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CHAPTER VII.

"In this meeting I see what I desire most to see-that the mass of the people are beginning to comprehend themselves and their true happiness-that they are catching glimpses of the great work and vocation of human beings-and are rising to their true place in the social state."-Channing on the Elevation of the Working Classes.

THE remarks with which we concluded the last chapter are as applicable to the working classes of society as to any other of its members. No just reason can be assigned why the artisan should not have the sentiment of selfrespect, and the desire for usefulness, as fully as the merchant or the nobleman. If these feelings were rightly cultivated by all, we should have no drunkenness to complain of. It is a low estimate of our nature which causes men to gratify their desire for intoxicating stimulants at the expense of their self-respect.

The condemnation of drunkenness is not of modern date: it runs back into antiquity. The vice was, in all ages, of the same disgusting character that it assumes in the present day; and the tongue and the pen were brought into eloquent requisition to rid the world of the nuisance. But the advocates of temperance have not yet been successful in uprooting the evil. We are, however, coming nearer and nearer to the glorious consummation of our labours; the fruit will soon ripen for our touch.

Many diseases are known to be hereditary— that is, the tendency of their future development is transmitted from parent to child. Among these diseases, it is asserted by eminent physiologists that drunkenness must be numbered. This adds not a little to the category of evils which it inflicts upon the human family. What father, what mother, imbued with the smallest amount of love of offspring, would not shrink in dismay from the idea, that in the

indulgence of an appetite for strong drinks, they were implanting in their tender little ones a latent desire for like indulgences, and impregnating the life which courses through their young veins, with a fiery thirst for the poison which may make their after career in life one of infamy and disgrace?

There is something fearful in the contemplation of transmitting to our children the drunken appetite of placing them in such a position, by natural descent, as will render it very difficult for them to escape the temptation. And it is the most gifted who are in the greatest danger. Their company is sought after with eagerness, and all the circumstances by which they are surrounded tend to throw them off their guard, and to render them a prey to the spoiler. Genius and learning afford no certainty of safety against the insidious approaches of this destroyer of human happiness. It seizes its victims out of all ranks and classes; men whose souls are on fire with the light of genius,

whose minds are mines of intellectual wealth, are whirled into the vortex of dissipation, and lost to their families and society.

Dr. Macnish, in his Anatomy of Drunkenness (p. 37), quotes the following remarks in reference to this view of our subject:"As good be melancholy still as drunken beasts and beggars' so says old Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy; and there are few who will not subscribe to his creed. The same author quaintly but justly remarks, If a drunken man get a child, it will never likely have a good brain.' Dr. Darwin, a great authority on all subjects connected with life, says in his Botanic Garden he never knew a glutton affected with gout who was not addicted to liquor. He also observes, 'It is remarkable that all the diseases from spirituous and fermented liquors are liable to become hereditary, even to the third generation, gradually increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family becomes extinct.""

Perhaps it would be difficult to name many

men of genius who have altogether escaped the snares of intoxication. Certainly, some who have borne the most illustrious names among our poets, statesmen, and philosophers, have sunk beneath this withering influence, and left behind them memories tarnished by the weaknesses and the vices of their early and their latter days. Many of these names sprung from among the labouring classes, over whom they cast for a while a brilliant light, proving to the world that God has created no aristocracy of talent. Intellectual power, and that subtle but all-commanding gift of genius, being frequently developed among the children of toil; but we too often see this light extinguished in the foul orgies of intemperance, and have frequent cause to regret the early destruction of men who might otherwise have been, for long years to come, a light and an ornament to the world.

With such evidences before us of the desolating effects of our social drinking customs on the lives of the brightest ornaments of our