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Sociology

Poverty - by James Platt

enormous sum of £147,288,759. Thus, while our population had only grown 15 per cent., our drink bill had grown 72 per cent. Between 1876 and 1880 the drink bill receded from £147,000,000 to £122,080,000. This was largely owing to the great depression in trade, and to some extent it was also due to the vigorous efforts of temperance reformers. In 1881 the drink bill rose again to £127,000,000; in 1882 it was £126,251,859; and in 1883, £125,477,275." Mr. Hoyle deserves great credit for keeping before the nation its yearly expenditure upon drink, and its indirect cost in wasted lives, vice, and crime. But we must remember that the hydra of human wickedness And folly has more than one neck. " Shut up the public-houses," Mr. Hoyle says, " and get rid of the cause of all human misery." But experience has proved how futile is the hope of these seemingly easy modes of dealing with evil in its manifold shapes. Upon the whole, the world is wiser than any one in it, and it is also at once more hopeful of general amelioration, and less sanguine of rapid attainment to perfection, than the eager reformers who see but one step from present evil to a- new heaven and a new earth. It is right that the magnitude of the drink bill should be kept before us, and every effort made to reduce it; but you cannot abolish drink altogether. Man has craved for stimulants in one form or another since the Flood, and there is little doubt but that he will go on using them to all coming time. The drink traffic wants better regulation, rather than suppression. The public want to be protected against had and adulterated liquors. The crimes ascribed to drink are frequently due to the badness of the drink. The fluids retailed to the poor are, in too many eases, concoctions which madden the brain