THE NATIONAL CURSE.

Evening Star, Issue 11776, 5 January 1903, Page 3

THE NATIONAL CURSE.

Mr Justice Channel, in charging the Grand Jury of Newcastle (England) on November 18,. said that he could nob help dwelling on the fact that the whole of the cases in the calendar arose to a greater or less extent out of drunkenness. Anyone who had to administer the criminal "law was always struck by the way in which prisoners excused themselves by saying that they were drunk, as if that accounted for everything, which perhaps it did, but as if it excused everything, which it certainly did not. And if only they could do something to diminish the prevalence of this particular vice they would have very small calendars, he thought, to deal with. He could not say that he had any new suggestion, to make upon the subject, but the one thing that did occur to him to a certain extent was this; It was a, great thing to dimmish the facilities there w*ere 1 Ict people getting drink. The real thing that was wanted was to make people understand that it was a disgraceful thing to take drink, and to extend the opinion regarding intemperance which prevailed among higher classes an opinion which had he supposed, within the memory °of manv people still alive, but certainlv within the last two or three generations' Thus anything that helped the respectable and hardworking people of England to amuse themselves and to find pastime and enjoyment and something to occupy such leisure as they had without resorting to drink, and to spread amongst them the feeling that the thing really was a disgrace, and, further that it would lead to the serious consequences' which it did so often in the Criminal Court’ when people lost their power and self-con-trol—anything, he repeated, which would extend amongst them that feeling which would give them something with which to occupy themselves and prevent them goinninro public-houses, was. in his opinion, tie method’that would enable them to diminish their calendars and empty the gaols.