Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/609

Rh purpose, and then gin or Geneva spirits and whisky or usquebagh (Irish for “ water of life ”) were added to grape brandy; then came corn brandy in the north and east of Europe, rum from sugar canes in the Indies, potato spirit, and eventually, as the process was perfected, rectified ethyl alcohol from almost anything containing sugar or starch.

The concentrated form of alcohol, thus evolved, for a long time carried with it the prestige of a divine essence from the middle ages when chemistry was a mysterious art allied to all sorts of superstitions. It had potent properties and was held to possess great virtue. This view is embodied in the name “ water of life, ” and was at one time universally held; traces of it still linger among the very ignorant. 'Ardent spirit seemed particularly desirable to the habit ants of the cold and damp regions of northern Europe, where the people took to it with avidity and irnbibed it without restraint when it became cheap and accessible. That happened in England, as related in the article on LIQUOR LAWS, in the early part of the 18th century; and out of the frightful results which followed there eventually arose the modern Temperance Movement. The legislature had been busy with the liquor traffic for more than two centuries previously, but its task had been the repression of disorder; the thing was a nuisance and had to be checked in the interests of public order. It is significant that though drunkenness had been prevalent from the earliest times, the disorder which forced legislative control did not make its appearance until after the introduction of spirits; but they were not cheap enough to be generally accessible until the home manufacture of gin was encouraged towards the end of the 17th century, and consequently their use did not cause visible demoralization on a large scale until then. When, however, the spirit bars in London put up signboards, as related by Smollett, inviting people to be “ drunk for one penny ” and “ dead drunk for 2d., ” with “ straw for nothing ” on which to sleep on' the effects, the full significance of unlimited indulgence in spirits became visible. Speaking in the House of Lords in 1143 Lord Lonsdale said:-

" In every part of this great metropolis whoever shall pass along the streets will find wretchedness stretched upon the pavement, insensible and motionless, and only removed by the charity of passengers from the danger of being crushed by carriages or trampled by horses or strangled with filth in the common sewers. hese liquors not only infatuate the mind but poison the body; they not only fill our streets with madness and our prisons with criminals, but our hospitals with cripples .... Those women who riot in this poisonous debauchery are quickly disabled from bearing children, or produce children diseased from their birth.” The latter part of this quotation is particularly interesting because it proves the participation of women in public drunkenness at this period and shows that the physical ruin caused by excess and its national consequences were then for the first time recognized. It was the first step towards the inauguration of the Temperance Movement in the sense of a spontaneous and conscious effort on the part of the community as distinguished from the action of authority responsible for public decency. The need was only realized by degrees. Intemperance was one of many questions which we can now see were struggling into existence during the latter half of the 18th century, to become the subject matter of “social reform” in the 19th. Like the majority of them it was a question of bodily welfare, of health. A breach had been made in the unthinking traditional belief in the'virtue of alcoholic liquor by the experiences referred to; and medical thought, as soon as it began to busy itself with health as distinguished from the treatment of disease, took the matter up. In 1804 Dr Trotter of Edinburgh published a book on the subject, which was an expansion of his academic thesis written in 1788; Dr Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, a distinguished American physician and politician, who had studied in Edinburgh and London, wrote a striking paper on the same subject i11 the same year; and very soon after this the organized Temperance Movement was set on foot in the United States, where the habit of spirit-drinking had been transplanted from the British Islands. Temperance Organization.-4-In 1808 a temperance society was founded at Saratoga in the state of'New York, and in .1813 the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance made its appearance These seem to have been the' earliest organizations, though the deviceof a pledge of abstinence had been introduced in 1800. 'lT.l1¢ movement made rapid progress mainly tmder the influence 'of the Churches. In 1826 the American Society for the. Promotion of Temperance *was founded in Boston, and by 1833»1llSI8 were 6000 local societies in several states with more than ra million members. The, campaign was for the most part directedagainstuthel use of spirits only, and the proposal to include all alcoholic in the pledge of abstinence, though adopted by a few societies; was rejected in 1833 by the American Society, but accepted -in 18 36 and retained ever since.

In Europe the earliest organizations were formed in Ireland. A temperance club is said to have been started at Skibbereen in 1818, and others followed; but it was in 1829 that the organized movement began to make effectual progress with the formation of the Ulster Temperance Society. By the end of that year there were twenty-iive societies in Ireland and two or three in Scotland. In 1830 the movement spread to Yorkshire and Lancashire, and supported a newspaper called the Temperance Societies' Record, according to which there were then 127 societies with 23,000 paying members and 60,000 associated abstainers. In 1831 the British and Foreign Temperance Society was founded in London with the Bishop of London (Blomfield) for president and Archbishop Sumner for one of the vice-presidents. This important society, of which Queen Victoria became patron on her accession in 1837, came to an end in 18 5o, when the whole cause was under an eclipse. At the time it was formed temperance meant abstinence from spirits, as at first in the United States; but very soon afterwards the more drastic form of total abstinence began to be urged in the north of England and acquired the name of teetotalism from “tee-total, ” a local intensive for “ total.” It led to strife in the societies and damaged the, cause, which suffered in public estimation from the intemperance of some of its advocates. The early promise of the movement was not fulfilled; it ceased to grow after a few years and then declined, both in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The most remarkable episode in the temperance campaign at this period was the mission of the Rev. Theobald Mathew of Cork, commonly known as Father Mathew, the greatest of all temperance missionaries. He travelled through Ireland in the years 1838-42 and everywhere excited intense enthusiasm. People docked to hear him and took the pledge in crowds. In 1841 the number of abstainers in Ireland was estimated to be 4,64.7,000, which is more than the entire population to-day. In three years the consumption of spirits fell from 10,815,000 to 5,290,600 gallons. This was not all due to Father Mathew, because great depression and distress prevailed at the same time, but he unquestionably exercised an extraordinary influence. In 1843 he went to England, where he had less, though still great, success, and in 18 5o to America. He died in 1856, by which time the cause had fallen into a depressed state in both countries. In the United States a Hash of enthusiasm of a similar character, but on a smaller scale, known as the Washingtonian movement, had appeared about the same time. It was started in Baltimore by a knot of reformed drunkards i11 1840 and was carried on by means of public meetings; many societies were formed and some half-million persons took the pledge, including many reformed drunkards. But the public grew weary of the agitation and enthusiasm died down. The decline of moral suasion and of the societies was followed by a tendency to have 'recourse to compulsion and to secure by legislation that abstinence from alcoholic drinks which the public would not voluntarily adopt or would not maintain when adopted. In 1845 a law prohibiting the public sale of liquor was passed in New York State but repealed in 1847.§ in 1851 state prohibition was adopted in Maine (see LIQUOR LAWS). The same tendency was manifested in England by the* formation