The history of drink

The hasty survey which has been made in the preceding chapters, of the drinking habits of our race in various lands and ages, will, we trust, have had the effect of modifying some of our theories, based upon preconceived ideas, concerning the causes of intemperance. That climate is not a permanent source of that evil has, we think, been clearly proved. Nor is the popular theory tenable that barbarism and an aboriginal condition of mankind mean purity and sobriety, but that drunkenness is the invariable concomitant of a high state of civilisation. For, at the time when man is supposed to have been in a state of paradisiacal innocence, the standard of his morality was very low indeed, both as it concerned his indulgence in drink, as well as in other respects; and although purity and simplicity of faith appear at all times to have been accompanied by similar moral qualities, yet religion alone, excepting in one or two cases, has not exercised an important controlling influence upon the passion for drink in the human race. On the other hand, however, the superstitious rites and ceremonies with which religion has been more or less encumbered in all ages have countenanced if not patronised the use of intoxicating beverages.

It is quite true that every phase and form of civilisation has at one time or other been debased by its association with intemperance, and has frequently ministered to man’s self-indulgence. Music and the arts have not disdained to become the handmaids of debauchery; poetry has been degraded by its influence; the artifice of politics and the designs of priestcraft have found it a convenient tool. And as to science, she has consented in a hundred different ways to multiply man’s opportunities for self-debasement or to furnish him with palliatives for mitigating the evil effects of his dissoluteness. But, on the other hand, if we can trust our imperfect knowledge, we see already that the wave of intemperance has invariably reached its highest point, not when nations have been the most highly civilised (if any nation can be said to have attained that condition), but either before it was fairly educated, or during the national decadence.

Nor is the expression “waves of intemperance” purely imaginative, for they have had a real existence in the history of the past. One or more such waves rose high in ancient China, and probably overwhelmed dynasties, and yet modern China is not reckoned amongst inebriate states.

Another reared itself in India, where it broke against the barriers which were opposed to it by Buddha and his disciples. The pure descendants of the Indian and Persian races, the Hindoos and Parsees, who are the best educated, are at the same time amongst the most temperate of the Eastern races. In ancient Rome, on the other hand, the wave of intemperance reached its greatest altitude when the arts were languishing, when her military prestige was waning, and when the barbarians whom she had subdued were becoming in their turn her conquerors. That wave was never broken, but for the time being it helped to wreck the civilisation of a large section of the human race over which it passed. Another smaller wave travelled from Central Asia towards the south-west, and there Islamism was the rock upon which it burst. This is, perhaps, the most conspicuous instance in which religion, aided, however, by the sword, has offered an effective resistance to the spread of drunkenness. The same tide which had submerged the Roman empire rolled on with undiminished force, and nearly overwhelmed the empire of Germany. But there, for the first time, we clearly apprehend the fact that drunkenness does not run side by side with true civilisation, at least if the latter is represented by all that is noble and refined in æsthetic tastes, all that is enlightened in literature, science, and philosophy. For the Germans were the greatest drunkards at the time they were mere fighting men; not, perhaps, when they faced the legions of Germanicus, and certainly not when they stood opposed to those of Napoleon III.; but whilst they were still a nation of uncultivated boors, submissive followers of a band of robber-barons, whose highest conception of human greatness consisted in feats of arms and deeds of chivalry. But with the extension of commerce and intercourse with surrounding peoples came habits of temperance and frugality, in which the nation was soon confirmed by the spread of knowledge, by intellectual culture in the upper classes, and by the education of the great mass of the people.

And so, too, it has been in modern Scandinavia, in England, and in the United States of America. In each of those lands the tide of intemperance rose to its highest before the masses began to be educated, and in all three the ebb appears to have set in with greater or less rapidity. So far, then, it would appear, from a careful study of the history of drink and its influence upon the various races and upon the different classes of society, that barbarism and religious credulity are accompanied by immorality and unbridled intemperance, whilst sobriety, virtue, and self-restraint are the concomitants of pure religion, and of the arts of civilisation.

But we must not content ourselves with the negative proposition that intemperance is not the necessary outcome of civilisation, nor even with the general statement that the latter brings with it self-restraint and sobriety. The most potent check upon immorality, especially in recent and modern times, has been enlightened public opinion, which is the expression of advancing civilisation; and it is upon the conduct of those who have moulded public opinion that the morality of every age has been largely dependent. Evil examples in high places and a disregard of public propriety have done as much to encourage the vice of intemperance as the passion from which it springs. Whilst the priests of the ancient faiths intoxicated themselves at the altar, and portrayed the deities whom they served with tastes similar to their own, it was not likely that the crowd of worshippers would practise sobriety. In those days the priesthood to a large extent represented public opinion, and, as we have seen, they not only countenanced drunkenness, but hallowed its exercise. When the military heroes of ancient Rome gave away a hundred thousand congiaria of wine to the mob, or kept cellars of 10,000 casks, or devoted whole days and nights to drinking bouts, it is no wonder that the ragged plebeians, without shoes or a mantle, spent the hours of the night in obscene taverns and brothels in the indulgence of gross and vulgar sensuality; for it was the great military leaders of that age who moulded public opinion. And so, coming nearer to our time, when, in our own country, the installation of a shepherd in the fold of Christ was commemorated by a feast at which 300 tuns of ale and 100 tuns of wine were swallowed down, and when the ladies of the court of Charles the dissolute “rolled about in a state of intoxication,” it was only a necessary sequence that the lower orders should get drunk upon gin at a penny a head, and whilst in that condition they should herd together upon straw in dark cellars which would have been unfit receptacles for the brutes, below whose state they had fallen. And although in our day the public feeling is expressed rather than created by those who occupy high places, still the utterances of ministers of state such as those we have quoted, and the open countenance and encouragement which is given by influential party-leaders to persons who profit by the intemperance of the ignorant and depraved, cannot fail to produce a very pernicious effect upon public sentiment, and to militate against the exercise of its due influence upon the national morals.

Looking at the other side of the question, we find that all great temperance reformers have appealed to public opinion to aid them in their efforts. Confucius did not say to his disciples, “Be careful not to drink wine to excess, for it will enervate your bodies and debase your intelligence.” He was more practical than that. “The superior man when he is at table does not glut his appetite,” he said; and “when you go abroad be not given to excess in wine.” In other words, “Don’t lower the standard of morality, nor degrade yourselves in public estimation, by setting a pernicious example; for, remember, you are superior men, the leaders of society.” The Buddhist priests were ordered not only themselves to refrain from using strong drink, but they were told that “there is no reward for him who gives intoxicating liquors.” And St. Paul advised abstention from drink lest others should be “made weak” by the example. Pliny, too, denounced the public drinking practices of his age, and the scandalous conduct of the great military leaders, who, as we have already said, moulded public opinion; and Mahomet said of drunkenness, that it diverted the attention of mankind from its highest and noblest occupations, prayer and the remembrance of God.

And if this has been the policy of temperance reformers in past ages, much more conspicuously is it so in the present day, when public opinion is becoming the censor of morals and the approver of merit and virtue. That it is absolutely essential for them to have the popular sentiment on their side has been conclusively shown in connection with every phase of the question. It is futile for earnest men to lecture to drunkards amongst the lower classes, so long as the great mass of the electors, guided by unscrupulous party-leaders, choose publicans to represent them in town councils, and promote them to the aldermanic or civic chair. Equally idle is it for clergymen to preach temperance sermons to decorous congregations whilst those who are enriched by the results of drunkenness are permitted, in consequence of their wealth and influence, to hold a higher rank than the parishioner whose calling is innocuous, and even above him whose profession ministers to that health and comfort which are undermined and uprooted by the gin-palace. Repressive legislation, however wise and however indispensable it may be, is, as we have seen, quite inefficacious unless supported by public opinion. It is in those countries where not only the upper ranks, but the whole mass of the people, enjoy the benefits of education, where, in fact, an enlightened public opinion is a possibility; in Sweden, Norway, and the United States of America, that the interference of the State authorities has proved of any avail in the work of temperance reform. The duty of Englishmen, in what is by many believed to be an important crisis in our history, is therefore very plain. It is because the abuses to which frequent reference has been made are tolerated and sanctioned in our own country, that our people abroad as well as at home are stigmatised as—the words come most reluctantly from the pen of one who is proud of his nationality—as a nation of drinkers; and it is the duty of men in every rank and station to express their disapproval of intemperance and the causes which lead to its prevalence, and so to influence public opinion in favour of sobriety.

And now let us say, in conclusion, that if the perusal of these pages should have removed any misconceptions, or have suggested any important truths, in connection with the subject of which they have treated; if it should induce any who have hitherto been calculating, or timid, or indifferent, to extend a warm and disinterested support to the cause of temperance reform; or if it should afford help and encouragement to those who are already labouring to raise the standard of morality and to ameliorate the condition of the poor and ignorant, their publication will not have been in vain, and we shall certainly have no cause to regret having invited our readers to bear us company in this cursory and imperfect glance over the history of drink in every age.