The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions

The Ethics of Drink and Other
Social Questions

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Title: The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions Joints In Our
Social Armour
Author: James Runciman
Release Date: September 3, 2004 [EBook #13365]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DRINK ***

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THE ETHICS OF DRINK AND OTHER SOCIAL QUESTIONS OR
JOINTS IN OUR SOCIAL ARMOUR BY JAMES RUNCIMAN
_Author of "A Dream of the North Sea," "Skippers and Shellbacks,"
Etc_
London HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCII [1892]

THE ETHICS OF THE DRINK QUESTION.
All the statistics and formal statements published about drink are no
doubt impressive enough to those who have the eye for that kind of
thing; but, to most of us, the word "million" means nothing at all, and
thus when we look at figures, and find that a terrific number of gallons
are swallowed, and that an equally terrific amount in millions sterling is
spent, we feel no emotion. It is as though you told us that a thousand
Chinamen were killed yesterday; for we should think more about the
ailments of a pet terrier than about the death of the Chinese, and we
think absolutely nothing definite concerning the "millions" which
appear with such an imposing intention when reformers want to stir the
public. No man's imagination was ever vitally impressed by figures,
and I am a little afraid that the statistical gentlemen repel people instead
of attracting them. The persons who screech and abuse the drink sellers
are even less effective than the men of figures; their opponents laugh at
them, and their friends grow deaf and apathetic in the storm of whirling
words, while cool outsiders think that we should be better employed if
we found fault with ourselves and sat in sackcloth and ashes instead of
gnashing teeth at tradesmen who obey a human instinct. The publican
is considered, among platform folk in the temperance body, as even
worse than a criminal, if we take all things seriously that they choose to
say, and I have over and over again heard vague blather about
confiscating the drink-sellers' property and reducing them to the state to
which they have brought others. Then there is the rant regarding
brewers. Why forget essential business only in order to attack a class of
plutocrats whom we have made, and whom our society worships with
odious grovellings? The brewers and distillers earn their money by
concocting poisons which cause nearly all the crime and misery in
broad Britain; there is not a soul living in these islands who does not
know the effect of the afore-named poisons; there is not a soul living
who does not very well know that there never was a pestilence crawling
over the earth which could match the alcoholic poisons in murderous
power. There is a demand for these poisons; the brewer and distiller
supply the demand and gain thereby large profits; society beholds the
profits and adores the brewer. When a gentleman has sold enough
alcoholic poison to give him the vast regulation fortune which is the

drink-maker's inevitable portion, then the world receives him with
welcome and reverence; the rulers of the nation search out honours and
meekly bestow them upon him, for can he not command seats, and do
not seats mean power, and does not power enable talkative gentry to
feed themselves fat out of the parliamentary trough? No wonder the
brewer is a personage. Honours which used to be reserved for men who
did brave deeds, or thought brave thoughts, are reserved for persons
who have done nothing but sell so many buckets of alcoholized fluid.
Observe what happens when some brewer's wife chooses to spend
£5000 on a ball. I remember one excellent lady carefully boasting (for
the benefit of the Press) that the flowers alone that were in her house on
one evening cost in all £2000. Well, the mob of society folk fairly
yearn for invitations to such a show, and there is no meanness too
despicable to be perpetrated by women who desire admission. So
through life the drink-maker and his family fare in dignity and
splendour; adulation surrounds them; powerful men bow to the superior
force of money; wealth accumulates until the amount in the brewer's
possession baffles the mind that tries to conceive it--and the big
majority of our interesting race say that