The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions | Page 6

I sometimes think they would
make a combined, nightly raid on the boozing-bars, and bring their lads
out.
Some hard-headed fellows may think that there is something
grandmotherly in the regrets which I utter over the cesspool in which so
many of our middle-class seem able to wallow without suffering
asphyxia; but I am only mournful because I have seen the plight of so
many and many after their dip in the sinister depths of the pool. I envy
those stolid people who can talk so contemptuously of frailty--I mean I
envy them their self-mastery; I quite understand the temperament of
those who can be content with a slight exhilaration, and who fiercely
contemn the crackbrain who does not know when to stop. No doubt it is
a sad thing for a man to part with his self-control, but I happen to hold
a brief for the crackbrain, and I say that there is not any man living who
can afford to be too contemptuous, for no one knows when his turn
may come to make a disastrous slip.
Most strange it is that a vice which brings instant punishment on him
who harbours it should be first of all encouraged by the very people
who are most merciless in condemning it. The drunkard has not to wait
long for his punishment; it follows hard on his sin, and he is not left to
the justice of another world. And yet, as we have said, this vice, which
entails such scathing disgrace and suffering, is encouraged in many
seductive ways. The talk in good company often runs on wine; the man

who has the deadly taint in his blood is delicately pressed to take that
which brings the taint once more into ill-omened activity; but, so long
as his tissues show no sign of that flabbiness and general
unwholesomeness which mark the excessive drinker, he is left
unnoticed. Then the literary men nearly always make the subject of
drink attractive in one way or other. We laugh at Mr. Pickwick and all
his gay set of brandy-bibbers; we laugh at John Ridd, with his few odd
gallons of ale per day; but let any man be seen often in the condition
which led to Mr. Pickwick's little accident, and see what becomes of
him. He is soon shunned like a scabbed sheep. One had better incur
penal servitude than fall into that vice from which the Government
derives a huge revenue--the vice which is ironically associated with
friendliness, good temper, merriment, and all goodly things. There are
times when one is minded to laugh for very bitterness.
And this sin, which begins in kindness and ends always in utter
selfishness--this sin, which pours accursed money into the
Exchequer--this sin, which consigns him who is guilty of it to a doom
worse than servitude or death--this sin is to be fought by Act of
Parliament! On the one hand, there are gentry who say, "Drink is a
dreadful curse, but look at the revenue." On the other hand, there are
those who say, "Drink is a dreadful thing; let us stamp it out by means
of foolscap and printers' ink." Then the neutrals say, "Bother both your
parties. Drink is a capital thing in its place. Why don't you leave it
alone?" Meantime the flower of the earth are being bitterly blighted. It
is the special examples that I like to bring out, so that the jolly lads who
are tempted into such places as the concert-room which I described
may perhaps receive a timely check. It is no use talking to me about
culture, and refinement, and learning, and serious pursuits saving a man
from the devouring fiend; for it happens that the fiend nearly always
clutches the best and brightest and most promising. Intellect alone is
not worth anything as a defensive means against alcohol, and I can
convince anybody of that if he will go with me to a common
lodging-house which we can choose at random. Yes, it is the bright and
powerful intellects that catch the rot first in too many cases, and that is
why I smile at the notion of mere book-learning making us any better.
If I were to make out a list of the scholars whom I have met starving
and in rags, I should make people gape. I once shared a pot of

fourpenny ale with a man who used to earn £2000 a year by coaching at
Oxford. He was in a low house near the Waterloo Road, and he died of
cold and hunger there. He had been the friend and counsellor of
statesmen, but the vice from which statesmen squeeze revenue had him
by the throat before he knew where he was, and he drifted toward death
in a kind