The Maine Liquor Law

Dr. F.R. Lees has gained a prize of one hundred guineas from the “United Kingdom Alliance to procure the legislative suppression of traffic in all intoxicating liquors,” for an essay upon the objects of the Society, which has been forwarded to us with a printed request that it may be reviewed. The essay was written between the 5th and the 29th of September, 1855; and as it contains 317 closely printed pages, it is, as might have been expected, very ill written. Dr. Lees says that he knows this as well as “the critics.” “It is,” he continues, “our pleasure to anticipate and prevent the needless labour by saying—“Perfectly true, gentlemen, we could have written a better essay if we had more time, and we could have had more time if we had had more money.’” He adds that he “knows the stereotyped jokes about prize essays, and that the old platitudes may be revived because convenient.” We know neither the jokes nor the platitudes, but we do know the stale expedient of apologizing for a slovenly performance by avowing its clumsiness if the absence of art or of care could be supplied by the presence of an unusual allowance of impudence. An ill-written book is an ill-written book, whether the author admits it or not; and in this ease, the badness of the composition is peculiarly vexatious, as it entails upon a reviewer, anxious to discharge his critical duties fairly, the necessity of reading through a thick volume which might, with a little trouble, have been compressed into a thin pamphlet. In the true style of a provincial prize essayist, Dr. Lees begins with many pages about the province of legislation, including much speculation and criticism on Bentham, Humboldt, Dr. Arnold, and the Westminster Review—all of which is meant to prove the self-evident truth that there are, or may be, trades which it would be wise to suppress by law. In an equally characteristic manner, we are treated to a whole wilderness of facts which establish, beyond a doubt, the indisputable truths that drunkenness is a very bad thing—that it causes a large proportion of the misery of the country—that legislation, up to the present time, has not put it down—and that much evil of every description goes on at public houses. The concluding chapter contains a sketch of the history of the Maine Law in the different States of the Union; and the whole essay asserts, reasserts, insinuates, and protests in a thousand shapes, and for a thousand reasons, that a law ought to be made as soon as possible for the suppression of all traffic in spirituous liquors. It is hard to answer, point by point, an argument of this blundering length and confuse character. Even Lord Stanley's conscientious and painstaking industry would probably break down under the task. But though we cannot follow Dr. Lees through all his facts and figures, we can, we think, give him, in a succinct form, the reasons which lead us to differ entirely from his conclusions.

Though drunkenness is an enormous evil, it is possible, though difficult, to exaggerate its bad effects; and Dr. Lees has, we think, accomplished this feat. Scotland is a more drunken and more prosperous country than Ireland—England would surely stand a comparison with Naples, in all respects except the relative sobriety of the two nations—and notwithstanding the total abstinence principles of Mahometanism, we should doubt whether the Turks and Egyptians were better off, on an average, than Europeans. For reasons of which these are a specimen, we are inclined to believe that national sobriety and national prosperity are by no means convertible terms. Though the evils of drunkenness admit of being exaggerated, and are in fact exaggerated by the advocates of the Maine Law, they are no doubt so great that any plausible scheme for their removal deserves serious attention. The proposal to declare the trade in intoxicating drinks illegal is advocated by its partisans as being the only one sufficiently comprehensive to face an evil so enormous. But Dr. Lees at least entirely fails to appreciate the difficulties which would make the enactment of such a measure in this country totally impossible, or, if possible, most dangerous.

To suppress a branch of commerce is a measure which can only be justified in those extreme cases in which the object of the prohibition is an evil universally acknowledged as such. The catalogue of prohibited trades is very soon exhausted. The cultivation of tobacco is prohibited for a conclusive financial reason. The trade in immoral books and prints is forbidden because no one doubts its pernicious character. But, on the other hand, though the Legislature professes its Christian character in the strongest manner-though it expends and sanctions the expenditure of many millions of money every year for the purpose of extending Christianity-though it has even made the publication and sale of blasphemous libels a crime—it abstains, and we think wisely, from putting the law in force against dealers in them. It virtually tolerates the traffic, because some publications of that class do in good faith advocate the views which they maintain, and a very small difference in opinion as to the character of any action is enough to make it an improper subject for legal punishment or prohibition. Where such a difference of opinion exists, the law loses its moral force over those who deny its policy; and if they are subjected to the legal penalties of disobedience, nothing will prevent them from considering themselves as martyrs, or at any rate, as victims of oppression. Dr. Lees' proposal is singularly open to this objection. It calls upon us to adopt as the basis of legislation a crotchet peculiar to an insignificant minority. Substantially, his proposal is that we should interdict the use of spirituous liquors to all but the very rich; for to those who cannot afford to import on their own account, a prohibition of the trade is equivalent to a prohibition of the commodity. Such an interdict can only be defended on the ground that the use of intoxicating drinks is malum in se. Now, however true that opinion may be, it is the opinion of but a small fraction of the population, and as such cannot possibly be made the basis of legislation.

The ground which we have indicated is simple and straightforward, but it is one which Dr. Lees is anxious to avoid—probably because it exposes his cause to the consequence which we have pointed out. As he would put the case, the prohibition of the liquor trade is a sacrifice which the law ought to impose upon the sober for the sake of the intemperate. He does his best to separate the question of prohibition from the question of total abstinence, and maintains that the first may be properly and consistently advocated by those who do not approve of the second. This argument appears to us to be not only bad in principle, but to set at defiance all the special facts of the case. To make a sacrifice is one thing—to enforce a sacrifice by law upon a very large minority (to take the view most favourable to the Maine Law) is quite another thing; but this is what Dr. Lees and the Alliance wish for. The conduct of a legislator and that of a private individual in such a case must be regulated by totally different principles. St. Paul would eat no meat so long as the world stood, lest he should make his brother to offend; but he carefully avoids laying down, a general rule that no Christians should eat meat lest weak brothers should be offended. Wise legislation takes into account the interests and prejudices of all classes, even those of the sober and well-conducted; and though it might be praiseworthy in those classes to deny themselves luxuries or comforts which habit has almost made necessaries, out of regard to their weak brethren, it would be very harsh in the Legislature to force them to do so. To contend that intoxicating drinks and poison stand exactly on the same footing, is one of those puerile exaggerations which injure any cause. At the very outside, drunkards are a not inconsiderable minority of the population, whilst those who drink beer or wine are an overwhelming majority. It would probably be an enormous exaggeration to say that a quarter of those who drink intoxicating liquors sustain any other injury from them than that which, in the opinion of teetotallers, is inseparable even from their temperate consumption; and even on that enormous and extravagant estimate, the proposed law would force three people to a painful sacrifice, in order to confer a doubtful benefit on the fourth. But if the general principles upon which the Maine Law is advocated are unsound, their application to the particular case of England is still more absurd. An English Maine Law would be--and, what is of still more importance, would appear to be--an invasion, by the rich, of the pleasures of the poor. The public house and the beer shop would be shut up, but the wealthy and the clubs would import their own wine. The tap would cease to run, but the cellar would be inviolable. It may be a very sad fact, but it is incontestably true, that the public-house is the poor man's favourite, too often his only, recreation. To deprive him of this would be the immediate and palpable effect of the law; and an effect more harsh and more cruel it would be hard to conceive. To force a crude and unpopular theory upon vast masses of people—to deprive them of a favourite, even if it be a pernicious indulgence—to treat grown-up men like overgrown babies, are a few of the methods which Dr. Lees and his friends recommend as likely to conciliate the different classes of society. Whatever may be the possibilities of legislation in an American Republic, such measures as the prohibition of the liquor trade are out of the question in a country like England. To abstain from extreme and violent remedies for social evils is part of the price we have to pay for our enormous wealth, for the vast and complicated texture of English society, and for the weight which is allowed to the interests and prejudices of all ranks and classes. Legislation has its bounds everywhere, but they are sooner reached in England than anywhere else. Society with us is too big to be governed except in the broadest way, and for ends the most universally recognised. There are numberless evils which might be prevented by law in smaller States, but which can only be remedied by private enterprise in England, and drunkenness is, we believe, amongst the number.

Of course a philanthropist like Dr. Lees is quite above troubling himself about any such matter as the question of revenue. A Maine Law, he says, would make the people sober. Sobriety would increase the national wealth, and the channels of taxation would be changed, whilst the subjects of taxation would be increased. We confess that this argument seems to us to stand on sand foundations. Would a Maine Law make the people sober? We doubt it exceedingly. It could only prohibit the sale, and not the importation-nor, as we understand the proposal, the manufacture —of intoxicating drinks; and where there is, on the one hand, a right to manufacture and to possess unlimited quantities of liquor, and on the other an ardent desire to drink it, the only effect would be to give an enormous impulse to smuggling. If the Chinese cannot prevent opium smoking, we may be quite sure that we should not be able to prevent drinking. If the manufacture, as well as the sale, of spirituous liquors were prohibited we should have the additional evil of bringing the law into disrepute, and exposing large classes of society to the constant temptation of breaking it. Smuggling has something of the charm of poaching-the most seductive, and one of the most demoralizing of crimes. To be village Robin Hoods, and to withstand with dauntless breasts the exciseman and the temperance detective, would be an irresistible temptation to the whole population of audacious youths who have more blood in their veins than brains in their heads. Even in the pattern State of Maine—where, by the way, the law has been repealed as intolerable--crime actually increased under the operation of the system, owing solely, says, Dr. Lees, with naive triumph, to the convictions under the law itself. Is this such a desirable result? Is it a very encouraging consequence of prohibition that it produces more offences in one direction than it prevents in another? And if this is the state of things in a comparatively small and simple society, what would it be in the oldest and most complicated society in the world?

There is another item in Dr. Lees' little bill to which he does not advert, but which staggers us not a little. Though his proposed “reform” would, in all probability, operate principally by driving the trade into secret and illegal channels, it would give the existing brewers, distillers, wine-merchants, hotel-keepers, publicans, and beer-sellers an unquestionable claim to compensation. Dr. Lees tells us that intoxicating drinks of various kinds in this country sell for £56,000,000. annually. How much capital is employed in producing this enormous amount? Is Dr. Lees prepared to add perhaps 25 per cent, to the National Debt, in order to buy it up; and can he point out the sources from which he proposes to raise a sum sufficient to pay the interest of the compensation-money, after cutting off the most fruitful of our branches of revenue? To a philanthropist and a speechmaker these considerations may appear vulgar enough; but to lawmakers we fancy they will appear sufficiently grave to postpone to a very distant day indeed the enactment of a Maine Liquor Law in this country.

Saturday Review, October 11, 1856.

The Opium 'Resolution'

On first reading Sir J. Pease's resolution about opium, it appears to be a resolution condemning the opium traffic as immoral in itself, and as one of which the extinction was recommended to the Government of India; but this natural impression was, it appears, erroneous. The effect of a resolution of the House of Commons is dependent upon rules as artificial as those of a decision of the High Court. In this case there was no resolution that the Speaker should leave the chair, and, therefore, substantially there was no resolution at all.

Whatever may have been the nature of the resolution, those who voted for it no doubt meant that the cultivation of the poppy should be discouraged, and if possible stopped, and the revenue from it given up. This resolution, and the debate upon it, appears to set one weakness of the national character in the strongest possible light. The motion was carried by 190 to 160, and if effect were to be given to it, it would strike what, if not a fatal, would at least be an unspeakably serious blow at the whole future of the British Government in India. It is recommended to reduce by 20 per cent, the income of the whole empire, without even a suggestion as to the manner in which the deficit is to be filled up, or a hint that the money already received was improperly spent. No one who dealt with the question at all took the pains to make a single observation upon these essential points. One member indeed proposed an amendment that the House should say it would take steps to reimburse the deficiency to the Indian Empire caused by the suppression of the opium revenue, and something was said as to the issue of a commission to inquire into the subject. These were the only traces which the debate showed of the most common precautions for any sort of security in carrying out what may with perfect justice be called a revolutionary proceeding.

Scandalous as such a mode of proceeding may be in dealing with the most essential interests of a great empire, which is in no way represented by Parliament, and which has no means of making its own wishes known upon the subject, no attempt will be immediately made to carry out the plan.

Bankruptcy, on the one hand, and the attempt to raise £5,500,000 by new taxation in India, which would go a long way to cause bankruptcy, will not be incurred.

The choice lies between letting things go on as they are, and paying the Indian Government about £5,500,000 a year to do away with the poppy. It is singular to trace out the strange results into which the proposal of laying such a tribute on British taxpayers would lead. The condition is one on which it would be hard indeed to get the English to continue to hold India. It is indeed difficult to see what else is to be got by doing away with the opium traffic; the attacks made upon it are based upon the ground that it injures the morals of the Chinese, and those of the natives of India and other parts of the world who practise opium smoking. To this there are two answers: (1) that the injury done is enormously exaggerated; (2) that it is done by the native populations which are affected by the use of opium, and that what they suffer by their own fault must be redressed by their own abstinence.

It is extravagant to suggest that an enormous expense should be incurred by English taxpayers for rescuing the Chinese from the consequences of their own self-indulgence. Nearly the only subject connected with the use of opium on which all persons are agreed is that it is a question of degree. Enormous masses of people of all countries use opium. It is stated that in the United States there are nearly a million opium smokers. When it is used in excess it produces dreadful results, but in moderation it is highly beneficial, and it is a gratuitously dismal view to think and speak as if in common cases it is abused for the purpose of drunkenness. [The following extracts were read by Sir H. E. Grant Duff in Parliament on the 10th of May, 1870, when the subject was last discussed. 'Tis true,' says he, 'I saw a man smoking, expecting in a moment or two to see him in his third heaven of bliss; but no! after he had taken a few whiffs he quietly resigned the pipe to one of his friends, and walked away to his business. Since then I have often seen the drug used, and I can assert that in the great majority of cases it has not been immoderately indulged in.' Mr. Balfour says that opium is like any other narcotic or stimulant, is as amenable to abuse, and, as being more seductive than other stimulants, perhaps rather more so, but this is certainly the utmost that can be imputed to it. Thousands consume it without any pernicious results, as thousands do wine or spirits without any evil consequences. The Assistant Opium Inspector at Benares says: 'With respect to the abuse of the drug in the mass of the people, I must affirm that no injurious results are risible.' (102, 506-507.)] Such an opinion is as ill-founded as the same opinion would be respecting spirits. It was well remarked in the course of the late debate that, in some ways, the drunkenness which arises from opium is far less injurious than the drunkenness which arises from spirits. A man drunk with opium is not violent or brutal. He dozes away his time ignobly, and no doubt may ultimately sink into a sort of idiocy, but he is, as a rule, inoffensive. This proceeding is essentially a self-regarding vice, and as such is distinguished fundamentally from the innumerable causes which are more or less connected with the majority of crimes in England. It was well said by Sir Richard Temple that Coleridge was fortunate in taking opium instead of spirits. If he had suffered from delirium tremens he might probably have had occasion to make a much worse confession than he ever made as an opium eater. This has, at all events, one highly important practical consequence. It is that if it is decided to treat intemperance in the use of opium as a vice, it will be found much easier to deal with it by way of prevention than to deal in the same way with intemperance in the use of intoxicating liquors.

There can be no difficulty in preventing, or at least in regulating and restricting, the sale of opium, nor would it be a matter of extraordinary difficulty or danger to turn out opium smokers, to take into custody people under the influence of opium, or to resort to other police measures for the purpose which might be easily devised and effectually carried out in India, but which it would be practically impossible to enforce in this country. Surely these are the natural and obvious measures for preventing scandals in the use of opium. It is not impossible that the enormous influence of Caste might be made use of in favour of temperance, but whatever means may be available ought to be tried to the utmost before a resolution is taken the carrying out of which would involve the monstrous consequences which would be involved in the destruction of the poppy and the prohibition of its cultivation.

One objection to any such proposal goes very deep indeed, and extends to all attempts to make temperance compulsory by destroying opportunities for its violation. It is that it is never wise to make war upon the strong and lasting feelings of mankind. Mankind have passions and inclinations which wise people must take as they find them. We must take it for granted that people will, whether their legislators like it or not, drink and smoke, and it is as a general rule unwise for rulers not to take it for granted. It is nearly as necessary to take for granted the habit of smoking opium as the habit of smoking tobacco. Many people dislike tobacco, and many people regard it as unhealthy, but no reasonable person supposes that it would be wise to legislate without reference to the existing state of public feeling on the subject.

It must never be forgotten that the demand that opium should not be smoked can be fully complied with only by prohibiting the cultivation of the poppy. It is of course impossible to carry out in detail all that is implied in destroying a crop, and especially a particularly rich and profitable one, without a good deal of incidental destruction. The immediate result will be the reduction of the Indian revenue by between five and six millions of pounds sterling, but what is to be got by way of compensation? The principal thing will be that less opium will be exported from India to China, and this is spoken of in terms of the highest and most indignant philanthropy. It is compared to the twenty millions paid for the abolition of slavery in the West Indian Islands, and is said to be a case in which England is to make an immense and interesting sacrifice for the abolition of a great moral wrong, and by way of expiation for that wrong in past times.

For glory to be got by attacking the memory of my ancestors or by setting right their supposed wrongs, I have no taste at all. Nothing leads to greater posthumous injustice, and in no case is this more true than in the present one. It is too late now to discuss the question of the so-called Opium War of 1842, but whatever may have been the morality of that transaction it is now a matter of history. It is enough to say that commerce in other things than opium was introduced in consequence, and that the object of insisting on a certain amount of commerce with China was clearly right. Now, at all events, the Chinese are at liberty to lay whatever duties on opium they think fit. Any complaint by the Chinese of the proceedings of the British Government about opium would be exposed to the unanswerable argument, why do you permit it? And the reply that it was forced upon their predecessors forty years ago would be obviously as irrelevant as it would be held to be now even if it were true in fact.

The notion that the English people will pay a 4d. income tax for the destruction of opium in India is one of the most foolish dreams ever indulged in. It is said that it will probably do so because our fathers paid twenty millions for the abolition of West Indian slavery: a weaker comparison can hardly be imagined. The very fact that West Indian slavery existed at all was a direct consequence of British legislation, and the terrible consequences which it involved were inflicted upon the slaves by British subjects. This was naturally used to bring home to English people the horror of slavery in the deepest colours, and the effect was specially deep. Indeed it may be doubted whether the demand made on the British conscience was not to some degree exaggerated, and whether the ‘man and brother' cry was not raised more loudly than it should have been. But whatever may be said on this subject, what sort of comparison can be rationally drawn between the case of black slaves dealt with as brutes and denied the first essential gifts of human beings, and persons whose faults, be they what they may, are the results of their own intemperance?

I have said what sort of chance there would be of looking to the generosity of the nation at large to pay a 4d. income tax for such an object as the one proposed, and it is so plain that it is unnecessary to insist upon it; but the other part of the question is just as important. How can any man who knows India believe that there is the least chance of raising what is required from India? The five and a half millions to be wasted here in the name of English philanthropy must be raised out of Indian taxation, and what is to be taxed if opium is to go free, which affords a natural source of revenue, and one to which the people of India is thoroughly well accustomed? All sorts of expedients have been suggested: there was some years ago a scheme for a tax upon marriage festivities, and for some other things of the same kinds of which a tax on tobacco was the only one of any importance; but none was ever tried or seriously considered, nor has anyone been willing since the Mutiny to run such a risk as inventing a new subject of taxation. A poll-tax and an additional salt-tax are the only things that could be tried, and no Government would run the risk of raising either: the attempt would be equivalent to raising a new mutiny. There is not the least reason to suppose that a mass of countries which never have been taxed at all would submit to be taxed heavily by a foreign parliament for a purpose of which they would not in the least approve.

It seems hardly possible to suggest anything that can heighten the absurdity of destroying the cultivation of the opium in India for the purpose of preventing some millions of Chinese from smoking it, and that for no other reason than that the English think it bad for them, the Chinese themselves insisting on the habit. The notion that English tastes are to be supreme, not only over their own proceedings, but over those of utter strangers with whom they have nothing at all in common, is one of those things which nobody would affirm in general terms, but which people continually act upon when they get a chance. A large share of English opinions, on religion in particular, is deeply infected with this vice. How much is done by Missionary Societies of all degrees upon the principle that their own particular views are the only ones which can possibly find favour with God!

If in some miraculous manner the financial difficulties of the question were evaded or overcome, a new series of difficulties would arise. No one has yet been so mad as to propose that we should insist on a general crusade against opium, whether grown in India, in China, or in Persia; but nothing else except a war of practically unlimited extent, and successful to an impossible degree, would persuade the Chinese from smoking Chinese opium.

Even as regards the smoking of Indian opium, it should be remembered that Indian opium is the most valuable kind of the drug. It is as champagne is to vin ordinaire, so that the only effect of stopping the growth of it upon China would be to prevent the Chinese from using the best kind. This would be indifferent to everyone except themselves and, to a certain small extent, to the opium growers in China itself. It would have no practical effect upon opium smoking—upon China in general. The homegrown article would be enough for Chinese smokers. Thus to endeavour to promote sobriety in the use of opium by prohibiting the cultivation of poppies in India is like an attempt to promote peace in Europe by prohibiting certain firms by name from constructing particular kinds of cartridges.

Not long ago a foreign politician who had travelled in India and was giving an account of his impressions to a well-known public man who had held high office there, summed up his views thus: ‘There is only one enemy in India whom you need ever fear, Yourselves.' The fact is that between Englishmen in India and Englishmen in England the greatest of all gulfs is fixed, all their fundamental assumptions are different, all their temptations are different. Each is continually learning the lesson ' Adora quod incendisti, et incende quod adorasti.' The Englishman at home is bred up in the most self-contented and peaceable society in the world; he is surrounded by every sort of conventional standard prescribing what he is to do, what he is to believe and think and like and dislike, what are to be his standards of morals and religion, but in India this state of things is gradually reversed. The Englishman finds by degrees that he is in a numerically small minority, and that he has to make out for himself what is the Indian estimate of English ways of thinking. He is in a country where the use of greased cartridges may cause a mutiny, though every school may, with perfect impunity, teach every scholar that Caste is hateful and the religious opinions of Hindoos and Mussulmans beneath contempt; that the most solemn oath to spare life is worthless unless it is made over Ganges water with salt in it, and that then it is inviolable even at the last extremity; and that whatever you do with Indians you must not tax them in any way to which they are not accustomed, nor for objects in which they feel no interest.

The Nineteenth Century, June 1891.