MR GLADSTONE AND NO-LICENSE.

Evening Star, Issue 14628, 26 July 1911, Page 2

MR GLADSTONE AND NO-LICENSE.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir. It gives me great pleasure to comply with Mr G. L. Denniston s request for the data on which I founded my claim that the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone was in favor of the principle of Local Optical, and that, though admittedly a moderate drinker, he was very moderate, and in aL probability would nave voted No-license. In an article upon W. E. Gladstone in the ‘Evening Star’ of April 8, 1910. which summarises an address on ‘Gladstone and Games,’ by Mr G. W. E. Russell, at Walworth. the following passage occurs : What was perhaps not generally known f» that Gladstone, whila at College, was so scrupulously temperate in the use of wine that he sot a really splendid example to the undergraduates. Though Gladstone was born over 100 rears ago, and at the time when he was 40 total abstinence was still a joke and a gibe in the land, yet he held such strong views that he used' to require all the boys and girls of the tenants on his estate to learn' the following:— Drunkenness expels reason, drowns the memory, distempers the body, defaces the body, defaces beauty, diminishes strength, inflames the blood, causes internal, external, and incurable wounds. It’s a witch to the senses, a devil to the soul, a thief to the purse, a beggar’s companion, a wife’s woe, and childrens Borrow; it makes man become a beast and self-murderer; he drinks to others’ good health, and robs himself of his own. Quite so, will say Mr Denniston. I also agree that drunkenness is bad and inexcusable, but that does not apply to moderate drnking. It does apply, however, for science, insurance statistics, and close observation have demonstrated since Gladstone’s day that for every 1,000 persons who begin to drink moderately a proportion (probably at least 200) ine%‘ita.bly finish bv becoming' excessive drinkers. In other words, the 200 shorten their lives and ruin their health and happiness and that of their wives, and very frequently blast the lives of their children—all in order that the individual selfishness and unnecessary luxury of each one of the 800 may be pandered to. It is balancing the right of each one of the 800 to drink against the sum total of the calamity of the 200 and their innocent wives and children. Each one of the 800 can only give it up for himself. H© has no loss because of others’ self-denial; hence it is his own self-indulgence, and that alone, to be weighed in the balance against the mass of the misery. Gladstone was great not because he drank, but because he drank so little that it was not enough to perceptibly affect his powerful mentality. Though it would truly have been a ghastly hypocrisy for Mr Gladstone, himself continuing to drink, to advise others to be abstainers, yet it would be quite allowable, and even commendable, for a drinker to vote No-license and even National Prohibition for the sake of his fellows, and still say to himself: “So long as drinking is legal and is the usual fashion of society I will drink, but I shall be glad, for the sake of others, to see it ended.” Of course, it is better for them to be abstainers also, but most people have not enough moral courage to fly iu the face of a social custom, and we must be thankful for their vote. This reasoning, no doubt, made Mr Gladstone say, in the debate on Sir Wilfrid Lawson’s Local Option resolution in the House of Commons on June 18, 1880 : I earnestly hope that at some not very distant period it may be found practicable to de »1 with the licensing laws, and in dealing with the licensing laws to include the reasonable and just measure for which my honorable friend (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) pleads. f j In an address by Mr Arthur Henderson, M.P., the famous British Labor Leader, reported in the ‘Evening Star’ of June 8, 1907, is the following passage— Mr Gladstone once said; “It is the just right of *he population to exercise, under fair conditions, that control in respect of licenses for the sale of liquor by retail which has heretofore rested without dispute in the hands of the proprietors of the soil. I do not understand how it Is possible to contest that proposition. And still in another speech Mr Gladstone said: I have in no respect receded from former declarations as to Local Option. In principle you are working upon the only lines either promising or tenable. The above quotations make the drift of Mr Gladstone’s mind easily understandable. Mr Denniston will get small comfort from them. It is the Liquor party, not we. who had better leave Mr Gladstone alone. I understand that Mr Gladstone, in a well-meant attempt to avoid the plain evils of bar drinking, was mainly responsible for the establishment of the now universally execrated grocers’ bottle licenses. This has only been another nail in the coffin of “ the trade,” for it has proved that the evil is the alcohol in the drink, however that drink may be sold.— I am, etc., SeCBETAUX No-LICENSB PaT.XX. July 26.