The Distracted Preacher (15 page)

But why not treat this trade like any other? At present it is a monopoly, and fastens upon the public all the characteristic evils of monopolies: its profits are unnaturally high; entrance into it is sought by every access of jobbery and intrigue; and the true interest of the customer—unadulterated liquor at a fair price—is the last thing thought of. Throw open the trade, and this state of things would cease, if not at once, yet before long; a healthy competition would set in; good beer would be the rule, not, as now, the exception; incompetent and dishonest publicans would have no chance; and the result would be less drunkenness, if not fewer drinking-places. But is, after all, even the boldest theorist quite prepared to put this business upon the same footing as any other? Because we must have no compromise here; no abandonment of the broad, clear ground of principle; no re-introduction of the idea of restriction by a side-wind. If licences are still to exist, they must be mere devices to raise revenue, like licences to sell tea and tobacco; and their price must be determined only by the policy of the national exchequer. It will not do to say that any man who brings evidence of good character, and is in possession of suitable premises, shall be permitted to sell drink. Nobody inquires into the character of the village grocer, or inspects the front room of the cottage, when he puts a few jars into the window and fixes a deal counter by the door. We must face the possibility that it may turn out to be as profitable to sell a little home brewed beer in every third or fourth cottage, as it seems to be now to vend sweetmeats and small wares in the intervals of domestic occupation. But not to insist upon the fact that the advocates of this view rarely go as far as this (desiring, we believe, for the most part, to preserve the magistrates' action, while laying down strict general rules for their guidance), they bring in the principle of restriction under another form in admitting the necessity of the severest supervision of the trade by the police. Is there, then, any great difference in principle between limiting a trade in its inception and surrounding it with regulations in its progress? We say nothing of the needless labour thus thrown upon the police; of their abstraction from other duties; of the danger of demoralization (with its consequent peril to the public) to which they will be needlessly exposed;—does not the very fact sufficiently prove that this trade cannot be treated like any other? It would be essential, to secure any supervision at all, to preserve to the police the power which they now have of unrestricted entrance to any house where drink is sold under licence; is anybody prepared, or does anybody think it necessary, to extend that power to the case of the grocer who, equally under licence, sells coffee and snuff? Of course, under this new system, we are to have limitation of hours of sale: shall we have a parallel legislative enactment for the baker and the bookseller? Why should Acts of Parliament be necessary in the one case, while the other is left to public opinion? Or has any other trade like this a direct tendency to produce breaches of the public peace of which the law must take cognizance? The truth is, that even the so-called free-trader cannot frame his theory of the liquor trade without calling in the aid of ‘regulation.' And regulation is only restriction in another form and applied at a different stage.

What, then, precisely is it that differentiates this trade from every other which is engaged in supplying men's common wants? We cannot accept, we do not at this moment pause to state why we reject, the distinction which the total abstainer would draw sharply and without hesitation, that the trade, namely, is in its nature wholly unlawful, as the selling of poison is unlawful. Our argument is conducted upon the hypothesis that this trade, like any other, has a use; and we are quite ready to admit that every other trade has, like this, an abuse. But as we do not propose to shut up Fortnum and Mason's because reckless gourmands destroy their digestion, or Poole's because foolish boys run into debt for countless pairs of trousers, why should we interfere with the publican who intercepts an unreasonable proportion of the working man's wages? First, then, because this trade is one of which the abuse is very quickly and surely developed out of the use, and stands to it in quite a startling ratio; and, secondly, because it is a case in which legislation, imperial or municipal, may hope to interfere with some prospect of success. It is altogether beside the mark to make a practical comparison between any shop in which a legitimate trade is carried on—a tailor's, for example—and the corner gin-palace. In connection with the former, isolated instances of extravagance and folly will manifest themselves in the midst of a large and continuous supply of lawful needs; while in the latter, the abuses are the staple of the trade and the main source of the profit. What would become of the publicans of any large town if they were all at once confined to the purveying of ‘the poor man's beer' for domestic consumption, and were cut off from feeding the growing passion for drink in children; from adding to the intoxication of men already bemused with beer; from selling the noggin of gin, which is in every conceivable case needless and shameful, to the self-indulgent wife; from serving out the fatal anodyne of forgetfulness to the prostitute? And these are precisely the things which regulation can touch. We have thoroughly learned in this century the utter futility of all sumptuary law: we cannot prevent men from giving and eating dinners which end in gout and gravel; or women from running up milliners' bills which may half-ruin their husbands; or working men, for that matter, from buying and consuming drink to excess—at home. But the simple reconversion of public-houses into what they once were, houses of entertainment, where drink was sold only or chiefly as the accompaniment of a meal, and the restriction within the narrowest limits of counters at which it is retailed simply for purposes of excitement or intoxication, would, we are convinced, have a most important effect upon sobriety, and all that sobriety will bring with it.

At the opposite pole of theory stand the advocates of what is called the Permissive Bill, which has more than once been introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, but has never yet succeeded in getting so far as the second reading. Its principle we understand to be this: The country is to be divided into districts, of size yet indeterminate; and within each district the control of the liquor traffic is to be committed to the ratepayers, who, by a majority of two-thirds, may absolutely prohibit it. The details of the scheme are to be left for future consideration, so that these fundamental provisions be not touched. And its chief defences, as reiterated, almost
usque, ad nauseam,
in the speeches of its advocates, are twofold: first, that the majority of the inhabitants have a right to put away this traffic from the midst of them, if they will; and, secondly, that as many landowners have already exercised, with good social result, the autocratic power of this kind which the law gives them, it cannot be unreasonable or undesirable that the same power should be entrusted to communities.

We believe that the scheme only needs to be stated in a plain, straightforward way, to be rejected as inadmissible by all sober political thinkers. As a matter of fact, it very rarely is so stated; the form in which it is invariably put by its advocates being, Have not the people a right to put away this intolerable nuisance from among
themselves?
Ought they not to have the power of regulating
their own
life? But to what extent this is a mere declamatory and
ad captandum
statement of the case, appears the moment we discern clearly that this Bill proposes to give two-thirds of the population of a given district the right of regulating in an important matter the life of the remaining third. In one word, the political principle upon which this legislation proceeds must be taken to be, that the rights of the majority over the minority are practically unlimited. If this Bill become law, it is difficult to see at what point any further resistance can be successfully made to the tyrannous will of the greater number. Of course it will be pleaded on the other side, that the sickness is one which requires this drastic remedy; that for the removal of so great an evil, the partial surrender of liberty is not too large a price to pay. We do not yield to any advocate of this Bill in sorrow and indignation at the present drinking habits of the people, and the misery which they produce; but we cannot believe that the way to a better state of things is through a violation of the fundamental principles upon which civilized society is built up. To one who believes that all noble ethics are founded on the freedom of the will, it seems the strangest dream to restore morality by sinning against liberty.

But it is alleged that many landowners already exercise this prohibitory power with excellent results, and it is asked, Why should not a majority of any community be entrusted with the same power? Would it not be more logical to inquire whether this power is one which ought to reside in owners of great estates, before taking for granted that it is desirable, and proposing to extend it? Surely all political thinkers who have any faculty of disentangling their minds from the actual prejudices of society, and of gaining some imaginative glimpse of the future, are convinced that the rights of property, and especially of landed property, are in England stretched to the hurt of the general good, and that nothing is more certain than the gradual recognition of the principle, that all land, in a country where every foot of soil has an owner, must be held under restrictions imposed by the State with reference to the common interest. We know a Welsh county where one nobleman perpetually adds estate to estate, building everywhere great walls to shut out, as far as he can, even the sight of the everlasting hills from the passer-by; putting a gate, only to be opened by a sixpenny fee, at every waterfall; fencing off the very heather, which is almost as guiltless of grouse as it is of pineapples, from the traveller's foot; and throughout the whole of his vast and increasing domain ruling like an absolute monarch in the matter of sites for churches and chapels and school-houses. We know a Nonconformist congregation in a midland county village, which dates back to the Revolution, and comprises in its members industrious, thoughtful, frugal, devout men which any community might be proud to count as citizens, which is being slowly, and without visible persecution, crushed out of life, because the neighbouring landowners have entered into a tacit combination to let no farms that fall vacant except to Churchmen. There is perhaps not a county, from Sutherlandshire to Cornwall, in which instances of this kind may not be found; instances of arbitrary and oppressive power exercised within the limits of the law, and from the circumstances of the case unrebuked, or ineffectually rebuked, by public opinion. And the question which we would ask those who so constantly adduce this analogy is: If this conduct is right, and ought to be imitated in regard to public-houses, can it be wrong in the case of Dissenting chapels? If the squire is to be praised for shutting up the Red Lion, can he be blamed for refusing a site for the Methodist meeting-house? The clergy of the province of Canterbury, whose evidence upon this subject is so often quoted, have probably an equal objection to both.

At what point is the power of the two-thirds over the life of the remaining third to be restrained? We think that, on the principles of the Permissive Bill, and in the spirit of the arguments by which it is defended, we could make out a good case for the suppression of Unitarian chapels; a case which, if it did not approve itself to the majority of the ratepayers of Birmingham or Manchester, might yet be convincing to two-thirds of those of an English, and much more a Scotch country-town, where the dead-level of Evangelicalism had been for the first time disturbed by some adventurous missionary who had lectured in the town-hall and was meditating a permanent settlement. For what can be of more importance than the eternal welfare of the townsmen and their children? Surely fatal heresy must be as much worse than drunkenness, as eternity is longer than time. And if, even in this extreme case, it is dangerous for the public authorities to meddle with opinions—look at the moral consequences which must result from the toleration of Unitarianism! Morality is founded upon dogma: to live well, men must believe truly; and Pope's famous line must be read the other way, “He can't be right whose faith is in the wrong.” There may indeed be produced, in connection with this heresy, a specious imitation of Christian morals; but it is only the electro-plate which simulates the silver, and is the more dangerous the more perfect the delusion. Lord Blank, who holds all the land hereabouts, will grant no site at all to any Non Conformist society: why should he have a right which is not possessed by an ancient and respectable municipality? It would be easy to find as many clergymen as have testified to the moral benefit of having no public-house in their villages, to bear witness to the equal advantage resulting from the absence of dissent; and this, it must be remembered, is no common dissent, but precisely the most noxious and intolerable form of all. On the whole, we are afraid that if a general Permissive Bill were passed, empowering two-thirds of any community to prohibit anything they disliked in the life of the other third, it would go hard with Unitarian chapels in some towns, and all kinds of Dissenters in many villages, and everywhere with the little knot of men who think for themselves and lead public opinion, and represent the common belief of the next generation but one. Who knows whether in the universal crusade against crotchets in which the British Philistine with such encouragement might engage, the great principle of the infallibility of two-thirds might not be used to put down teetotal meetings?

Some of the more obvious practical objections to this legislation have been so often urged, that we shall not enlarge upon them in these pages. There is the difficulty of what we may call geographical sobriety; neither public house, beer-shop or wine-merchant, on this side of an impalpable line; and on that, the whole system flourishing with double vigour. There is the certainty that the most drunken places would be precisely the last to adopt a voluntary remedy. There is the impossibility of coercing the recalcitrant minority of a great city: one-third of the population of Liverpool or Glasgow is 200,000 souls—a city in itself. There is the fact, that if in such a city the requisite majority could by any means be attained, the stoppage of all public sale of liquor would leave behind it an enormous mass of appetite for drink, demanding the gratification which an illicit trade would find it most gainful to supply, and which would add to drunkenness the new pleasure and the keener excitement of breaking the law. But a more general and even more cogent objection to legislation of this kind is, that it confounds the removal of temptation with the extirpation of vice. We do not dispute that the presence of temptation is one element, and often a very important element, in the committal of a sinful act; and that insofar as it can be lessened or taken away, the probability of the sin is diminished; though even here we might be inclined to maintain that the entire abolition of any lawful means of gratifying a natural desire, will put the passion very eagerly on the scent for unlawful ones. We admit that the liquor trade, as at present carried on, surrounds the average working man with a persistency and seductiveness of temptation which he finds it almost impossible to resist; and we allow that in some cases even an enforced sobriety, inasmuch as it may lay the foundation of habits of abstinence, is better than a freedom which is only liberty to fall. But what is the moralist to think of a virtue which is at the mercy of temptation? We have been told stories of the paradisiacal peace and virtue of certain villages which fell into swift demoralization as soon as a public-house was opened; but it did not seem to strike the tellers of them how little nerve and strength there must have been in the goodness that was so soon and so easily debauched. If to take away temptation can be said very indirectly to add to a man's moral force, inasmuch as it may save him from the weakness which is part of the punishment of sin; on the other hand, it is only in conflict with temptation that any manly vigour can be won. An untried virtue is no virtue at all. It is an old story, that those who have been brought up out of sight and hearing of evil are the surest to go down in the first real conflict with it. Presently we may find that no voters are so open to intimidation as those who have most sheltered themselves behind the protection of the ballot-box; and that drunkenness may rage most fiercely among populations which have grown up in the enervating air of prohibition.