DRUNKENNESS IN LANCASHIRE.
THE statistics of Lancashire Drunkenness, published in the Times of Wednesday, are very distressing, and not a little
puzzling. Knowing that crime prevails among the teetotal races to a degree unknown among the drinking races, and seeing the yearly increasing prosperity of two of the drunkard countries, Sweden and Scotland, we have never been able to endorse the wild assertions of the Alliance,—to suppose that crime would cease with drunkenness, or that a nation, like a man, could drink itself dead. But we have never attempted to deny either that the evil was a great one, or that it deserved the most strenuous attention of legislators as well as of philanthropists, or that if it can be shown to increase, the attention might become imperative and absorbing. These Lancashire statistics, if they can be trusted, certainly show that it does increase, and, moreover, that the checks hitherto adopted either fail or are wretchedly insufficient. They show that the number of convictions for drunkenness in the county of Lancashire have increased in five years from 42,576 in 1870 to 53,810 in 1875, the increase being as steady and regular as if it obeyed some natural law. More- over, though crime, on the whole, decreases, the offence of drunkenness increases, till the proportion, which in 1867 was 27 per cent. of the whole, rose in 1875 to 50-1 per cent. The increase, though most rapid in country districts, is not confined to them, for the increase in Manchester is decided, mounting by about 1,000 a year ; nor is it confined to either sex, the convic- tions of women this year exceeding any previous number by a fourth, and being nearly five times the convictions in each year of the decade ending 1865. These decade figures are not of much use, as drunkenness is much more punished than it used to be ; but the positive figures are sufficiently startling, and become more so when we consider the times at which the arrests are made. These figures show that the arrests are most frequent on Saturday and Sunday, and diminish down to Friday, with the diminution of the workmen's money, and that all the drunkenness stopped by early-closing is shifted from the late night to the afternoon and evening. Allowing, in fact, for in- creased energy in the police—which, however, the officials do not believe in—and for an increase in the male immigrant popula- tion which drinks, greater than the general increase of population, it is still evident that Lancashire men drink in proportion to their means, that nothing stops them but want of money, and that early-closing Acts chiefly benefit the police, whose night work is seriously diminished. That is a decided advantage to the cause of order, and there is apparently nothing to set against it, for though the Acts have not diminished drunkenness, there is no evidence that they have increased it. They may have, on the old argument that a man who drinks quickly gets drunk more certainly than the man who drinks slowly, but there is no positive evidence of the fact, while there is evidence that night-drinking and crime have both diminished. The general result, therefore, of the figures, stated without prejudice upon either side, maybe taken to be this :—Licensing Acts fixing early hours for closing certainly diminish night- drunkenness, and lighten the labours of the police, and pro- bably diminish crime, but they do not diminish the total amount of drunkenness, either in town or country. They are beneficial, perhaps very beneficial, from a police point of view— for but for them crime might have increased pari passu with drunkenness—but from the moralist's point of view they are of little or no use. The statesmen may not have been upon the wrong tack in considering drunkenness after dark exceptionally dangerous, but the philanthropists have been misled in con- sidering that the passion for drink would be less in ordinary hours. It exists as a force independent of hours, and must be alleviated by remedies with which a legal time-table, though it may be beneficial in other ways, has no concern.
This discovery, if it is verified by other returns, is a most disheartening one, for it shows not only that all the work is yet to do, but that the means of doing it have yet to be discovered. If prohibition is impossible, as it undoubtedly is in the present state of opinion, and restriction is of no use, as would appear from the Lancashire figures to be the case, in what direction are the philanthropists to labour? or are they to sit down and admit that drunkenness is past cure, that the English people will not be restrained from it except by poverty, that as they grow richer they must drink more, until at last, when every one has some surplus over his necessities, drunkenness will be a national habit, and half the national gains be spent on means of in- toxication ? It is impossible for them to submit to such a con- clusion, and yet what are they to do ? In what direction are they to turn ? There is no method of amelioration which the nation has adopted with any hope except restriction, or which it could be persuaded to embody in an Act, and restriction—though, we repeat, beneficial in one way—has, as a curative measure, entirely broken down. There are many observers who believe in sanitation, and say that drunkenness is connected with close packing, but country-folk drink as hard as towns'- folk, though they are not so often arrested, and in Lancashire the largest city is not the most drunken place. There are many more who believe in education, but drunkenness and education seem to go on together, and it may well be doubted whether, among women especially, new intelligence does not develope the craving rather than assuage it,—whether, in fact, education below a certain point does not stimulate rather than abolish drinking. They all believe that want of means diminishes drunkenness, but they cannot de- liberately set themselves to produce poverty, in order that sobriety might follow. The people would not permit them to do it, nor, if they did, would the philanthropists, who are seeking other improvements besides sobriety, enter heartily into the crusade. What are they to do when they have re- covered their tempers sufficiently to acknowledge that their trusted palliative, though it secures some good results, does not secure the one which they and we most desire ? Will they try extra taxation on liquor I? We are by no means so certain that extra taxation could not be exacted if Parlia- ment chose, for the mass of drinkers do not like the raw stuff produced in illicit stills; and the revenue laws might be made a great deal stronger; but then, would that do any good ? Would not the drinkers get drunk still, and only waste the more on their enjoyment V Or will they try to cheapen greatly all liquor below a certain alcoholic power, and trust that, as in Southern countries, quantity may serve instead of potency V Wine is perhaps cheapest in the most temperate country in the world, the rural part of Tuscany ; and drunkenness is less in Munich, where beer runs like water, than in London, where it costs, of the same quality, three times the sum. There is no proof, however, that cheap wine or cheap beer would stay the craving in England for intoxication, and a great deal of proof that in Ireland the increased cheapness of spirits involves increased drunkenness. Several very competent observers, and at least one leading statesman, doubt whether all English restriction does not begin at the wrong end, and whether the best palliative for drinking would not be to allow liquor to be sold like milk, provided only that, like milk, it were not drunk on the seller's premises. But not to mention the impossibility of suddenly extinguishing the publicans, who showed their power in the last elections, there is no proof that the country would not be covered with small clubs for drinking, which, though not selling liquor, would become at once unlicensed drinking-houses. That evil would be worse, in all probability, than the existing one. The truth is that there is no certainty about the whole question, that we are labouring to a great degree in the dark, and that it is very doubtful whether the wisest step would not be to authorise the municipalities to try any experiments short of prohibition in dealing with the evil. Oddly enough, the very people who drink will bear severe restrictions on their drinking, and some municipality like Birmingham might hit upon a course which could be followed with success. At present, we try only one plan throughout the entire country, and when that fails are reduced almost to despair, or to an acknowledgment that the only cure lies in the endless revolution in our habits, our finance, and our industries involved in the impracticable suggestions of total or local prohibition.
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