“My Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,—-My worthy friend the doctor has given you a very excellent discourse upon his own profession. It So happens that as I was coming to this meeting I met with a gentleman who had just been to consult his medical man; and finding I was coming to this meeting, he laughed at all idea of abstaining from intoxicating drinks. He told me he had been to see a very eminent member of the medical profession. I asked him what was the result.
“He said the physician told him he wanted a stimulant and prescribed one. I said, ‘What did you give him:’
“He replied, ‘Of course, I gave him the usual fee—a guinea.’ I said, ‘I can show you how to save that guinea in future. If you will give me half of it. I will give it to some good charity, and the other half you may keep in your pocket.’ He said, ‘How is that?’ I said, ‘Instead of going to the physician, go to the publican, and tell him what is the matter with you, and he will prescribe the same thing; and if the landlord is not in, say the same to the potboy, and he will do as well. Rely upon it, they will prescribe exactly the same thing as the doctor, and the effects will be the same. Now, I must say one word, if you please, to defend a very eminent prince who has been mentioned here to-night. I am sorry to say it happened to be my fate to hold up to ridicule the Prince Regent—very often indeed; but he was not such a bad man as he is represented to be. It must be recollected that if he committed excess in the way of drinking, it was then the fashion for all the eminent persons to get drunk. No man was considered a liberal man—no man was considered a gentleman, in fact, unless he made his companions drunk; and therefore, with all due respect to my friend Mr. Scott, who mentioned the circumstance, it must be recollected that about half a century back it was the fashion—it is a fearful thing, but it was the fashion—of gentry to get drunk; therefore we ought to make allowances. But now, my Lord Mayor, to come to this very serious question. This hall is the place where the great City feasts are held, and the question is, is it possible that there can be any grand entertainment given without mixing up with it the intoxicating cup? What will be said? It is very well for you, my lord, who are almost an abstainer yourself—very well for you—but what will be said of another Lord Mayor who comes here and gives a dinner without wine and beer? What will be said of him? He will be called a shabby fellow; and the question is, whether the guests will not all be melancholy. It will, perhaps, be somewhat in this style: ‘Have a little more soup?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘More fish?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Bit of fowl?’ ‘No.’ ‘Venison?’ ‘No.’ ‘What, can’t you eat any more?’ ‘No, I don’t like it: I want something to drink.’ There is the serious thing: what is to be done? There is one way of settling that question. It is supposed that there can be no sociality, no comfort, no enjoyment, without intoxicating drinks. Now, I recommend the next Lord Mayor who may succeed our honoured chairman, if he be in favour of the moderate use of these delightful drinks, to be so good as to ask the present company to come to dinner. Wouldn’t you enjoy yourselves? And then, when we have had enough to eat, and want something to drink, here you are (holding up a glass of water)—Mr. Chairman, your very good health! Ladies and gentlemen, your good health! (drinking the toast.) We should have a jolly time of it. (Loud and long-continued cheering.) Mr. Morley says we will take the sherbet without the punch. That is the way in which these things are looked at; but supposing that it is impossible that any social enjoyment can be had without the use of these stimulants, let us take another view of the question. I have had the honour of dining here, and I have enjoyed myself very much, not only in the time when I used to take wine myself—because I recollect there was such a time as that—but when I have been a teetotaler I have been, here, and enjoyed my dinner very much indeed, without any of these drinks. But supposing we had this hall upon the occasion of the Lord Mayor’s feast with the most elegant people in the world (for I believe of all the people in the world the British people are the best looking and the best dressed): imagine the scene! The tables are set out in the most splendid manner; everything looks grand and happy; but what is going on outside? Ay! my friends, the most splendid monument in the world where this drink is used in moderation as it is in this country, may in the inside be a splendid monument of good order, taste, and sobriety, but at the outside there is filth and dirt and crime through drink. I say, suppose these social meetings cannot be enjoyed without these drinks, let us look at the outside. Now, there are a certain number of circumstances or acts committed in society, which are always injurious, not only to the individual himself, but also to society at large. Now, I do not mean to say that every teetotaler is an honest man. There may be some dishonest fellows amongst them. I have heard of two in the last thirty years. This reminds me, by-the-bye, of a teetotal turnkey at Coldbath Fields. There were two youths brought into the prison, who were teetotalers, and the other turnkeys jeered the teetotal turnkey upon it. He said, ‘It is true that there are two teetotalers here, but they are here only for begging, whereas you have about fifteen hundred brought in who drink, and they are most of them committed for stealing.’ There are a number of besetting sins connected with drinking, such as robberies, brutal assaults, garotting, house-breaking, suicide, and murder. By-the-bye, speaking of murder, there has been a very strong feeling existing for many years, and still increasing, against the punishment of death. I think it is a very horrible thing indeed to hang anybody; but, my friends, do not forget that it is a still more horrible thing for one to be murdered. Do not let us forget that. There was a young man in the country a little while ago hanged for murder—quite a young man. It was a sad thing indeed, no doubt, to see this poor fellow gibbeted; but what was he hanged for? He had been drinking on the Saturday night, and he murdered a young woman as she was going to church on the Sunday morning. Do not forget that these horrible, detestable, damnable crimes are committed under the influence of drink. We will talk about doing away with the punishment of death after we have stopped murders. I had the honour of speaking in the Mansion House when Mr. Charles Pearson, the City solicitor, brought on the question about the convicts; and I told the Lord Mayor then, that if we could do away with intoxicating liquors altogether, we might wheel out that dreadful instrument the gibbet into the Old Bailey, and make a bonfire of it. I believe you will find, if you go into the question, that there is hardly a murder committed in this country out of a hundred—I may say out of a thousand—not ten out of ten thousand—but drink has something to do with it. Remove the drink, and you will stop murder. But there is a gentleman who ought to have been speaking instead of myself, and therefore I will not detain you much longer; but I will say this, my friends, and call your attention to it especially, that the teetotal question has now been before the world for about thirty years, and during that short time I challenge any one to point out any teetotaler who has been committed for a brutal assault upon his wife, or for garotting, or picking pockets, or house robbery, or murder. I challenge the world to produce one single case wherein any real teetotaler has been convicted of one of those crimes. Then, if this be so, what have we to do but to spread this Temperance movement throughout the length and breadth of the land? and then we should stop, if not all crimes, if not all offences, still the great majority of them; and that is what we are aiming at. And recollect this, my friends, that we are not a society formed merely for the purpose of reclaiming the drunkard. It is a very good thing to do so, and I am sorry to say that my time is so occupied that I am almost in despair. I have six most dreadful cases in hand at the present moment There is nobody to assist them. I could not go to the brewer or distiller, and ask them to give me funds for the support of these people whom they have rained; and why not? Because there is blood upon the money. I would not have it. But I had to-day a letter imploring me for help from the nephew of an old friend of my father. What am I to do? I have a lady in the country at this moment, the wife of a barrister, who is starving for want of help, and whose husband has been ruined by drinking. My time is occupied, and my friends are gone, and I am called upon for all I can afford. But, my friends, if you do away with these drinks, you do away with these cases. But it is utterly impossible to go into the evils arising out of these drinks in the time I have to speak—they are so extensive; all I have to say is, ‘Go on and prosper!’ and prosper we shall. I cannot sit down without saying that I look upon this meeting to-night to be one of the grandest movements that this cause has ever had. I say it from my heart, and think that those gentlemen who have assisted in getting up this meeting deserve our best thanks.”
The idea of a temperance Lord Mayor’s Banquet suggests, no doubt, many vastly amusing incidents and episodes to the mind of the comic writer, but honest-hearted George Cruikshank could not, and would not, in his latter dav, see any element of fun in drunkenness, and he was quite in earnest in recommending the next Lord Mayor to fill his loving-cup with pump water. *
* Since Cruikshank delivered the above speech, a Temperance
banquet has been held at the Mansion House.
The account he gave, moreover, of his trouble about the many people who were seeking his assistance, was true of his experience year after year. His doors were besieged. He was waylaid by petitioners for his known bounty (the recklessness of which, as we have seen, Dickens reproved) whenever he went abroad. A poor man himself, for ever in money troubles, even to the end of his laborious life, his heart lay always open to a tale of distress. He was never without “cases” on hand.
It has been remarked of his Temperance days, by one of his friendliest critics, that his style suffered from the contraction of his ideas and sympathies, “and it cannot be questioned that with the general public his reputation declined in proportion to the increase of his popularity among the teetotalers.” He lost heavily, in a pecuniary sense, by his Temperance advocacy. Publishers ceased to employ him. He remarked that, for the last ten years of his life, he was without commissions. He had refused none, he would say. He was willing to work, and he held that his powers were unimpaired.
Temperance preacher; to them the inimitable George, the illustrator of Boz, the kindly satirist, the creator of “Points of Humour,” the illustrator of Grimm, was dead.
And, firmly believing this, the brave old man held on in the rigid course of duty he had laid down for himself. He had seen all the horrors which lie behind drunkenness; in his early time he had himself been a tavern hero; and he had dedicated the remainder of his life to the work of warning the rising generation out of the path in which he himself had stumbled.
“I come forth,” he said, in one of his earliest temperance harangues, “to set by my humble example the opinion of this unthinking world at defiance.”