Chapter I (3)

It is interesting to learn from the same authority whence the above extract is taken that whilst the consumption of liquor in Sweden is still enormous, it has been reduced (mainly owing to the care exercised in testing its purity, and partially, also, to well-regulated restriction) from ten gallons per head throughout the kingdom in 1860 to about two gallons in 1870, which is about the same proportion as in Scotland at present; and that the universal testimony of the Swedish philanthropists, far from favoring absolute prohibition, looks rather to purity of liquor, conjoined with moderate restriction, and finds the results eminently satisfactory. But while we point to their experience, as well as to common sense, right reason, the practice both of the ancient and modern world till the beginning of this agitation of a factitious temperance; while we invoke the teachings of Scripture for those who profess to be guided in matters of morals and doctrine by that, and by that alone, and appeal to the constant practice and to the authority of the church, which should, with Catholics, be paramount to all other considerations, yet we are painfully aware that to produce conviction in the minds of extremists is a task that no logic can accomplish. It is, like the cure of the vice itself which gives occasion for this article, only to be accomplished by the grace of God. The English-speaking world—the most enterprising and energetic portion of the human race—occupying, for the most part, regions which suggest toiling and striving physically and mentally so as, in the opinion of many of them, to necessitate an occasional resort to alcoholic stimulants, have used these liquors largely, we will say too largely, if you please. Other shrewd and unscrupulous Anglo-Saxons have stepped in and poisoned, for gain, the cup which they thought one of refreshment. Death and disease, drunkenness and dipsomania, have been so long and so frequently the result that the attention of the public is imperatively called to it. “Take the pledge,” says one; “that will settle the matter”—forgetting that without the help of God no pledge is of any account, and that with his grace no pledge is needed. “Join the order,” bawls another; “here you find the sovereign panacea for drink”—oblivious of the fact that these secret institutions are never permanent, rarely at peace within themselves, constantly shifting in views and practice, and that in joining them the neophyte simply takes as many masters as there are members, exchanging the slavery to drink for one still more galling and quite as sinful. “No license to sell less than a quart,” says yet another. The quart is soon disposed of, and many another quart and gallon go the same road. “Sell no liquor, open no drinking-house on Sunday,” screams a full-throated chorus of religionists. This, too, is tried, and the poor man, obliged to choose between entire dulness and intoxication, prepares himself on Saturday night for a Sunday’s drinking bout. “No license less than three hundred dollars,” suggest the cannie property-holders; and, presto! higher adulteration; more poison in the drink; a higher rate per glass, it may be, but not a tippling-shop less in country or city. “No license at all,” is the next cry. It is tried; adulteration becomes still more barefaced, but the same amount of drinking is done, it can hardly be said clandestinely, for it is done in the face of day, and everybody knows or may know of it. Macrae’s _America_ tells us that when an investigation was instituted into the workings of the prohibitory or no-license system in Boston, there were found to be in that city over two thousand places where liquor was vended by the glass, and that the average annual amount spent per head (men, women, and children included) for liquor in the entire State was a little over ten dollars. “_We’re all for the Maine Law here_,” said a man to Mr. Macrae, “_but we’re agin its enforcement_.” It may here be stated once for all, without possibility of successful contradiction, that not one of these laws, whether for Sunday-closing, higher license, no license, partial license, or entire prohibition, ever was carried out, or ever had any other effect than possibly to add to the cost, and certainly to enlarge illicit distillation and set an enhanced premium on the adulteration of liquors.

Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi!

Maine was obliged, after a few years’ trial, to abrogate her prohibitory law; and the most ardent favorers of _local option_, which has now had a full and fair trial in many States, confess it a failure. Our own experience of it is that drunkenness is nowhere so rife as in the midst of those very regions where no license is granted and entirely prohibitory laws are supposed to prevail; and there is surplusage of testimony to the facts.

Strange, certainly, it seems to us, that among the various modes, some plausible and some supremely silly, that have been proposed and acted upon with a view of checking the ravages of intemperance, so few should have suggested, and none should have acted upon the idea of trying, what might be the possible effect of pure liquor. Common sense should have at once suggested it, and a portion of the redundant and exuberant philanthropy of the age might have been well, at least harmlessly, employed in making an experiment which could in no case have worked disastrously, as all those plans have done which familiarize the people with systematized violation of law, to gratify the morbid craving for those poisons the use of which, growing with every indulgence, soon leaves the victim incapable of resisting the craving that never abandons him but with life. Most people, however, once fairly inoculated with the views of the temperance societies (we refer to the _secret_ institutions under that name), see everything but from one point of view; the vision becomes jaundiced, prejudice carries the day, argument is of no avail, moderate measures are futile, liquor in any shape, alcohol in any quantity, are the _accursed thing_, and those who deal in them, nay, those who see no objection to their use, are _Amalekites_. What to them are the vested interests of the eight hundred thousand persons engaged in the manufacture and sale of liquor in the United States alone? What the employment of hundreds of thousands engaged in its transportation? What care they about the wives and families of either? It is of no sort of consequence to them that over sixty million dollars accrue to the federal treasury, even under the present extremely defective system of collection, from the tax on domestic liquors; half as much more from the tariff on foreign wines and spirits; and that the amounts paid for municipal, county, State, and federal purposes, by license on liquor-selling and drinking-houses, are simply incalculable. As well plant and try to cultivate the sands from high-water mark to ebb-tide as attempt to reason with such people! They are the _communists_ of our country, the _impracticables_, the men of one idea, and that idea a wrong one. We would much like to be able to reach them, to be able to make them hear the words of genuine truth and soberness; but they are “joined to their idols,” as Ephraim of old; the doctrines of the “lodge,” the rulings of the _W. Patriarch, W. Chief Templar_ (or whatever else may be the name of the presiding _Grand Mogul_), are of more avail to them than all the philosophy and all the logic of ancient and modern times. What are the Fathers of the church to the Rev. Boanerges Blunderbuss, at Brimstone Corner, who explains to the satisfaction of his hearers that wine, “which cheers the heart of God and of man,” is but the unfermented juice of the grape, and that our Saviour, at his last supper, squeezed out some three or four clusters of grapes into the goblet whence he and his disciples drank? Talk to one of these people about the desirableness of some regard for the habits and customs of the multitudes in this wide world who use wine and spirits without abusing them; he regards you with a withering contempt for your ignorance, and informs you that _they are all drunkards_ and must be _reformed_; that if five glasses of wine make a man drunk, one-half of a glass must make him one-tenth part drunk; that liquor is never necessary, even in disease as a remedy; that the Good Samaritan was really poisoning the poor fellow to whom he gave the wine; and he leaves on your mind the general impression that Solomon had yet a great deal to learn from Sons of Temperance and prohibitory-law men when he over-hastily recommended in his Proverbs to “give drink to the sorrowful.” Just as impracticable, though in a different way and for a different reason, is the man who has no sympathy for habits and needs which he never knew; who never had a generous impulse in his life; whose every act is based on cold reason and personal interest; who seldom or never took, and who never longed for, a glass of wine since his wedding-day; who has no sympathy for those differently situated in life or of different physiological diathesis. He has neither genuine sympathy for the unfortunate drunkard nor fellow-feeling for those who use liquor. Mistaking oftentimes his own plentiful surroundings for honesty, the want of temptation for temperance, and his own success in life for virtue, we need expect from him no other cry than “do away with the whole thing.”

Those poor degraded wretches at the other extreme of society who, from congenital inclination, bad surroundings, evil training, folly, disease, or the gnawing remorse engendered by failure in life, have fallen a prey to the accursed poisons sold as drink, their intellect shattered and their physical constitution prostrate, do not, we confess, deserve a very ardent sympathy from a community for which they have done little but harm. Still, that community was to blame that received money for licensing the houses that sold them narcotics instead of beer, henbane instead of wine, and liquid damnation for strong drink. It is, at least, a duty which we owe in future to all who can control themselves that, when they ask for bread, they shall not be furnished with a stone.

We are very anxious not to be misunderstood. This article is not intended to be either a recommendation of, or an excuse for, tippling habits, still less as an argument in favor of the drinking usages of the last century or of any other period distinguished for copious drinking. The personal habits and practice of the writer are opposed entirely to the use of wine, beer, or spirits. His profession does not render them necessary nor his taste crave them, and he would that in this one respect the world “were altogether such as” he is; but he cannot ignore the fact that all men are not so constituted physically, so situated in a worldly point of view, or mentally disposed in the same way. What all can clearly see is that a cry is being raised, an attempt being made, to add in a clandestine and illegitimate way something that shall in effect be tantamount to a precept, and that this something so foisted upon us is opposed to the practice of the church, consequently to the Scriptures. We see that this cry has become fashionable, a fear of being reckoned with the “vulgar herd” (for drunkenness is a vice of the vulgar) or a fear of giving offence causing many to be silent who should “cry aloud and not spare,” lest haply the harm may be done and it be too late for the remedy. Now, the whole clamor, save in so far as it inveighs against drunkenness, “the disgrace of man and the mother of misery,” proceeds on the false hypotheses, 1, that the Holy Scripture discountenances the moderate use of liquor; 2, that the church opposes it; 3, that the ancient philosophers condemned it; 4, that it is injurious in health; 5, that it is valueless as a remedy in sickness; and, 6, that prohibitory laws should be passed forthwith forbidding under penalty the manufacture, purchase, sale, or importation of wine, beer, or spirits. Not a single one of these assertions is true, or has about it the semblance of verisimilitude to any but the average brain of the secret-society _affilié_, or the fungus that stands in the place of a heart for the bigoted sectary. Were they every one true, we should still be opposed to the manner in which it is attempted to carry them into effect; fully believing, as we do, that the whole matter of personal reform lies within the domain of the church, upon which region the civil power has no right to trench. Of course the state has a perfect and undisputed right to tax wines, liquors, etc., like all other articles of luxury, to any extent she may deem advisable, either for revenue or repression of habits of expense among her citizens. But, inseparably bound up with this right, and as a corollary from it, it is the duty of the state to see that the article or articles for allowing the sale of which she receives revenue shall not injure, much less ruin, her citizens; and it is in the performance of this duty that we affirm government to have been totally remiss and delinquent. Had it been otherwise, and had the state been half as anxious to perform her duty as she has been always eager to claim her right, there never would have been the faintest plausibility in the cry raised; no agitation could have resulted; with her performance of the duty the clamor must, of necessity, cease, and with it those secret societies, so powerless for good, so potential for evil, that have been evoked by it.

There is, however, no limit in our age to the power of clap-trap, of a cry well started and persistently kept up. Back such a cry by the unremitting efforts of a few secret organizations, which demagogues well know how to use as a means of climbing into power, and superadd the influence of some of the sects, it deepens to a howl, and a careless or lethargic community is easily induced to believe that there must be some reason for the clamor; that what so many people say must be true; that where so much smoke exists there must have been a fire at some time; and, finally, that the object on which so many persons seem to have set their minds, to carry which so many are combined, must be a good one. From this point to supporting it with vote and influence the step is an easy one. Hence it is that, absurd as is the proposal of those who favor Congressional prohibitory laws touching liquor, we feel no certainty that its unreasonableness will prove a barrier to its being at some time put into effect. We have indicated previously that there exists, even among Catholics, who should know better, a lurking notion that in joining the T. B. A. or any of its congeners, they take a step forward in holiness, approach nearer to the imitation of the Saviour, and outstrip in piety those who remain outside the institution using (and able to enjoy without abusing) “the liberty wherewith Christ has made them free.” Now, this is false, and consequently is not Catholic doctrine or feeling. It is according to the doctrine of the church, with which the practice of Catholics must agree, that should the experience of any individual prove to him that total abstinence from drink is _in his special case_ easier than moderation in its use, and that he ought, consequently, not to use liquor at all; and if, in addition, he is clearly of opinion that this, his proper course, is much facilitated by joining a Catholic temperance association, he has a clear right, nay, it is his duty, to attach himself to it. Further, should a Catholic have a friend, whom he can largely influence, who is becoming over-fond of drink, and whom he judges in conscience he can reclaim by taking with him the pledge of total abstinence, or by accompanying him into any of the Catholic associations got up and recommended for such purposes, the Catholic so doing acts nobly and performs a meritorious work, greater and more laudable just in proportion as he himself was further removed from temptation or danger of fall in the matter of drink. But it is not a bounden duty enjoined on every Catholic Christian to abstain entirely from liquor, much less to join a temperance society; and, except where it is done to save another, as in the case just presented, the Catholic so joining it is no more laudable, certainly, than he who stands aloof, using his God-given liberty in the matter.

While the church, like her divine Lord and Founder, has never forcibly interfered with man’s free-will, yet her entire history proves that her salutary influence has been exerted, and that, too, with the highest success, against every shape in which the sin of luxury has appeared. The Catholic countries of the world are not now, and they never have been, the drunken countries. Drunkards are not found to-day among those who frequent the tribunal of penance; and, with that consistency of action and oneness of doctrine which is found in no other existent institution, the church maintains that against the sin of drunkenness, as against all other forms of sin, there is no thoroughly effectual remedy but the frequentation of her sacraments. Pledges and associations, while sanctioned by her, are regarded as mere _adminicula_, tending to bring the sinner to the use of confession, the performance of enjoined penance, and the worthy reception of the Blessed Sacrament. Abstinence, whether for a time or for life, she looks upon as a work of perfection, of remedy, or of penance for the individual. The _pledge_, as administered by her, is neither oath nor vow, but either a resolution taken by one’s self in the presence of another, or at the utmost a solemn promise made to man. While more than fifteen hundred years ago the church anathematized the heresy of the Manicheans, who taught that spirituous liquors are not creatures of God, and that, as they are intrinsically evil, he who uses them is thereby guilty of sin, yet both before and after the rise of that detestable sect all the writings of her fathers and doctors, all the decrees of her synods and councils, all the decisions of her Supreme Pontiffs, and all the labor of her priests have been persistently directed towards teaching her members to “subdue the flesh with its affections and lusts.” How well she succeeded let her conquest to Christianity of the conquering northern barbarian hordes testify. Of these, whose temperament rendered them peculiarly inclined to debauch, whose habits by no means belied their inclinations, and whose besetting sin was drunkenness even after their conversion to the faith, she made sober nations. Acts of Parliament, municipal and other local measures, show us the huge strides toward unbounded intemperance in drink taken by the English people from the time when, in giving up the true church, they abandoned the sacrament of penance; while the same acts, and what we have had of so-called repressive law-tinkering on the same subject in our own country, show us the utter futility of any and every attempt by the civil law to render men moral by statute—to do God’s work without the help of the Omnipotent. Were it even possible for the state to succeed in carrying out the most stringent prohibitory or repressive laws that it ever entered the brain of the wildest or most narrow-minded fanatic to conceive, what would be the result? Simply that people would, like inmates of the work-house or penitentiary, endure privation without practising abstinence. The church of God takes no such ground; and the state can no more succeed in carrying out such measures than did Domitian with his sumptuary decree. Legislators forget what the church always bears carefully in mind and has always inculcated—viz., that _drunkenness is the sin not of the drink but of the drunkard_. The assertion that alcohol in any form is an emanation of the evil spirit, or the denial of the lawfulness of the use of liquor, is in itself just as much a heresy today as it was in the days of the Egkratites. But, that we may not overrun our limits in pursuing this branch of the subject, we refer such readers as may be anxious to see it fully and ably treated to the valuable little work entitled _The Discipline of Drink_, by Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R.

It is not, however, from Catholic sources that the proposal emanates to cut off by legal enactment the supply of beer, wine, and spirits, which many people—indeed, the vast majority of the civilized inhabitants of the earth—deem necessary for their health, conducive to their comfort, or desirable for their enjoyment. Such schemes come from the _Radicaux enragés_; from those who addle their intellects by striving to decipher the mystic number of the Apocalyptic beast; from the men of the George Fox stripe, to whom a _steeple-house_ is the unclean thing; always from men on whom the name of the Church of Rome operates as does the flaunting of a red rag by the picador on the bull in the amphitheatre of Seville; and, finally, from those who believe neither in this nor in anything else that man should hold sacred, but who see and seek in the secret societies, and in the agitation of this and similar questions, a stepping-stone to power and a means of gaining influence.

Were one to judge by the pamphlets and tracts written on the side of the prohibitionists, he would readily suppose that it is admitted on all hands by physicians and chemists that alcohol is of no use as a remedial or curative agent; that it is not food, is not life-sustaining; that no possible good can come out of Nazareth; that the unclean thing is altogether accursed, and should be relegated to the bottomless pit whence it sprang. And, that we may not overburden this article, we shall simply give the conclusion arrived at by a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1875, entitled “The Physiological Influence of Alcohol,” in which the writer (himself a physician, whose yearning to find against us is evident throughout), after an able comparison and summing up of the cases, experiments, and arguments of Doctors Richardson, Thudichum, Dupré, Anstie, and other celebrated authorities, thus perorates:

“The inference is plain. The nutritious capability of alcohol, when
used in appropriate circumstances and in reasonable quantity, is yet
a matter of controversy, and a question which has yet to be further
investigated and weighed by competent scientific authorities before
any absolute judgment regarding it can be pronounced that shall be
worthy of general acceptance.”

Those who feel any interest in this part of the subject would do well to read the entire article referred to, and we feel convinced that nine out of ten who do so will come to the conclusion, from the data given, that the able writer’s patent bias is what caused the very non-committal wording of his final dictum; while the same number will decide the large preponderance of proof to be in favor of the nutritive qualities of alcohol. We have failed to see in any of the “temperance” documents the remotest hint that there was anything at all to be said in favor of alcohol as an article of nutriment. Is this honest? These people must calculate largely on the gullibility of the public; but they should recollect, too, that the same public, when it once discovers their prevarication, is very ready to apply the proverb, _Falsus in uno_, etc.

The great Swedish chancellor, Oxenstierna, said to his son: “You do not yet know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.” We are in this respect neither better nor worse off than other countries, with perhaps this exception: that our best citizens, those of largest experience and soundest judgment, are too self-respecting, too proud, to descend into the dirty arena of politics, a vast majority of such never having attended a primary meeting in their lives, and many, very many, rarely casting a vote. True, when corruption has run its course, when ring-rule becomes unendurable, this class will sometimes, as lately in New York, arouse itself. Now, the men of one idea, the canters (honest and dishonest), and the knaves are not so. They never miss an opportunity of propagating their views, and it would seem almost as though there were an intimate and necessary connection between the falsity or illiberality of the view and the pertinacity of its upholders in spreading it. Besides, they are not indifferent to, but they hate, broad and liberal views on any subject; they must gauge all humanity by their own instrument, which, while it suits the pint-pot, is but ill adapted to the hogshead. “_Les idées générales sont toujours haïes par les idées partielles_,” says a French writer to whom (while we by no means agree with him in everything) ability must be conceded. Should people ever have the power to do it—a contingency by no means unlikely in this century, in which the secret societies seem to hold “high carnival” (May a subsequent Lenten time purge the world of such foul humors!)—they will infallibly enact a penal prohibitory law. This will be accomplished by means of the already-organized associations, the oath-bound classes, the pledged abstainers, some of the sects, largely aided by the lethargy and carelessness of people who hold clearer and more correct views. It will be worse than useless to pass such laws, unless provision be made for stringently carrying into effect their details. Suppose that the prohibitory law proposed has been enacted and is vigorously enforced, and let us cursorily examine what is this Golden Age, this antedated millennium promised us so confidently by our over-temperate friends.

A blockade of coast will be necessary, to which the blockade of the Confederate territory during the late war will be as nothing, either for extent of coast to be guarded or for the numbers, ingenuity, and means at the command of the blockade-runners. The Canadian and Mexican borders will require cordons of sentries day and night, to furnish which one hundred armies such as we possess would be ridiculously inadequate. A government detective force of at least one-fourth our adult male population will have to be employed, organized, and paid; and not less than one-half of the remainder will soon be in prison for infraction or evasion of the law. Meanwhile, the revenues will have diminished by fully one-third, while the governmental expenses will have been tenfold increased. The hundreds of thousands who now make a livelihood for themselves and families by the manufacture, transport, and sale of beer, wines, or spirits must find other employment or join the already too numerous army of tramps; and in this case what becomes of the unfortunate families? If the laboring man finds it difficult to procure work now, what will it be then? Taxation must, of necessity, be decoupled; and meantime a large proportion of the population will have come to the conclusion that they are suffering under the most odious of all tyrannies, and will be ripe for revolution. The pretext will not be wanting in the details of carrying out the provisions of the law. This state of things might last, at the utmost, a year, during which insurrections would be of constant occurrence in every part of the country; outbreaks in the cities would take place day after day; and, finally, the minority, in revolution against what they considered an unjust and tyrannical edict, would carry the day either peacefully at the polls (by aggregating to themselves such of the majority as had become convinced of the absurdity of the law) or, sword in hand and at the mouth of the cannon, would revindicate to themselves the rights so wantonly trampled upon. The results of such a victory may be better imagined than described. History, fortunately, has but few examples of such revolutions against the extravagance of over-zealous reform, but those few are terrifically replete with warning.

We wish, then, to insist that _no law at all_ is better by far than a law which, in its nature, _cannot be carried into effect_. That this is such a law we think manifest on the above showing; and did we wish further proof, it is readily found in the fact that all those communities, great or small, towns, counties, or states, that have tested this, or even much milder doses of similarly-intended laws, have been obliged either to abandon them after a longer or shorter trial, or to acknowledge their impotence to execute them, and to own that under such _régime_ the evils deprecated become more virulent and drunkenness more rampant. Contempt, too, for the law, in one instance, has the inevitable tendency to sap the foundations of respect for all law, not merely in the mind of the drunkard but in that of the moderate drinker, as well as of those who abet them both in their violation of legal enactment. Meanwhile, the sensible man, the practical but unpledged total abstainer, cannot be expected to feel strongly interested in the success of a law which his judgment tells him to be merely an arbitrary _enforcement, by a majority, of their views of morality_ on a minority entitled to their own ideas and practices in this matter alike by natural reason, Scriptural teaching, and church commands. “A nation is near destruction when regard for law has disappeared.”

Fully aware, as we are, that the arguments and deductions, the statements and quotations, contained in this paper are far from being in accord with the oral and printed teachings most in vogue and most palatable to the reading public, and much as we might desire to be on the popular side, still we are not prepared, for the attainment of this end, to sacrifice our convictions of right, to ignore the experience of the past, to turn a deaf ear to the teachings of the church, or to superadd to her commands practices in morals that she knows not. We cannot undertake to find in Scripture injunctions that do not exist; still less are we willing to lie supine when erroneous views are stealthily creeping in (even amongst ourselves), are sedulously promulgated over the length and breadth of the non-Catholic world, and when the attempt is making to enforce _even desirable_ practices in morals and personal discipline by false arguments and means that will not stand the test of right reason. Let us review the ground and gather together the results.

The use of intoxicating liquor or strong drink has been known in all countries and from the earliest times; drunkenness must have been and was equally well known. In no system, even of heathenism, has intoxication been recommended; and in none, save that of Mohammed, has abstinence from liquor been enjoined. The Old and New Testaments, while teeming with allusions to the use of _wine_ and _strong drink_, nowhere lay down any precept forbidding their use, but frequently by the clearest implication, and in a few instances by express injunction, command the use of both; and the manufacture of wine _must_, by the institution of our Blessed Saviour, be kept up so long as the world shall exist. There is _no_ proof for the assertion, that alcohol is not food, and _less_ for the averment that it has no efficacy as a remedial agent. The taste for liquor is a natural one and inherent to all men, but probably stronger and more necessary of gratification among hard-working men, and in damp or cold climates, than in the case of sedentary persons or in mild and hot countries. It is _not_ the province of civil government to remove temptation to the infraction of the moral law; its province is _to keep order_ and _to punish infractions_ of law. To pass a series of totally prohibitory laws would be to attempt the legal suppression of human nature; which being impossible, such legislation must be absurd. There are great evils in the present management of the liquor-traffic, chiefly arising from the wholesale adulterations with poisonous drugs everywhere _largely_ practised, but most ruinously in the northern countries of Europe, in Canada, and in the United States. Were the traffic so taken in charge by governments or carefully-appointed companies that _pure liquors only_ should be furnished for consumption, all profits from the sale accruing to government, the great mass of the evils (now justly complained of) in connection with the liquor trade would disappear, while at the same time an immense revenue would accrue to the federal or State treasury, as the case might be. If these prohibitory laws were passed, and carried out in their spirit, dreadful evils would be the result; and, finally, such laws never can be carried out at all, and, by consequence, it is not competent for government to enact them. The whole matter of intemperance comes purely within the domain of morals; religion alone can deal with it radically; and while the civil law should and must punish drunkenness, with the crimes resulting therefrom, it is to Christianity alone that we must look for the effectual reformation of the drunkard and prevention of his sin.

These are the arguments that present themselves to us against the enactment of what are called “prohibitory laws”; and we believe the suggestions above given, regarding the evils of the present liquor trade and the mode of ridding the world of those evils, to be in full consonance both with the facts and with common sense.

“Si quid novisti rectius istis.
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.”

FRENCH PROVERBIAL SAYINGS.[48]

There is, in the French language, one peculiarity amongst others which only becomes perceptible to foreigners after a somewhat lengthened residence in France—namely, the frequent use of proverbial expressions of which the original meaning, as far as the speaker is concerned, is utterly lost.

For instance, a person grandly dressed out is said to be _sur son trente et un_; an old piece of furniture or of attire is _vieux comme Hérode_; again, _il ne se foule pas la ratte_ means “he takes things easily”; _prendre les jambes au cou_ is to go as fast as possible; and a person who speaks French badly is said to _parler Français comme une vache Espagnole_.

When the English-speaking races use expressions of this kind, there is in them almost always some recognized allusion, quotation, or, it may be, a quaint adaptation of the words of some well-known author, ancient or modern, or they point to some fact or tradition or popular notion. In French familiar conversation, however, there are numberless proverbial and popular sayings still in common use the sense of which has been lost for centuries. Comparatively few amongst those who use them know that they are expressions borrowed, it may be, from certain customs or from history or from literature; but usually the trace is lost, the connection broken, and the reason of their existence forgotten.

These proverbial expressions have, for the most part, been recently collected, and as far as possible accounted for, and their source and history, where not discovered, at least suggested, in an ingenious volume by M. Charles Rozan, in which he gives also certain popular words usually qualified as vulgar, but “whose fundamental meaning it is all the more acceptable to learn, from the fact of their not being yet admitted into the official dictionaries; since,” he adds, “it is intruders more especially whom we would question as to who they are, whence they come, and what they have done.”

In the present notice we have chiefly selected examples having a local, historical, or in some way characteristic interest, and, with one or two exceptions, we have left aside those taken from the drama, besides the numerous sayings, not by any means peculiar to France alone, which relate to classical antiquity, and which any one possessing a very moderate knowledge of ancient history and literature would at once understand.

_Je m’en moque comme de l’an quarante_ is a saying which dates from the beginning of the eleventh century. There was at that period an extensive belief that the end of the world was at hand, and that the _thousand years_ and more supposed to have been assigned by our Lord as the duration of his church on earth, and of society in general, were to expire in the year 40 of that century. Sinners were converted in crowds; many talked of turning hermit; but, once this redoubtable epoch was over, men changed their tone, and from that time to this the expression used in speaking of a thing which need inspire no alarm is: “I care no more for it than for the year forty!”

_La beauté du Diable_ we should naturally suppose meant an appalling ugliness. It means nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, that exceeding prettiness frequently noticeable in young girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen, or thereabouts, which then passes away. This, the freshness of youthful beauty, seems to derive its name from the old proverb, _The devil was handsome when he was young_—namely, while he was yet an unfallen angel.

Ladies somewhat advanced in the debatable ground of life’s pilgrimage, when youth has made way for the nameless years of “a certain age,” are said to _coiffer Sainte Catherine_.

It was formerly the custom in France, as it still is in Spain and some parts of Italy, on particular festivals, to array in festal garments and headgear the statues of the saints. St. Catherine being the patroness of virgins, the care of her adornment was always entrusted to young girls. This charge, however agreeable and honorable at sixteen, might, nevertheless, not be desirable in perpetuity, and thus it came to be said of any middle-aged maiden: “She stays to _coiffer_ St. Catherine.”

To speak French very badly, or with a bad accent, is called _parler Français comme une vache Espagnole_. The people inhabiting the Basque provinces obtain their name from the indigenous word _vaso_—mountain—which, when taken adjectively, is augmented by the final _co_, and thus becomes _vasoco_, and, by contraction, _vasco_—mountaineer. The French, knowing little enough of Spanish, said at first _vacco_, and then _vacce_. Thus, _parler comme un vacce Espagnol_ meant at first to allude to the _inhabitants_ of the Basque provinces of Spain, whose language still bears all the characteristics of a primitive tongue, and who have great difficulty in expressing themselves in French; but _vacce_, at a time when the Latin had left its traces everywhere, was said for _vache_, the peasants in many of the French provinces retaining it still. Thence arose the confusion which produced the senseless comparison, “to speak French like a Spanish cow.”

_Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ (wait for me under the elm) implies that “the rendezvous you ask is disagreeable to me, and I will not keep it.” The type of an unpleasant rendezvous is that which compels an appearance before the judge, and it is to this that the expression here quoted originally referred. Formerly the judges administered justice under a tree planted in the open space before the church or the entrance of a seignorial mansion; hence the phrase of _juges de dessous l’orme_, and also that of _danser sous l’orme_. _Attendez-moi sous l’orme_ means, Find me there if you can (ironically), and to name a rendezvous which one has no intention of keeping.[49]

_Faire Charlemagne_ is to retire from the game after winning it, without giving the adversary a chance of revenge. This expression evidently alludes to the death of the great Charles, who, when he had become the monarch of the West, quitted this life without having lost any of his conquests.

To make unlawful profits by deceiving as to the price of any articles a person has been charged to buy is called “shoeing the mule” (_Ferrer la mule_). The expression dates from the time when the counsellors of the Parliament repaired to the _Palais de Justice_ mounted on mules, and the lackeys who remained outside during the sittings of the Assembly spent their time in gambling, extorting from their masters the money they wanted for their amusement by pretending that they had had to pay for shoeing the mules. Others carry the origin of the saying back to the time of Vespasian; the muleteer of that emperor, when on a journey, having been bribed to do so, suddenly stopped the mules under pretext of having them shod, so as to give time to a person whom they had met on the way to speak to the emperor of his affairs.

_Faire danser l’anse du panier_ is said of a cook who fraudulently obtains from her mistress more money for her purchases at market than they have really cost. The idea is that of shaking the basket so as to make its contents take up as much room as possible, and thus look worth their alleged price.

_Connaître les êtres de la maison_ is to know the doors, staircases, passages, rooms, outlets, etc.—in a word, the internal arrangements—of the house. _Êtres_, which for a long time was written _aîtres_, has for its origin the Latin _atria_, in the sense of dwelling.

_Je l’ai connu poirier_ is said of a _parvenu_ whose sudden rise from a mean condition has not earned him much consideration. There was in a village near Brussels an image of St. John, black and worm-eaten with age, and held in great veneration by the people. M. le Curé, thinking it time to replace it by a new one, sacrificed his best pear-tree for that purpose. One of his parishioners, who had shown great veneration for the ancient statue, took no notice whatever of the new one. “Have you lost your devotion to St. John?” the curé one day asked him. “No, M. le Curé; but the new St. John is not the real one—_I knew him when he was a pear-tree_.”

The expression of _Cordon Bleu_ is a singular example of the degradation of an aristocratic word, and we discover its ancestry with the same feeling that we once received the answer of a poor mason’s apprentice, who, on being asked his name, gave as his Christian and surname those of two of the oldest and noblest families in the county of Devon.

To the Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted in 1578 by Henri III., not every one could aspire. It consisted of only one hundred members, at the head of whom, as grand master, was the king.[50] The Dauphin, the sons and grandsons of the monarch, knights by right, were, as well as the princes of the blood, received at the time of their First Communion. Foreign princes were not admitted before the age of twenty-five; dukes and other nobles of high rank not until thirty-five; and in all cases none was allowed to enter who could not trace back at least three generations of nobility on the father’s side. The cord to which the symbol of the order was attached was blue, and the knights themselves were commonly designated _Cordons Bleus_.

The distinction being reserved to only a small number of persons of the highest rank, it gradually became customary to give the name of _cordon bleu_ to persons of superior merit. The Order of the Holy Ghost was abolished at the Revolution. All the dignities as well as all the ideas which had grouped themselves around this noble order have disappeared with it. Its name is no longer used in the figurative language of France to recall great merit or a distinguished name; the last memory of the order lingers in the kitchen, and the only _cordon bleu_ of the nineteenth century is a good cook!

Those who have hard work and scant pay are wont to observe that they might just as well _travailler pour le roi de Prusse_. The kingdom of Prussia not having been a century and a half in existence, this expression cannot have an earlier origin. M. Rozan asks, therefore, which is it of the five Fredericks who thus puts in doubt the royal generosity? Some persons say that it is Frederick William I., constantly anxious to show himself economical of the property of his subjects, unlike his father, who was, according to the expression of Frederick the Great, “great in little things and little in great.” Either from what the one did not spend at all, or from what the other spent amiss, a conclusion might be drawn in the sense of the proverb. We incline, however, rather to charge upon the Great Frederick himself all the responsibility of the French reproach.

Frederick II. was fond of employing French workmen, but not quite so fond of paying them; and as no people know better than the French that _noblesse oblige_, it is no matter of surprise that he should have furnished them with a proverb. We also find an example of his sparing management in the conflict which arose between him and Voltaire (who was very economical also) about lumps of sugar and candle-ends. In the agreement he had made with the poet Frederick had promised him, besides the key of chamberlain and the Cross of Merit, the ordinary appointments of a minister of state—_i.e._, an apartment at the château, board, firing, two candles a day, and so many pounds of tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate every month. These articles, though duly provided, were of such bad quality that Voltaire complained to the king. Frederick professed to be infinitely pained, and promised to give fresh orders. Were the orders given? In any case the provisions were as bad as ever, and Voltaire again remonstrated. The king got out of the affair with equal economy and cunning. “It is frightful,” he exclaimed, “to think how badly I am obeyed! I cannot hang those rascals for a lump of sugar or an ounce of tea; they know it, and laugh at my orders. But what most pains me is to see M. de Voltaire disturbed in his sublime ideas by small miseries like these. Ah! let us not waste upon mere trifles the moments that we can devote to friendship and the muses. Come, my dear friend, you can do without these little provisions. They occasion you cares unworthy of you; we will speak of them no more. I will command that for the future they shall be stopped.”

On another occasion Frederick was having a new front put to a Lutheran place of worship in Berlin. The ministers complained to the king that they had not light enough to carry on the service. The building, however, being too far advanced for his majesty to wish to incur the cost of alteration, he sent back their address, after writing upon it: “Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe.”

As a last proof of the just implication of the proverb, an English traveller, who does full justice to the eminent qualities of the monarch, says: “Never was there a fat soldier in any country; but the King of Prussia has not even a fat sergeant. A profound knowledge of financial economy is a point on which this sovereign excels. It is also a reason why his troops should never be otherwise than lean.”

This observer might have added that Frederick made it a rule never to allow his soldiers any pay on the 31st day of the month. There were thus seven days in the year on which the whole Prussian army _travaillait pour le roi de Prusse_.

_Manger de la vache enragée_ is to suffer great privations, to procure with difficulty the merest necessaries of life, and so to be reduced, as it were, to “eat the flesh of a mad cow.” The expression has also come to mean the trials of every kind which, in the course of life, ought to strengthen the body to endure hardness and the mind to a habit of fortitude.

On entering upon a house or _appartement_ in Paris it is customary to make a present of a few francs to the concierge, which present is called _le dernier adieu_. The newcomer, if a foreigner, wonders why the first dealings he has with the concierge of his new abode should be so singularly misnamed as “the last farewell.” The words are a corruption of the _Denier à Dieu_—God’s penny—the piece of money given to the person with whom a bargain was concluded, with the intention of taking God to witness that the engagement had been made, and of offering him a pledge that it should be faithfully kept. The sums thus given were bestowed by the receiver in alms to the poor, and were not appropriated, like the _arrhes_, a part payment of what was due to the person with whom an agreement had been made.

The lugubrious associations connected with the name of the melancholy building at the back of Notre Dame de Paris encourage the idea that the word _morgue_ must relate to corpses, or in any case to death. M. Rozan disabuses us of the mistake.

There was formerly at the entrance of prisons a room where new arrivals were detained for a few days after committal, in order that the keepers might learn to know their faces and appearance sufficiently well to preclude any chance of their escape. Later on the corpses found in the Seine or elsewhere were exposed in this same room, the public being admitted to see them through a small aperture made in the door.

Until 1804 the corpses were exposed in the lower jail dependent on the prison of the Grand Châtelet, when they were transferred to the quay of the _Marché Neuf_ in a small building which received the name of _morgue_, an old French word for _face_ or _visage_, and used also to express a fixed or scrutinizing look. It is doubtless in the latter sense that we find the true meaning of the term.

Now that we have given a greatly abridged version of portions of M. Rozan’s work, we refer the reader for the remaining curious fragments of information scattered throughout its pages to the book itself. At the same time we venture a suggestion that in future editions it might be well if the author were, as far as practicable, to classify its contents under certain heads—such, for instance, as are dramatic, historic, local, or classic, etc., in their origin or allusion—so as to allow some continuity of ideas in its perusal, and to gather its at present scattered stones into a collection of mosaics.

Footnote 48:

_Petites Ignorances de la Conversation._ Par. Charles Rozan. Paris:
Hetzler. 1877.

Footnote 49:

We may here mention that the finest elm in France is probably that in
the court of the Deaf and Dumb Institution in the Rue St. Jacques in
Paris. It is 50 metres in height and 5 in circumference, the last
remaining of the 6,000 feet of trees planted under Henri IV. We
mention this merely for the sake of our European readers, not for
those accustomed to the sylvan giants of the Western world.

Footnote 50:

Henri III. instituted this order in memory of the three great events
of his life which had happened on the Feast of Pentecost—namely, his
birth, his election to the crown of Poland, and his accession to the
throne of France.

THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE.
_A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.”_