The indiscriminate granting of licences in Ireland, which has resulted in the provision of liquor shops in a proportion to the population larger than is found in any other country, is in itself due mainly to the moral cowardice of magistrates, who do not care to incur local unpopularity by refusing licences for which there is no pretence of any need beyond that of the applicant and his relatives.  Not long ago the magistrates of Ireland met in Dublin in order to inaugurate common action in dealing with this scandal.  Appropriate resolutions were passed, and much good has already resulted from the meeting, but had the unvarnished truth been admissible, the first and indeed the only necessary resolution should have run, “Resolved that in future we be collectively as brave as we have been individually timid, and that we take heart of grace and carry away from this meeting sufficient strength to do, in the exercise of our functions as the licensing authority, what we have always known to be our plain duty to our country and our God.”  No such resolution was proposed, for though patriotism is becoming real in Ireland, it is not yet very robust.

I do not think it unfair to insist upon the large responsibility of the clergy for the state of public opinion in this matter, to which the few facts I have cited bear testimony.  But I attribute their failure to deal with a moral evil of which they are fully cognisant to the fact that they do not recognise the chief defect in the character of the people, and to a misunderstanding of the means by which that character can be strengthened.  There are, however, exceptions to this general statement.  It is of happy augury for the future of Ireland that many of the clergy are now leading a temperance movement which shows a real knowledge of the causa causans of Irish intemperance.  The Anti-Treating League, as it is called, administers a novel pledge which must have been conceived in a very understanding mind.  Those enlisted undertake neither to treat nor to be treated.  They may drink, so far as the pledge is concerned, as much as they like; but they must drink at their own expense; and others must not drink at their expense.  The good nature and sociability of Irishmen, too often the mere result of inability to say ‘no,’ need not be sacrificed.  But even if they were, the loss of these social graces would be far more than compensated by a self-respect and seriousness of life out of which something permanent might be built.  Still, even this League makes no direct appeal to character, and so acts rather as a cure for than as a preventive of our moral weakness.