If your friend is in want, don’t carry him to the tavern, where you treat yourself as well as him, and entail a thirst and headache upon him next morning. To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, or fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of lace ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back. Put something into his pocket.
Before estimating the causes of the prevalent declension of morals, it will be necessary to examine the legislation at the close of this seventeenth century, with which it was intimately associated.
Partly through hostility to France, and partly to encourage the home distilleries, the Government of the Revolution, in 1689, prohibited the importation of spirits from all foreign countries, and threw open the distillery trade, on payment of certain duties, to all its subjects. These measures laid the foundation of the great extension of the English manufacture of spirits.[177] Any person was permitted to set up a distillery, on giving ten days’ notice to the excise. The consequence of this was a general thriving of the distillery business, with a corresponding deterioration of the people. Indeed, legislative modification was soon found to be absolutely necessary to counteract the influence of these baneful measures upon health, sobriety, and public order.
We scarcely wonder that the king enthusiastically encouraged the new distilleries, although the measure was a reversal of all previous policy. From the Norman period downwards, the laws of the land had prohibited the conversion of malt into spirit, except a trifling quantity for medicinal uses. Elizabeth had so strictly enforced this statute as to treat an infringement of it as a moral offence.
A change so disastrous could not escape condemnation. The discursive Whiston, in his autobiographical Memoirs, laments:—
An Act of Parliament has abrogated a very good law for discouraging the poor from drinking gin; nay, they have in reality encouraged men to drunkenness, and to the murder of themselves by such drinking. Judge Hale earnestly supported the restrictive law, and opposed its abrogation, declaring that millions of persons would kill themselves by these fatal liquors.[178]
By the 5th & 6th of William and Mary, the duties were raised in 1694 to 4s. 9d. on strong, and 1s. 3d. on table beer. In 1695, the Commons resolved that a sum not exceeding 515,000l. should be granted for the support of the civil list for the ensuing year, to be raised by a malt tax, and additional duties upon mum, sweets, cyder, and perry. In 1691, owing to the tension with France, further supplies were raised by impositions which included in their number a duty of sixpence a bushel on malt, and a further duty on mum, cyder, and perry.
The price of claret rose rapidly when war with France broke out. Soon the clarets were exhausted. A substitute had to be found, and was discovered in the red wine of Portugal, then imported for the first time.
‘Some claret, boy!’—‘Indeed, sir, we have none.
Claret, sir.—Lord! there’s not a drop in town.
But we have the best red port.’—‘What’s that you call
Red port?’—‘A wine, sir, comes from Portugal;
I’ll fetch a pint, sir.’
The next quotation throws light upon its composition:—