LORD JUSTICE DENMAN ON INTOXICATION.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 10215, 10 December 1898, Page 5

LORD JUSTICE DENMAN ON INTOXICATION.

The annual meeting of the Liverpool Diocesan Branch of the Church of England Temperance Society was held on January 28th, in Liverpool, the Rev. the Lord Bishop of Liverpool presiding. . , The Chairman read a letter from the Hon. Justice Denman, regretting Iks inability to be present owing to illness. Justice Denman, in the course of his letter, saad:—"The sort of evidence I can give only goes to prove what no one denies, viz., that intemperance is the greatest curse and the mosr* potent cause of misery from which tkdf, nation suffers. Tw-ntv T-ars of judicial life, and forty-six years of. constant - attendance. in . the criminal courts as an advocate or judge, are enough to enable any man to form an opinion as to the extent of the mischief caused by drunkenness. Not a day passes in the criminal courts without some evidence of it. I suppose that between 1872"arid 1893 I must have tried many thousands of . cases of violence and cruelty—murders, manslaughters, murderous and savage wounding-, kickings, and assaults. Of these, I am sure, I speak well within the mark when , I say more tian oiw-haif were direotly connected with exoas-ive dr_aking. But beyond this I have painful recollections of ruined homes, bankruptcies, frauds, quarrels ending in violence, and separations of husbands and wives, constituting too large a portion of the work of even civil trih_;uals, , all arising from indulgence in drink and the consequenf demoralisation. I can recall- i j miserable histories without number of men ! and women who have by yielding to temptation in this respect lost everything that was worth keeping—character, health, money, j and even, life itself; old schoolfellows ruined and disgraced,- clergymen driven from their .parishes, soldiers and sailors degraded and •: j dismissed after having served their Queen ' f and country for a time/ domestic servants losing good places, drivers of public and private vehicles unable to obtain employmerit for want of character for sobriety,or tried for manslaughter by reason "of bad driving when drunlT; babies smothered to death by drunken mothers, children shivering*iri fireless lodgings for want of clothing and coal which might have been bought with the money wasted in whiskey, brandy, or : gin. More than one member of my own profession, whose abilities and prospects seemed , to destine him for high preferment, dragged ; down-to penury, degradation, disease, or premature death, or worse, by this fatal habit, acquired early in their career. Of /all these things I could have spoken, and not half exhausted the instances -mV which I have had proof of the terrible effects of . drinking to excess. But, when it comes to remedies,* I am' afr'aitl I feel very incompetent to give advice; only counsel I should-have ventured to?give at such a meeting as that of Monday is this:—Tn advocating the claims of Temperance let us be temperate and just,' what we want to put down by all-legitimate means is not drink,., but drinking to intoxication; or, to put,it into.every-day language, we want to prevent that 'drop too much' which is looked! upJtn so lightly by", hundreds and thousands, in these islands, #0 whom it is the first step to misery Whatever— and, indeed, whether any—legislative enactment may attempt successfully to deal with this evil, I am convinced there is no present agency more powerful than that of tho Church of England Temperance Society." 'Tf it were not. for drunkenness, there would be ho crime in Ireland at all. As it is, there is no crime which daes not arise out of that evil," says Archbishop Croke, of that country.