“The masters of our poor houses tell us that they can trace the pauperism of most of their inmates to their own intemperance, or to that of their parents.
“The governors and chaplains of our prisons tell us that most of the crime in our gaols is directly or indirectly caused by strong drink.
“If the offences to which habitual drinking has ultimately led could be ascertained, I believe we should find that four-fifths of the recorded offences have sprung from it.”
Although the remedy for this enormous evil is justly regarded as lying to a considerable degree in the hands of educators, it is maintained that “much may be done to abate the evil by reducing the number of licensed public houses both in town and country, and by greatly raising the expense of strong drink.”
As an evidence of the effects of cheapening strong drink, it is stated that in 1825, the duty on whiskey was greatly reduced in Scotland, and that as a consequence, intemperance began to increase, so that “in the twenty-seven years which have since elapsed, the consumption has become nearly five-fold greater; crime, disease, and death have increased in similar proportion; and the sober, religious Scotland of other days is now proved, by its consumption of spirits, to be, without exception, the most drunken nation in Europe.”
As to the connection between intemperance and the other causes of juvenile depravity, “the records of the prison-house, if fully analyzed, would show that the first penny or the first pound taken by a son from his parents, or abstracted by the young man from his master’s desk, is for the theatre, not for the public-house. But youth, being corrupted by the pleasures of sin, drunkenness follows, and becomes the associate or the substitute of licentiousness, and completes the ruin. Money becomes indispensable, and it is gotten by some desperate and wicked means, at the possibility of which a few months before, the mind would have recoiled with indignation, like that of Hazael, when reproached by the prophet: ‘Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?’”
In the great majority of instances, it is believed, the only means by which the reformation of such can be rationally expected is by their thorough and permanent severance from those scenes and associations in which their evil habits were formed. Although suffering from hunger and misery, it must not be supposed that the lives led by these delinquent children are void of pleasurable sensations; “the very alternation from one extreme to another keeps the mind in a state of feverish excitement; the want of a penny to buy food on one day, is more than compensated by the reckless profusion of the next; and the despondency created by privation and long suffering is speedily supplanted by exultation on the success of some criminal feat of daring and dexterity.”
None will deny another position of the report, viz.:
“That it is impossible for children to be brought up as Christian children ought to be, when huddled together, male and female, old and young, like pigs in a stye; and yet this revolting expression is not too strong to designate the dwellings of tens of thousands in our land.
“How many of our honest industrious artisans have only one apartment, or, at most, a room and a closet for father and mother, and grown up sons and daughters!