TYRANNY OF TEETOTALLERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 643, 26 March 1864, Page 20

TYRANNY OF TEETOTALLERS.

(From " London Society.")

It seems to be necessary to man that he should be subject to tyranny in some shape or other. Jane Eyre says that women like to be mastered, and it may be doubted whether the satisfaction of being oppressed is confined to one sex. We are very fond of talking of the blessings of civil and religious liberty, but it would be difficult to see in Avhat our great privileges, the birthright of the Englishman, consist. We certainly have a right to go to Church or Meeting-houses as we please; and we vote for members of Parliament, Vestrymen, and Board of Guardians. But here the matter practically ends. Gradually, and year by year, personal liberty to do as one pleases is — and in some cases very properly — abridged. It seems, however, to be i scarcely considered what a large and increasing amonnt of municipal and police interference with what is called the freedom of the subject is yearly added to the Statute-book. The principle of all our Sanitary Reforms, Health Acts, and Building Acts, is that in moral and aocial matters the Government undertakes to enforce personal duties, and take care not only that we do not injure other people, but that we do not injure ourselves. The more civilisation advances, the more minute and intrusive does this interference become. We suppose it must be so, and we are not complaining of rfc. But we must ta'ce especial care to what departments of personal duty, and to what matters of moral choice, this principle is applied. Undoubtedly, there seems to be no reason, at first sight, why, if an Act of Parliament prevents the sale of poisons, it should not prohibit the sale of everything injurious to health. The United Kingdom Alliance — this is the fine name for the teetotallers — are wise enough to see that, as far as the principle goes, they have but to assume that intoxicating drinks are poison, and their case is gained. Mr Lawson is about to bring into Parliament what is called' the Permissive Bill, which is only the preliminary stage to the Prohibitory Bill. What he and hia friends want is, in short, that the sale of wine, beer, and spirits should be placed under the same regulations as the sale of blue vitriol and strychnine.

This is what is aimed at, for we must do the Alliance the justice to assume that they do not seriously believe that a Permissive Bill would ever work. They only advocate it because they know that, in the event of its becoming law, it would break down at once, and Parliament would then in consistency be bound to pass a Prohibitory Act. As we understand the Permissive Bill, it is to allow the inhabitants of any " place " to decide whether they will have any houses licensed for the liquor. When Mr Lawson's bill is printed, we shall see how he defines a " place "—whether it is a city, town, parish, ward, or street ; whether Liverpool or Little Pedlington, St Pancras or Perivale, are to pronounce in the same way ; what issue is to to be placed before whom ; what proportion of dissidents, or whether a mere minority of thirsty souls, is to yield to the righteous majority ; how often the question is to be re-opened, and whether the ballot, manhood suffrage, or universal suffrage is to be the machinery by which public opinion is to pronounce in any given locality. All the Permissive Acts have been hitherto failures, and the Permissive Bill of the Alliance is only planned to fail. What Mr Lawson and Mr Pope want is the power, not only to abstain from strong drinks, but to compel everybody else to abstain from them. At present they only ask that, in a parish of twenty householders, where there are eleven who wish to have no public houses or beer shops, those eleven shall force the nine never to enter into any liquor shop, by taking care that there shall be no liquor shop for them to enter. This tyranny of the eleven over the nine the Alliance is pleased to justify on the ground that "people should have power to protect themselves," which is precisely what the unfortunate men are not to be allowed to do. The alleged ground is so transparently ridiculous that it,is idle to discuss it. " The eleven have, and always have had, power to protect themselves; what they now ask is power to protect, not themselves, but other folks. With an affectation of justice, Mr Lawson says that if the people of a parish wish to have " drunkenness, pauperism, crime, and lunacy," his bill will permit them to enjoy their peculiar taste. What he asks, then,

is that Parliament should pronounce that a certain practice leads infallibly and iv every case to pauperism, crime and lunacy, but that every year every man in every parish shall have the power of 3aying whether he will be a pauper, criminal, and lunatic, or not. Merely to describe the Permissive Bill in its author's own word 3 is to condemn it.

No ; what the Alliance honestly mean is, that they have proved that strong drink is the inevitable parent of pauperism, crime, and lunacy, and therefore that the State is bound to prohibit the sale of strong drink. Another step in legislation would of course prohibit, not only the sale, but the use of strong drink. Here we can join issue with the Teetotallers. We deny that all these consequences naturally follow from the use of strong drink ; and we add, that if they did, it is a question whether it is the province of Government to enforce moral virtues, because, if it is the duty of Government to do so in the case of one branch of ethics, it is equally the duty of Government to interfere in every department of moral and personal responsibility. We shall spare ourselves the trouble of arguing that the use of a thing is not its abuse ; that Scripture, reason, the universal practice of all ages, and the ascertained facts of physiology prove that strong drink is not necessarily deleterious; and that what is one man'a poison is another man's meat. We urge rather the other branch of the argument, because we are afraid the fallacy is not quite so obvious to all minds in the teetotaller's assumption with respect to the duty of the State as in his theory about the nature of stimulants. Besides, there are respectable people, like Miss Nightingale, who are so carried away by zeal against personal vice that they can see no other duty than that of preventing sin by prohibiting it by penal eractment. And first, we must say that it is becoming a very grave question whether we have not reached the limit of interference with personal liberty in the way of legislation. In those days of Social Science Congresses, everybody who sees a moral evil is for an instant application to Parliament to put it down. Put down suicide, put down drunkenness, put down fornication, put down lying and slandpring, put down stinks, put down smallpox and typhus, put down diseased cattle and diseased meat, put down street organs, perambulators, crinoline, and red hair. These things are an offence to me, and a stumbling-block to my neighbor ; it is the business of the Government to see that everybody is healthy, wealthy, and wise. Only exterminate all evil, and all access to evil, by Acts of Parliament, and what a pleasant world it would be to live in! • It was only Cain who doubted whether he was his brother's keeper ; and what is the use of Government if it is to be no better than Cain ? Let us be consistent. We compel men to attend to their health in mines and factories ; let us compel them to attend to their health in what they drink, and, of course, in what they eat. A great many people think that pork is the parent of acrolula. If a Permissive Drink Bill is right, next let us think of the Permissive Pork Bill, and let the parish be polled on the question whether the ma-, jority will have pig's meat sold in it or not. The answer to all this is, that the line must be drawn somewhere, and that a good many people think that the range of prohibitions by Act of Parliament is already extensive enough, if not too extensive. The experience of the world teaches us that that virtue is but flabby and unmuscular which cannot depend upon itself, and that health, and morality, and religion are not good for much if they are not self-derived, self-cultivated, and free from the restraints and safeguards of public enactment. The Jews, the Spartans, the Chinese, have all tried this theory of paternal government, and the precedents are far from encouraging. We are drifting overfast in a dangerous direction ; and at the present moment we see across the Atlantic what shipwreck of real liberty men will submit to, or even welcome, in the frenzy of political despair. But political self-distrust is only personal distrust on a large scale ; and we decline, even for our alleged good, to be made good upon compulsion. For compulsion it is likely to be, and compulsion is

only to be carried out by the usual arts of the tyrant. Constituencies are to be agitated, Parliament men to be terrorized, and Mr Pope promises that ' the agitation shall not be conducted on the kid-glove principle. The alternative of kid gloves is, we suppose, the cestus ; and the United Kingdom Alliance must be ready with professional bruisers and a good supply of bludgeons and brickbats, to secure a Parliamentary majority for Mr Lawson's Per-

missive Bill.

The next general election

promises, at any rate, a new cry, and new itactics to correspond. We are to abstain totally, or else get our heads broken.

' Why, Mr 8.,' said a tall youth to a little person who was in company with half a dozen huge men, ' I protest you are so small I did not see you before.' — ' Very likely,' replied the little gentlemen ; ♦ I'm , like a sixpence among six copper pennies, not readily perceived, but worth the whole of them.'