Chapter I (2)

“But when the furniture of dear Loewenstein was sold at auction, and when Moida bought it all, oh! from that day I have not set foot in her curiosity-shop; for I know every clock and cup and pike and helmet, and ’twould break my heart to see this man and that coming in and cheapening those precious heirlooms. But Moida is not displeased with me for holding aloof; she respects my feelings, although not at all a sentimental girl herself. Unhappily during the past year business has been very dull, and she sells but few things, while the rent of the store keeps high; and only that my friend has great spirit she might almost fall into despair. Yet even now, in what I may call her darkest hour, she tells Ulrich to be cheerful, that their wedding-day will come sooner or later.”

“Yes, yes; very soon,” murmured Conrad, who felt tempted to lay bare at once his whole heart to Walburga. But a moment’s reflection deterred him: it might appear too abrupt, for the young lady had never seen or spoken to him before. So, while admiring her more and more, he resolved to wait a little.

But Walburga’s voice sounded so sweetly to his ears that Conrad urged her to go on and tell him something more about herself and Moida.

Whereupon Walburga smiled and hesitated; for although she had scarcely paused an instant with her brush, yet his presence was felt to be a distraction. If she interested him, it was no less certain that he interested her. She could not feel towards Conrad as towards a stranger; she knew that he had befriended Ulrich; that he was now the owner of the place where she was born; and that the many precious things which debt and the auction-sale had scattered to the winds he was bent on recovering and taking back to Loewenstein. What wrought most potently upon Walburga was the evident interest which he showed in herself. Instead of buying her picture and then retiring, Conrad had dallied half an hour by her side, and prevailed on her to talk about her affairs with an openness at which she inwardly blushed.

Nor was he at all like the other sight-seers who were wont to visit the gallery. The two shy glances she had given him had convinced her that Conrad was no ordinary man; that whatever his origin—even if he did not know who his great-grandfather was, as Ulrich had written to Moida—yet his was not a grovelling, low-born soul.

Accordingly, after remaining silent well-nigh a minute, Walburga yielded to his request and proceeded to tell him more about herself. “Moida and I and two others, sir,” she resumed, “have a home together—which makes four of us in one small lodging.”

“Four!” repeated Conrad, just a little disturbed and wondering who the other two might be.

“Yes, four. There is myself, Moida, Caro, and a nightingale.”

“Oh! indeed—Caro and a nightingale,” ejaculated her admirer, with a sense of relief he was hardly able to conceal.

“And never was a more peaceful home. Up under the roof it is; but that gives us fresh air, and into our dormer windows the sunshine comes sooner than into any other windows on the street.”

“And you have the sweetest of all birds to sing for you,” observed Conrad.

“Yes, indeed. But I sometimes think of giving my pet his freedom. Moida laughs at me for it. Moida is——”

“Not in the least sentimental,” interrupted the other, with a smile.

“Well, true, she is not. But my bird is now a prisoner, and I am sure he must feel lonesome where he is.”

“Oh! believe me, he is far happier as your prisoner than if he were enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria,” said Conrad, with a faint tremor in his voice.

“Indeed!” exclaimed Walburga, answering his emotion by a crimson spot on her cheek.

“Well, you may be right,” he added presently. “Your kind heart may tell you that your nightingale sighs for some other little bird to love.”

At these words the sweet, pink blush spread itself with the quickness of light over Walburga’s whole cheek, and she answered:

“I declare, ’tis just what I told Moida.”

“And what did she say?”

“Moida said—and no harm in repeating it—she said Ulrich was her nightingale.”

“Her nightingale! Well, really, your friend _is_ sentimental; and I envy your brother. It must be the greatest of earthly joys to be happily wedded, as they soon will be.”

Here Walburga’s countenance grew suddenly pensive, and she murmured to herself: “Ay, the greatest of earthly joys.”

Conrad noticed the change in her expression and wondered at it. Then he thought to himself: “’Tis time for me to withdraw; I may be wearying her.”

But ere he retired he said: “May I come again, gracious lady, tomorrow or the day after? I sometimes have melancholy moods, but these lovely pictures bring the sunshine back to my heart; and the loveliest picture of all is in this part of the gallery.”

“You may, sir, if it pleases you,” was the answer he received. Then, making an obeisance, Conrad went away, leaving Walburga hardly in a fit state to continue her work; and she inwardly repeated the words which he had uttered about her nightingale: “Far happier as your prisoner than enjoying the freedom of all the woods in Bavaria.”

“What did he mean?” she asked herself. “What did he mean?”

A few minutes later the girl rose and went away too, still murmuring the question: “What did he mean?”

TO BE CONTINUED.

Footnote 43:

The narrowest street in Munich; hence the name.

Footnote 44:

The name of the park in Munich.

Footnote 45:

Valley of the Inn.

Footnote 46:

These are made afresh every year on the feast of the Epiphany.

Footnote 47:

An instrument not unlike a guitar.

ROSARY STANZAS.
SORROWFUL MYSTERIES.

I.

_Luke_ xxii. 44.

No impious hand, no torture-instrument
The Son of Mary yet has touched. Alone
His prostrate form upon the ground is rent
With cruel agony of blood to atone
For thy too easy life. A heart of stone
Could but dissolve before the piteous sight.
All through the _Holy Hour_ he made his moan,
Beneath the olives, on the sacred height;
Wrongs of the ages saw in vision that dread night!

II.

JOHN xix. 1.

An act, a little word, of God made man
Bears in itself his own immensity;
To him the universe is but a span,
A world’s full ransom his one tear might be.
Not as we reckon outlay reckons he,
Until his boundless love has lavished all.
The knotted scourge precedes the fatal tree.
Couldst thou return him less, if he should call?
Or would the martyr’s palm thy coward soul appall?

III.

JOHN xix. 5.

A crown of thorns for him, a crown of bays
For such as I! A fool might surely deem
The servant greater than his Master. Praise
Might to the sinner merest irony seem,
The while the Sinless One is made a theme
Of ribaldry. Before his crown of thorn
Honor and earthly glory are a dream,
A phantom flimsier than of vapor born:
By that pierced brow the crown of all the worlds is worn.

IV.

MATT. xi. 30.

Simon to bear thy cross they would compel;
Yet for the deed, though done against his will,
On him and on his sons rich blessing fell,
As old traditions say. How richer still
The graces that the heart’s long thirst will fill
For him who runs that sacred load to meet,
And bear it upward to the holy hill!
To share His burden be my footstep fleet:
True love will make his yoke unfelt, his burden sweet.

V.

JOHN i. 29.

Behold, the Lamb of God is crucified!
His head is bowed, to impart the kiss of peace;
Stretched are his arms, to draw thee to his side;
Opened his heart, thy heart’s love to increase.
His all is spent to purchase thy release.
Canst thou, my soul, love great as this refuse?
Henceforth in thee let sin’s dominion cease,
And with the Mother of the martyrs choose,
Rather than him in death, a whole world’s wealth to lose.

PROHIBITORY LEGISLATION: ITS CAUSE AND EFFECTS.

It has been well said that “the best government is that which governs least”; and it might with infinite propriety be added that the legislative body stultifies itself when it passes laws that cannot possibly be carried into effect. One such law on our statute-books, yet constantly and notoriously violated, does more to destroy that political morality with which our people are, to say the least, not overburdened—of which certainly there is no surplus—than would ten wrong practices against which no law exists. We learned, during the late war, of how little avail legislation is when it undertakes to regulate and declare the value of gold; and it is designed briefly to set forth in this article that the proposed much-vaunted prohibitory legislation touching alcoholic liquors is false in theory, must be unsuccessful in practice; that remedial (not _repressive_) measures are what is required; and to suggest means by which the end aimed at by such enactments can be attained without invading the domain of the church, the free-will of humanity, or placing the state in the odious light of executor of a grinding tyranny exercised by a temporary majority over a recalcitrant minority.

And here, in the outset, let it be understood that there is no difference between ourselves and the most ardent favorers of the Maine Law, or any similar enactment on this matter, concerning the detestable nature of drunkenness, which we both admit to be a damning sin in the sight of God and a crying scandal before man. That it is a loathsome vice is a proposition requiring only to be stated, not argued. Even the wretched being who is enthralled by it will admit this and lament his deplorable condition. The days are past when Fox, Pitt, and Sheridan went openly drunk to the House of Commons; when the usages of the highest society were such that we still retain therefrom the saying, “Drunk as a lord”; when the literature of the age informs us everywhere that _gentlemen_ were not expected to be sober after dinner; when Burns could write in Presbyterian Scotland, “I hae been fou wi’ godly priests”; and when, in our own country, the first thing on entering and the last on leaving a house was a visit to the sideboard. Drunkenness is now deservedly considered by the entire community not only a vice but an inherently vulgar one. Fashionable society will not tolerate it, and there is no pretence of usage any longer set up that will even partially condone it. In short, it is the one unpardonable sin against modern society, and we are well pleased to see it ranked in this category. But while detesting drunkenness, and deprecating, in the strongest manner, the habitual use of intoxicating liquors, we dislike very much to perceive a tendency on the part of the public to ignore the fact that there are other sins besides the abuse of liquor, and that it is not by legal provision that people are to be kept sober. As Almighty God has been pleased to leave us our free-will, the reason is not evident why frail man should seek to take it away; and we object utterly to that queer manipulation by which the word “temperance” itself, the proper meaning of which is “moderation in any use or practice,” should be restricted to the moderate use of alcoholic drinks, much more that it should falsely be twisted and perverted into implying a total abstinence from them. Why should we be wise above what is written? Has Almighty God failed his church? Are we prepared to admit that Christianity is a miscarriage? This we tacitly do when we invoke to her aid the arm of the civil law. It is not to be doubted but there are persons so unfortunately constituted that they cannot use stimulants of any kind without abusing them. “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson to a lady who asked him to take a little wine—“madam, I cannot take a _little_, and therefore I take none at all!” Such persons must plainly abstain entirely; whether they shall do so of their own accord, by taking a simple pledge or by joining a “temperance society,” is for themselves to answer. In any case there is no safety for them save in total abstinence; but said abstinence, to have any merit whatever, must be voluntary, not one of legal enforcement.

While attention had, from time to time within the last century, been called to the intemperate use of alcoholic liquors, it is only within comparatively recent times that any organized efforts have been made to grapple with this monstrous evil. The first association for the purpose was made in Massachusetts in 1813. By its means facts and statistics were gathered and published for the purpose of calling the attention of the public to the magnitude of the evil, and suggestions made for its abatement or suppression. Similar associations were soon formed in adjoining States, and these again organized branches, until associations of the kind existed in nearly all the Eastern and Middle States. About 1820 there was formed in Boston “The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance,” which in 1829 had over one thousand auxiliary societies, no State in the Union being without one or more. The influences relied upon by this institution were the dissemination of tracts in which were portrayed the evil effects of the use of alcohol, and the employment of travelling lecturers to deliver addresses in favor of temperance. The first society professing the principle of total abstinence from intoxicating liquors was formed at Andover in 1826. These several societies, under one form or other, soon spread largely not only in our own country but in Canada, England, and Scotland, until they existed by hundreds in each; and about this time the word _temperance_ began to lose its normal signification, and to be used as a synonym for total abstinence from the use of liquors. _Teetotalism_ became the popular cry. The country was taken by storm; lecturers loomed up all over the States, administered the “pledge” publicly to hundreds of thousands; various minor denominations refitted their terms of communion in accordance with the new war-cry. In Ireland the cause of total abstinence was so successfully advocated by Very Rev. Father Mathew that he is stated to have administered the pledge to more than a million persons within three years from 1838; and since that time there has been, in the popular mind, no such thing as temperance, except in the sense of total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. All the former associations which proposed to themselves any such secondary and inefficient object as moderation in the use of liquors, or which administered either a partial pledge or one merely for a specified time, were disbanded or fell out of sight. Societies of Washingtonians, Sons of Temperance, Good Templars, and Rechabites sprang up, most of them secret and with signs, passwords, grips, tokens, etc., the members of which were pledged neither to touch, taste, handle, buy, sell, manufacture, nor use as a beverage the _accursed thing_. In 1851 the Legislature of Maine passed the well-known “Maine Law,” by which it was made penal to manufacture, have in possession, or sell intoxicating drinks. The law was repealed in 1856, and it has since been lawful to distil, keep, or sell spirits under certain restrictions, but drinking-houses are prohibited. A similar law was enacted in Massachusetts in 1867. In many of the States there is a law prohibiting the sale of liquors on Sunday, and in a majority the _local-option_ law (which leaves the question whether license to sell spirits shall be granted or not to the decision, at the polls, of the people of each city, town, township, or county) is now in full blast, with results that we shall glance at hereafter. A political party has been formed in many States, under the name of “prohibitionists,” which, though as yet but rarely sufficiently numerous or powerful to elect a governor on that single issue, yet numbers adherents enough frequently to hold the balance of power between the two prominent parties, and thus extort from candidates very important concessions in their own interests. They are active, energetic, conscientious in the main, and they besiege the various legislatures with petition upon petition against the liquor-traffic, which, to their minds, is the sum of all iniquities. The various religious sects come to their aid, loudly decrying all traffic in, and use of, spirituous drink. Matters have been brought to such a pass that a man’s reputation is imperilled by taking a glass of liquor; and there is yet wanting but the one further step of making its use illegal and its procurement impossible—a course strongly and unhesitatingly urged by almost all the various supporters of what is nowadays called _temperance_, and which seems quite likely to succeed, should the upholders of these views increase in numbers for a few more years as they have done within the last two decades.

It is a law of all fanatical movements, and one of their most peculiarly dangerous features, that they readily enmesh large numbers of people, and that their workings, tendencies, and developments fall of necessity, in the long run, into the hands of the extremists, the _intransigentes_, among themselves. Nor has this movement proved an exception, as is seen in the attempt made by legal enactment to coerce people into the practice of an enforced abstinence from stimulants—an abstinence _not_ shown to be physiologically desirable, _not_ commanded by the church, and most assuredly _not_ inculcated in Scripture. But in secret societies always, in sectarian combinations generally, and oftentimes in political parties, the experience of all ages shows that people first set up for themselves a master, and then obey him like so many slaves. They do this, too, under the delusion, for the most part, that they are carrying out their own convictions of right. It is much easier to join one of these secret organizations in a flush of curiosity, enthusiasm, or other temporary excitement than it afterwards proves to leave them in calm blood. Ties of acquaintance and _quasi_ friendship have been formed which most men strongly dislike to break. Good care is usually exercised that “the rhetorician, from whom,” as Aristotle says, “it is an error to expect demonstration,” shall be on hand to stimulate, exhort, inspirit, and incite to still further and more vigorous exertion; the boundaries between right and wrong fade away from the mental view; and few start in on this false track who fail to accompany their misled companions as far as the archbigot or archfanatic may choose to take them.

Within the Catholic Church a large number of total-abstinence societies have been formed, of course with her sanction. Most of these are at the same time _beneficial_ institutions, which in case of sickness give the member, and in case of death to his nearest kin, a certain allotted sum. But probably most priests on the mission will say that the great mass of Catholics who feel the necessity _for them_ of such abstinence take the pledge as individuals at the hands of the priest, either for a certain term or for life, without joining any special society. An immense amount of good has thus been accomplished, particularly among the poorer and laboring population, a very large proportion of whom are Catholics, and, from their circumstances and inevitable surroundings, most in danger of falling into temptation in the matter of drink, as well as most certain to suffer very severely from its effects. But it has at no time been, nor is it now, any part of the teaching of the church that her children shall not manufacture, buy, sell, and use (should they be so disposed) vinous, malt, or spirituous drink. Condemning the abuse of them, and reprobating drunkenness as a mortal sin, she yet allows to her children the moderate use and enjoyment of that wine which our Blessed Lord himself made for the use of the guests at the wedding at Cana, as well as of the other forms of it, which no physician or chemist ever found to be injurious _per se_ until it chimed in with a cry emanating from a large, an influential, _possibly_ a well-meaning, but in our view _certainly, if so_, a false-thinking, or it may be a deceived, portion of the community.

And here it may be well to note the unpardonable arrogance of assumption with which the intemperately temperate of all sorts take it for granted that all intelligence and morality belong peculiarly to those who inculcate or practise this one principle of abstinence from liquors. We see it displayed most offensively, indeed, among the variously bedizened and becollared gentry of the divers oath-bound secret societies, and among such sectaries as practically make total abstinence a term of communion; but truth compels us to go further, and to admit the tendency, even among Catholics, on the part of those who have ardently attached themselves to the societies got up with this view, to treat all outsiders as though living on a lower plane of piety and morality than themselves. “Stand thou off, for I am holier than thou” is too frequently their language in effect, if not in words; and, indeed, that is an almost inevitable effect of what the Scotch call “unco guidness.” However, the teaching and tenets of the church remain what they have always been, and the Catholic manufacturer or vender of wines and spirits, the total abstainer and the moderate drinker, go to confession, receive absolution and holy communion, together; nor do intelligent or well-instructed Catholics imagine for a moment that the formal pledge of abstinence from intoxicants, or membership in a total-abstinence society, are anything more than _adminicula_ to the individual whom his own weakness, the circumstances under which he earns a livelihood, or other reasons place in peculiar danger with reference to this vice.

But there must be some strong reason why an all-pervading necessity has been felt, in this century, for doing something in regard to drunkenness, the need of which (if ever previously perceived) has certainly never been acted upon by the most enlightened nations, whether of antiquity or of modern times. Lot was made drunk; Noe was drunk; Nabal and the Ephraimites were “drunken withal”; and all the evils and phenomena of intoxication are fully described in various passages of the Old Testament, always with reprobation, but there is not to be found in the entire book the slightest disapproval of the use of the fruit of the vine. On the contrary, oblations of wine to the Deity are enjoined upon the children of Israel; and the most horrible judgments denounced by the prophets of God upon the Jews consist in their being deprived of wine. In New Testament times our Saviour was called by the Pharisees (the prototypes of our ultra-abstainers) a wine-bibber; yet the same Jesus does not deem it at all necessary to proclaim himself on the teetotal side, or to leave us any precept against the use of wine. On the contrary, he institutes in wine the sacrament of his love, thus rendering the manufacture of wine necessary till the end of time. He himself changes water into wine. His apostles nowhere discourage its use, while they frequently speak of and upbraid professing Christians with its abuse, and one of them actually advises another to drop water and use a little wine for sanitary reasons. It would be sheer waste of time to undertake to refute those very ignorant or very dishonest persons who try to make it appear that wine, when mentioned in Scripture with commendation, is merely the unfermented juice of the grape, and that the _shechar_, _tirosh_, and _yayin_ were only intoxicating when excess in their use was reprobated. Either these people know better, and are wittingly making use of a dishonest argument, or their ignorance is too dense to be penetrated by any proof, however cogent. The reader who may wish to see this branch of the subject succinctly yet exhaustively treated should refer to an article in the _Westminster Review_ for January, 1875, entitled “The Bible and Strong Drink.”

The Greeks and Romans cultivated the vine very largely, made and used wine habitually; but their whole literature, while teeming with reference to the use, in no single instance commends the abuse, of wine. That the Spartans were accustomed to make their slaves intoxicated, in order by their example to deter young men from becoming addicted to the vice, is as well attested as any fact in history; while even in the worst periods of Roman story drunkenness is invariably referred to as disgraceful in itself, never to be predicated of people entitled to respect, and relegated, even at the _Saturnalia_, to the rabble and to slaves.

In the _Stromata_ of St. Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the latter part of the second century, we find allusion made to a few who at that day attempted to disturb the harmony of the church by imitating the example which they professed to consider set them in the narration by the Prophet Jeremias of the story of the sons of Jonadab-ben-Rechab, and we find those persons classed by him with those of whom the apostle speaks, as “commanding to abstain from that which God hath ordained to be received with thanksgiving.” Two centuries later St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine both pointedly condemn, as acting “plainly and palpably contrary to Scripture and to the doctrine of the Church,” some who, fancying they had attained spiritual information not generally accessible, tried to introduce among Christians the vow of the Nazarites. From that time till the former half of the present century we read, indeed, of drunkenness as existing; for that matter, we know of its existence in the earliest ages, and in all times and countries since, just as we do of incontinence, of theft, and of suicide by poison. It was reserved for the nineteenth century to attempt to do away with the possibility of the vice of drunkenness by rendering penal the production of the means; which is as though the law should step in to render men chaste by emasculation, theft impracticable by the abolition of property; and not in the least more feasible than would be the carrying out of an edict against the production of animal, mineral, or vegetable poisons.

Now, we should not in the least object to any well-devised and practical legislation that would do away with drunkenness entirely, if that were possible, which it unfortunately is not; nor will it ever be the case so long as the human race exists upon earth. The question, then, arises, What would be _practical_ legislation in the matter? This, in turn, involves an inquiry into the latent causes of the great commotion raised within this generation on the subject. It will be fresh in the memory of reading people in the United States that some two years ago one of our ablest metropolitan journals employed an agent to purchase samples of every possibly adulterable commodity from the most reputable venders in that city, drugs of the same description from the most respectable apothecaries—in short, specimens of everything on sale that was capable of deterioration by admixture of foreign substances; and that, on handing them over to a competent chemist for analysis, there was not a single instance of an article so purchased and tested that was not found adulterated to the last extent. All, without exception, whether articles of food, drink, medicine, or products of the arts and manufactures, were debased and corrupted—always, of course, with an inferior and cheaper, frequently with an absolutely injurious, and in some instances with a poisonous, admixture. The exposure occupied the columns of the paper referred to for some two weeks, and was then discontinued; not, however, without leaving food for reflection in the minds of the thoughtful. Now, when we consider the still greater temptation, the patent feasibility, and the larger gains resulting from adulteration of the various liquors, owing to the many hands through which they must and do pass before reaching their consumers, and the almost total impossibility, as things are, of detection, we shall have strong reason _à priori_ to believe that such adulteration takes place. But we have before us at this moment a book of some two hundred pages, entitled the _Bar-keeper’s Manual_, in which the facts are laid down, the method explained, the ingredients unblushingly named, the manipulations described, and a clear reason thus afforded why the use of liquors _nowadays_ is so ruinous to health, so productive of hitherto comparatively unknown forms of disease, and has become in this century especially such a crying abomination. In this book (which forcibly recalls to our mind an advertisement for “a man in a liquor store” that we once saw, and which wound up by stating that no one need apply who did not understand “doctoring” liquors) recipes are given for making from common whiskey any kind of gin, brandy, rum, arrack, kirschwasser, absinthe, etc., as well as any other desired brand of whiskey; together with full directions for mixing, diluting, coloring, adding strength, bead, and fruitiness, as well as for flavoring them each up to the required mark. When we find among the ingredients recommended (and evidently used, as the result of experience in this diabolical laboratory) nux vomica, cocculus indicus, strychnia, henbane, poppy-seed, creosote, and logwood, to impart strength to the false liquor, we need not inquire after the thousand other less pernicious articles used to supply color, odor, or bead to the noxious compounds. Now, from conversations held with persons who have been engaged in the liquor business in its various forms, as well as from reliable information long since spread before the public, but to quote which _in extenso_ would occupy too much space, we may generalize these facts, which we take to be not only undisputed but indisputable; viz., that _wines never_, and brandies, gins, etc., _rarely_, reach our shores in their pure state; that the same assertion is true of every imported liquor; that the subsequent adulteration is something fearful to contemplate; and that the advocates of prohibitory laws are talking within bounds when they call such preparations _poisons_. We may further learn that rarely indeed do our home-manufactured liquors pass in a pure state into the hands of the first purchaser; and that, after they have passed through two or three subsequent hands, whatever they may have become, they are anything in the world but pure liquors. By the time, then, that they reach the small groceries, drinking-shops, doggeries, and the lowest classes of saloons, all liquors will, on an average, have passed through at least seven or eight hands, each man quite as eager as the last to make all the gain he possibly can upon the article; and adulteration (he has the _Manual_ before him) presenting the safest and easiest plan, it follows that the laborer or artisan, those whose poverty forces them to frequent the lowest and meanest places, will be supplied with the most villanous article possible to be conceived under the name of liquor. Mr. Greenwood, in his work, _The Seven Plagues of London_, says:

“Where there is _no pure liquor_—and there is little such in London,
even for the wealthy—perhaps nothing used by man as a stimulant is
liable to greater and more injurious adulterations than _gin_; and I
assert that it is _not_ to-day _to be procured pure_ (I speak not of
merely _injurious_ but) of _absolutely poisonous_ drugs at a single
shop in London to which a poor man would go or where he would be
served.”

Mr. Nathaniel Curtis, the founder and first Worthy Chief of the Order of Good Templars, has (though his deductions from the facts are entirely different from ours) made it abundantly evident that the adulteration of all liquors, fermented, vinous, and ardent, is carried on in a most reckless manner and without regard to consequences in our own country. His words are:

“From the tramp’s _glass_ of beer, through the sot’s _glass_ of rum,
_jorum_ of whiskey, or _pull_ of gin, up to the merchant’s madeira
or sherry and the millionaire’s _goblet_ of champagne, we have shown
them all to be, not what the drinker supposes—and that were bad
enough in all conscience—but _universally drugged_, most frequently
_poisoned_, and not in one case of ten thousand containing more than
a small percentage of the article the purchaser paid for.”

We might multiply authorities, chemical, medical, and purely statistic, on this subject to an indefinite extent, but it would occupy too much space; besides which, reading men are already sufficiently convinced of the facts. Within the last few years such a mass of damning evidence has been put before the public on this subject that the man must be wilfully blind who does not admit adulteration of the most injurious sort to be the rule in all the various branches and phases of the liquor-traffic. One quotation, however, we must make from the pages of the _Dublin Review_, July, 1870, article “Protestant London,” in which the writer suggests something very like our own view, though he seems to have an idea that the wholesale adulteration was, in England, confined to fermented liquors, which is indeed a grave mistake, whether as regards England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, or in fact any of the countries peculiarly afflicted by this demon of drink. The writer says:

“Yet the effects of beer in England are confessedly far worse than
those of wine in France. We believe the real explanation of this to
be its adulteration. It is by drinking, at first in moderation,
adulterated beer that the habit of intoxication becomes a slavery,
by which men are afterwards led on to the abuse of gin. There are at
this moment thousands of habitual drunkards among us who would never
have been drunkards at all, had they not been betrayed into the
snare by drinking in moderation adulterated beer—that is, _if the
beer sold in public-houses were not universally adulterated_. This
evil, at least, law well administered might meet and uproot.
Government should _not_ allow men both to _cheat_ and _poison_ their
neighbors with impunity.”

It is, then, not at all surprising that _mania a potu, delirium tremens_, and other disorders arising from the abuse of good or the use of drugged liquor should have become so common in this country as to furnish a good or, at any rate, a plausible reason why many conscientious persons have attributed to the use of liquor effects due, either solely or in great measure, to the stupefying and poisonous decoctions vended under that name. But while this would have been, at all times as it is now, an excellent and an all-sufficient reason for trying to induce people to refrain, whether by pledge or otherwise, from such infernal compounds, and for having analysts appointed by law to examine and test the liquors sold in every tavern, we insist that it is no argument at all for doing away by law with the use of liquor _in toto_. We believe sincerely that no single measure (that can be carried out) would do more to lessen the national curse of drunkenness than the appointment of competent chemists to see to the purity of the liquors vended. And, considering the advanced state of chemical science among us, is it absurd to suppose, that if the government were determined that so it should be, the selling of adulterated liquor might not easily be made so dangerous a trade as to be very soon given over? It is lamentable that people are so eager for gain that they will and do adulterate everything capable of the process. Physicians tell us that it is nearly impossible to get at the ordinary drug-stores any of the higher-priced medicines in their pure state; that opium, quinine, etc., are nearly always impure, mixed with foreign ingredients; and that, for this reason, their prescriptions often fail of the intended effect. This, certainly, is no good reason for enacting a law to abolish entirely the use of adulterable drugs; nor because tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, mace, mustard, and pepper are rarely found pure should we therefore abandon their use altogether.

Here, of course, it will be contended that the cases are not parallel; that whereas the abuse of liquor, or the use of the drugged article going by that name, renders man like the brute, degrades and obliterates the image of God in us, yet such is not the case with the adulterated commodities of food or with the drugs referred to. True, the analogy does not hold equally good throughout in each case, but the principle is exactly the same in all. We will go further, admitting that liquor is in very few cases an absolute necessity; but what a large number of mankind regard it as of prime importance to their well-being, to their comfort, or, finally, to their enjoyment! How few of the great mass of humanity, on the other hand, are of that unfortunate constitution of mind, of body, or of both that they cannot restrain themselves within the bounds of moderation in the use of liquor vinous or fermented! Suppose even that the passage of a prohibitory law by the majority were consonant with church and Scriptural teachings, would it be fair or reasonable that for the lamentable weakness of the very few the comfort and enjoyment of the vast mass of humanity should be lightly set aside as an unconsidered trifle? That Anglican bishop who said he “would rather see England free than England sober” expressed a noble sentiment, and we think, with him, that enforced sobriety (as would be that produced by such a law) would be dearly purchased at the expense of virtual slavery. Some one pithily condemns _that false system of morality that begins by pledges of total abstinence_, but the falsity of such a scheme is trifling compared with that which would invite us to come and admire a nation sober, enforcedly sober, _de par la loi!_ As well ask us to applaud the sobriety of the convicts in the penitentiary. We are not placed in the world to be free from temptation, but to resist it. All theologians assure us that this is a state of probation, nor is it the business of the civil code either to abolish property lest many may steal, or to suppress the manufacture of liquor lest some shame themselves and sin against God by getting drunk. Again, if you begin this business, where is it to end? Human beings are very full of kinks and crotchets. Each half-century is sure to have its peculiar vagary. What may not be that of the next one? King James considered tobacco as a direct emanation from the devil; and John Wesley was no whit behind him either in the belief or its expression. It is certainly quite as unnecessary, quite as much an article _de pur luxe_, as beer, wine, or spirits. Who is bail to me that, the principle once established of suppressing human nature by act of Congress, future Good Templars, prospective Rechabites, Sons of Temperance yet to come, nay, the whole Methodistic fraternity, may not revivify the views of Wesley and thunder anathemas against Yaras, Fine-cut, and Cavendish? Or there may arise an expounder of Scripture who shall deduce thence a system of vegetarianism (quite as unlikely doctrines and practices have been deduced from Holy Writ) to his own satisfaction and that of crowds greater than wait on the ministrations of our latest evangelists. Of course then, marshalled to victory by the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” they will soon have a law enacted forbidding to us all beefsteak or mutton-chop! There is, in short, no end to the antics and absurdities that may, nay, that must, arise under the ægis of such a precedent as this law would furnish. We, for our part, fully believe in rendering to Cæsar what belongs to him; but it is the province of the church, representing God upon earth—of religion, in other words—so to dispose man as to enable him to withstand temptation to sin and crime; and the business of the civil power to punish him _for offences committed_, not to remove all temptation to wrongdoing. In short, the law is not held to an impossibility, which this would plainly be, unless the world were made a _tabula rasa_. The assumption, therefore, by the civil law, of the divinely-conferred duty and prerogative of the church would, in any case, be a usurpation, were it even practicable. We shall see that in the case before us, at least, it would be purely impossible to carry out the legal mandate by all the power of the government, were it multiplied a hundred-fold.

The heavy tariff on foreign, and the large internal revenue tax on domestic, liquors, necessitated by our civil war, have also been a great inducement to the adulteration of spirits, as well as to the advance of that already too wide-spread practice of cheating the government in matter of revenue, now so common as hardly to be regarded in the light of a moral wrong. Howsoever it may have come about, the fact is that the tone of political morality with us is about as low as it has ever been in any country that the sun shines on. From the Stocking & Leet trial, through the troubles of Tammany’s magnates and the charges of complicity with smugglers pending against some of our most prominent mercantile firms, down to the “crooked whiskey” cases of to-day, as well as the constantly-bandied and the sometimes thoroughly proven charges of bribery against our most highly-placed public men, we see everywhere either a desperate resolution to evade all law, or a serene belief that deception and the withholding of tax and tariff legally due cease to be cheating and swindling when the government is the party of the second part. It is now clearly made out that, since the laying on of high duties and revenue tax, it has cost our government an average of three dollars to collect every two dollars received from that source in the public treasury; while as to the amount of which the government is annually defrauded, no calculation other than an approximate one can, of course, be made, but those whose position gives them the best chance to form an accurate judgment place the yearly sum at the minimum of $80,000,000. Before our late war we had a federal treasury ever full. Indeed, but a very short time before that dismal experience the general government distributed a large surplus among the States; our treasury notes were always above par, and our simple government bonds at high premium. With the advent of war came the necessity for raising a large and an immediate revenue. Taxation, direct and indirect, was resorted to, the like of which has rarely (if ever) been known in civilized countries. Paper money, redeemable at the pleasure of the government, was issued. Gold and silver entirely disappeared. An army of internal revenue officers had to be created, and a supplementary host of detectives to ferret out infractions of the new-made laws. The tax on common whiskey was placed at two dollars and fifty cents per gallon, and corresponding sums on foreign liquors; Cognac, for example, being rated at seven dollars per gallon. Our people were not accustomed to, and did not like, taxation; and the government neither knew how to suggest, nor its officials how to carry out honestly and skilfully, any well-devised plans for the collection of revenue on such a gigantic scale. Here there was a strong inducement at once both to the illicit manufacture and to the increased adulteration of liquors, the latter of which (though existing too largely before) took, from that time, large strides in advance, and both have uninterruptedly continued their progress till the present day, threatening (unless most stringent measures be taken for their repression) to ruin our country, morally, and a large number of her citizens temporally and eternally. It is true that the tax on home-manufactured spirits was largely cut down in 1870, and that on foreign wines and liquors heavily curtailed; but those at all acquainted with the subject know how little this step, taken after eight years of the reverse practice, was likely to interfere with clandestine manufacture, and how immensely it tended to give a superadded impetus to the practice of adulteration. Our internal revenue officers are now legion, yet they do not collect one-half of the revenue that should be collected; and of that one-half not more than two-fifths inures to the benefit of the treasury. Our detectives swarm everywhere, yet illicit distillation and poisonous adulteration of liquors are on a very rapid increase. Now, a very large number of people, learned and lay, rich and poor, of practical experience in the use of liquor, and deriving their information from the experience of others, or from reading, are strongly of the opinion that the best and most practicable mode of decreasing actual drunkenness, and of mitigating or diminishing the acknowledged evils of drink, would be the furnishing of pure liquors instead of the noxious compounds now on sale. Certainly, to put the matter in the mildest terms, there prevails a very extensive belief, founded, we think, upon good reason, that if pure liquors alone were sold drunkenness would not prevail as it now does. It is not contended that intoxication would thereby be done away with, any more than that the most skilful devices can ever entirely prevent theft, forgery, murder, or other crime; but we insist that the tendency to drunkenness, now so inseparable (as experience shows) from the use of the drugged article, would not exist in a tithe of the instances nor to a hundredth part of the extent that we daily see. Certain it is that in the last century, and until adulteration began to prevail extensively in the present, the terrific effects of liquor-drinking now known to us, under so many different names and forms of disease, did not present themselves with any frequency; and it is equally certain that just in proportion to the universality of adulteration has been the commonness and virulence of mania and delirium resulting from drink. We have said that stringent measures should be taken to guard the interests of the comparatively helpless consumers, so that they may have some reasonable ground for believing that in taking a glass of ale or beer they have not imbibed a dose of _cocculus indicus_, that a drink of whiskey does not of necessity imply an undefined amount of _nux vomica_, or that the symptoms resultant from a mixture of brandy and water at dinner are not due to _strychnia_ or _creosote_. We found it much easier during the war to raise prices on account of the enhanced value of gold than it has since proved to diminish them in accordance with the approximation of greenbacks to coin. So, too, in this matter of suppressing adulteration of drink (which is the remedy we propose, and which will be just so far valuable as it is thorough and uncompromising, while comparatively useless unless rigidly and strenuously carried out), we have called into play a practice, we have evoked a demon, which is not to be abolished or banished by feeble instrumentality. We shall illustrate what may be done here in our own country by what has been successfully accomplished in Sweden (a country in which drunkenness and its attendant evils had attained a magnitude beyond, perhaps, any other of Europe); nor can we do it better than by the following account taken from Dr. Carnegie’s late book, entitled _The License Laws of Sweden_:

“In the town of Gothenburg, however, these measures (_prohibitory
laws_), partly from local reasons, were not found sufficiently
restrictive; and a committee, appointed in 1865, readily traced a
concurrent progress between the increasing pauperism and the
increasing drink. The laws were evaded, the police set at naught,
and nothing remained but to inaugurate a radically new system. This
consisted of various measures, all subordinate to one great
principle—viz., that no individual, either as proprietor or manager,
under a public-house license, should derive any gain from the sale
of liquor. To carry out this principle in its integrity the whole
liquor-traffic of the town was gradually transferred to a company,
limited, consisting of the most highly respected gentlemen of the
town, who undertook, by their charter, to carry on the business in
the interests of temperance and morality, and neither to derive any
profit from it themselves nor to allow any person acting under them
to do so. The company now rent all the houses and licenses from the
town, paying a moderate interest on the capital invested, and making
over the entire profits of the trade to the town treasury. The
places for drink—the number of which was immediately curtailed—are
of two classes, public-houses and retail shops, both bound to
purchase their wine and spirits (analyzed and authoritatively
pronounced pure) from the company, to sell them without any profit,
to supply good food and hot meals on the premises, and not to sell
Swedish brandy except at meals. The public-houses are managed by
carefully-chosen men, who derive their profits from the sale of malt
liquors (also analyzed before being put on sale), coffee, tea, soda
and seltzer water, cigars, etc., and from the food and lodgings. The
retail shops are managed entirely by women, who have a fixed salary
but no share in the profits. This system began to work in October,
1865. Its effects have been at once perceptible. In 1864 the number
of fines paid in Gothenburg for drunkenness was 2,164; in 1870, with
a largely increased population, 1,416. Cases of _delirium tremens_
in 1864 were 118; in 1868 but 54. Nor are the financial effects less
encouraging. In 1872 the company realized in net profits no less
than £15,846, which, being paid over to the town, far more than
covers the entire poor-rate. Another pleasant fact is that this
large amount of trade is virtually carried on without any paid-up
capital, the whole outlay of the company having only amounted to
£454.”