TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 125, 23 November 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

CARDINAL MANNING ON DENS, DRUNKENNESS, AND LAWLESSNESS. My purpose is to trace out the causes of this monstrous wreck of humanity, and to see how far wo are responsible for tho creation of those dangerous and pitiable outcasts from our Christianity and our civilisation. (1) The first cause of this social wreckage is the destruction of domestic life. .... (2) The next cause of utter wreck is, I will not s iy intoxicating drink, but the drink trade. This is a public, permanent, and übiquitous ogoncy of degradation to the people af these realms. That foul and fetid housing drives men and women to drink, aud that drink renders their dens sevenfold more foul and fetid, is certain. The degradation of mon, women, and children, follows by an inevitable law : but only those who are striving to save them have any adequate knowledge of the inhuman and hopeless state of those who have fallen into drunkness. I am not going to moralise upon drunkenness. I will only say that the whole land is suffering from the direct or indirect power of tho drink trade. In' times of depression only one iuterost still prospers — its profits may be slightly lessened, but its gains are always largo and safe : that is, the great trade iv drink, which enriches half a million of brewers, distillors, and publicans, with the trades depending on them, and wrecks millions of men, women and children. This one traffic, more than any other cause, destroys the domestic life of the people. The evidence taken by the Housing Commission expressly shows that in the overcrowded rooms in Dublin the moral wreck wrought in London is not equally found. A counteraction or preservative ,is there present and powerful. This I can affirm also of a large number of homes in London. The same is affirmed on evidence of Glasgow. Nevertheless these exceptions only prove the rule. The drink trade of this country has a sleeping partner who gives it effectual protection. Every successive Govornmnent raises at least a third of its budget by the trade in drink. Of this no more need be said. It changes man and woman into idiocy and brutality. It is our shame, scandal, and sin ; and unless brought under by the will of the people, and no other power can, it will be our downfall. (3) A third cause of this human wreck is the absenco of a moral law. It is materially impossible for one half of the population of London to set foot on a Sunday in any place of moral toaching or of Divine worship. If all the churches and places of worship were filled three times on Sunday, they would not, I believe, hold more than 2,000,000. But the population of London properly so called is 4,000,000. Of the remaining 2,000,000 of men, how many have received Christian education, or even Christian baptism or moral teaching? How far is God in all their thoughts ? This may be an argument of weight to some of our philosophers ; but to those who still hold fast not only to faith, but to the intellectual system of the world, it is a fact of evil augury, as selfevident as light. They who think themselves able to live and die well without God will treat his assertion lightly : but they who believe, with St. Jerome, " Homo sine cognitione Dei pecus," will be unable to understand how the moral life of men can be sustained without the knowledge of God. Where there is no legislator there is no law, and where there is no law each person becomes a law to himself: that is, the perversion and passions of his own will are his only rule of life. What ruin to himself and all depending on him comes from this needs no words? Look at our calenders of crime and our revelations of social vice. And yet everyone of these human wrecks was once an innocent child. From these three chief causes comes all personal demoralisation by immorality, intemperance, and ignorance, and therefore by poverty in its worst form. From these also come the greater enormities, as some appear to think — namely, imposture and idleness. Such are the social outcasts that form our criminal or dangerous class. And so long as they are born in dens, and live in drunkness, and die without the light of God's law, they will multiply and perpetuate their own kind. Multitudes are at this day in London in the abject poverty of moral degradation, and of wreckless despair of rising from their fallen state. But these three causes are the direct results of the apathy or the selfishness of what is called Society, or more truely of our legislation or neglect to legislate, or of good laws inefficiently administered. — The Nineteenth Century.