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The ethics of drink and other social questions OR JOINTS IN OUR SOCIAL ARMOUR

By James Runciman
Author of “A Dream of the North Sea,” “Skippers and Shellbacks,” Etc

London
Hodder and Stoughton
27, paternoster row
MDCCCXCII [1892]

THE ETHICS OF THE DRINK QUESTION.

All the statistics and formal statements published about drink are no doubt impressive enough to those who have the eye for that kind of thing; but, to most of us, the word “million” means nothing at all, and thus when we look at figures, and find that a terrific number of gallons are swallowed, and that an equally terrific amount in millions sterling is spent, we feel no emotion.  It is as though you told us that a thousand Chinamen were killed yesterday; for we should think more about the ailments of a pet terrier than about the death of the Chinese, and we think absolutely nothing definite concerning the “millions” which appear with such an imposing intention when reformers want to stir the public.  No man’s imagination was ever vitally impressed by figures, and I am a little afraid that the statistical gentlemen repel people instead of attracting them.  The persons who screech and abuse the drink sellers are even less effective than the men of figures; their opponents laugh at them, and their friends grow deaf and apathetic in the storm of whirling words, while cool outsiders think that we should be better employed if we found fault with ourselves and sat in sackcloth and ashes instead of gnashing teeth at tradesmen who obey a human instinct.  The publican is considered, among platform folk in the temperance body, as even worse than a criminal, if we take all things seriously that they choose to say, and I have over and over again heard vague blather about confiscating the drink-sellers’ property and reducing them to the state to which they have brought others.  Then there is the rant regarding brewers.  Why forget essential business only in order to attack a class of plutocrats whom we have made, and whom our society worships with odious grovellings?  The brewers and distillers earn their money by concocting poisons which cause nearly all the crime and misery in broad Britain; there is not a soul living in these islands who does not know the effect of the afore-named poisons; there is not a soul living who does not very well know that there never was a pestilence crawling over the earth which could match the alcoholic poisons in murderous power.  There is a demand for these poisons; the brewer and distiller supply the demand and gain thereby large profits; society beholds the profits and adores the brewer.  When a gentleman has sold enough alcoholic poison to give him the vast regulation fortune which is the drink-maker’s