strive, by raising their notions of comfort amid respectability, and by affording them rational entertainment for leisure hours, to effect an improvement in the morals of the poor. To is certain extent, the dissemination of the evidence given before the Committee may be useful : it may coetain striking facts free from exaggeration. Our remarks do not apply to the evidence, which we have not seen, inn more than to the volunetry assoeia- tiens for the pnoteotion of teue.erusce, which eeither seek nor require legislative patronage. It is to the Drunken Report merely that our st: letures are confined: it communicates no real inftsrmation, or none that it r«ptired the machinery of a Com- mittee of Paliateent to bring teeether; it is full of exaggeratA statements, aml ie not free of linsehood,—as, for instance, when the decreasing lengevity el El; elishmen is asserted; the fact 'mines as may be :leveller:ea at any life assurence-olhee, thet human life in Eligland has been very much extended in duratioa during the last half century.
Enough of this subject : it is one on which nothing new has been said since the time of Solomon ; who, as liar as we re- member, is the oldest writer of sermons upon it. Solomon had by far too wed: knowledge of mankind to he guilty of the folly of attempting to suppress drunkenness by a royal decree. And if Mr. B L'en INC its 11, disregneling the example of the wise wan, should persevere in his determination to legislate on drinking., we hope lie will at least aveid the partiality of legislating for a class merely--but lock up the wine-cellars of the rich, as well as the gin-shop of the psupers, who reqs:ire stimulietts (lithe as much as fine gentlemen and ladies.
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