CARDINAL MANNING ON DENS, DRUNKENNESS AND LAWLESSNESS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 4539, 30 November 1889, Page 3

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 we are responsible for the creation of these dangerous and pitiable outcasts from onr Christianity and our civilisation. (1) The first ciuse of this soolal wreckage Is the destruction of domestic life. (2) The next cause of utter wreck is, I will not SBy intoxicating drink, but the drink trade. This is a public, permanent, and übiquitous agency of degradation to tbe people of these realms. That fonl and fetid housing drives men and women to drink, and that drink renders their dens sevenfold more foul and fetid, is certain. The degradation of men, 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 hopeleßS elate of those who have fallen into drunk enness. lam not going to moralise upon drunkenness. I will only say that the whole land is suffering from the direct or indirect power of the drink trade. In times of depression only one interest still prospers—lts profits may be Bllghtly lessened, but its gains are always large and safe : that is, the great trade in drink, which enriches half a million of brewers, distillers,. 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 Deople. 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 also affirm of a large number of homes in London. The same is affirmed on evidences of Glasgow. Nevertheless those exceptions only prove the rule. The drink trade of this country has a sleeping partner who gives it effectual proteotlon. Every successive Government 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 tUo absence 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 teaching or of Divine worship. I; 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 bo 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 1 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 Bystem of the world, it is a fact of evil augury, self-evident aB 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 pecuß," will be unable to understand how the moral life of men can be sustained without the knowledge of God. Where there la 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 oirn will are his only rule of life. "What ruin to himself and all depending on him comeß from this needs no words'? Look at our calendars of crime and our revelations of social vice. And yet every one 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 worß'c 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 bo long as they are born in denß, and live in drunkenness, 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 reckless despair of rising from their fallen state. But these three causes are the dlreot results of the apathy or the selfishness of what is called Society, or more truly of our legislation or neglect to legislate, or of good laws inefficiently admlnistered.—The Nineteenth Century.