The Inebriates Acts of 1870-1900 deal in the first place with non-criminal, and in the second place with criminal, habitual drunkards.
For the purposes of the acts the term “habitual drunkard” means “a person who, not being amenable to any jurisdiction in lunacy, is notwithstanding, by reason of habitual intemperate drinking of intoxicating liquor, at times dangerous to himself or herself, or incapable of managing himself or herself and his or her affairs.” A person would become amenable to the lunacy jurisdiction not only where habitual drunkenness made him a “lunatic” in the legal sense of the term, but where it created, such a state of disease and consequential “mental infirmity” as to bring his case within section 116 of the Lunacy Act 1890, the effect of which is explained in the article Insanity. Any “habitual drunkard” within the above definition may obtain admission to a “licensed retreat” on a written application to the licensee, stating the time (the maximum period is two years) that he undertakes to remain in the retreat. The application must be accompanied by the statutory declaration of two persons that the applicant is an habitual drunkard, and its signature must be attested by a justice of the peace who has satisfied himself as to the fact, and who is required to state that the applicant understood the nature and effect of his application. Licences (each of which is subject to a duty and is impressed with a stamp of £5, and 10s. for every patient above ten in number) are granted for retreats by the borough council and the town clerk in boroughs, and elsewhere by the county council and the clerk of the county council. The maximum period for which a licence may be granted is two years, but licences may be renewed by the licensing authority on payment of a stamp duty of the same amount as on the original grant. When an habitual drunkard has once been committed to a retreat, he must remain in the retreat for the time that he has fixed in his application, subject to certain statutory provisions similar to those prescribed by the Lunacy Acts for asylums as to leave of absence and discharge; and he may be retaken and brought back to the retreat under a justice’s warrant. The term of detention may be extended on its expiry, or an inebriate may be readmitted, on a fresh application, without any statutory declaration, and without the attesting justice being required to satisfy himself that the applicant is an habitual drunkard. Licensed retreats are subject to inspection by an Inspector of Retreats appointed by the Home Secretary, to whom he makes an annual report. The Home Secretary is empowered to make rules and regulations for the management of retreats, and “regulations and orders,” not inconsistent with such rules, are to be prepared by the licensee within a month after the granting of his licence, and submitted to the inspector for approval. The rules now in force are dated as regards (a) England, 28th Feb. 1902; (b) Scotland, 14th April 1902; (c) Ireland, 3rd Feb. 1903. There are also statutory provisions, similar to those of the Lunacy Acts, as to offences—(i.) by licensees failing to comply with the requirements of the acts; (ii) by persons ill-treating patients, or helping them to escape, or unlawfully supplying them with intoxicating liquor; (iii.) by patients refusing to comply with the rules. The Home Secretary may (i.) authorize the establishment of “State Inebriate Reformatories,” to be paid for out of moneys provided by parliament; and (ii.) sanction “Certified Inebriates’ Reformatories” on the application of any borough or county council, or any person whatever, if satisfied concerning the reformatory and the persons proposing to maintain it. An Inspector of Certified Inebriate Reformatories has been appointed. Regulations for State Inebriate Reformatories and for Certified Inebriate Reformatories have been made, dated as follows: State Inebriate Reformatories:—England, 21st of June 1901, 29th of Dec. 1903, 29th of April 1904; Scotland, 9th of March 1900; Ireland, 16th of March 1899, 16th of April 1901, 10th of Feb. 1904. Certified Inebriate Reformatories:—England, Model Regulations, 17th of Dec. 1898; Scotland, Regulations, 14th of Feb. 1899; Ireland, Model Regulations, 29th of April 1899.
Any person convicted on indictment of an offence punishable with imprisonment or penal servitude (i.e. of any non-capital felony and of most misdemeanours), if the court is satisfied from the evidence that the offence was committed under the influence of drink, or that drink was a contributing cause of the offence, may, if he admits that he is, or is found by the jury to be, an habitual drunkard, in addition to or in substitution for any other sentence, be ordered to be detained in a state or certified inebriate reformatory, the managers of which are willing to receive him. Again, any habitual drunkard who is found drunk in any public place, or who commits any other of a series of similar offences under various statutes, after having within twelve months been convicted at least three times of a similar offence, may, on conviction on indictment, or, if he consent, on summary conviction, be sent for detention in any certified inebriate reformatory. The expenses of prosecuting habitual drunkards under the above provisions are payable out of the local rates upon an order to that effect by the judge of assize or chairman of quarter-sessions if the prosecution be on indictment, or by a court of summary jurisdiction if the offence is dealt with summarily.
Authorities.—As to the history of legislation on the subject see Parl. Paper No. 242 of 1872; 1893 C. 7008. See also Wyatt Paine, Inebriate Reformatories and Retreats (London, 1899); Blackwell, Inebriates Acts, 1879-1898 (London, 1899); Wood Renton, Lunacy (London and Edinburgh, 1896); Kerr, Inebriety (3rd ed., London, 1894). An excellent account of the systems in force in other countries for the treatment of inebriates will be found in Parl. Pap. (1902), cd. 1474.
(A. W. R.)
INFALLIBILITY (Fr. infaillibilité and infallibilité, the latter now obsolete, Med. Lat. infallibilitas, infallibilis, formed from fallor, to make a mistake), the fact or quality of not being liable to err or fail. The word has thus the general sense of “certainty”; we may, e.g., speak of a drug as an infallible specific, or of a man’s judgment as infallible. In these cases, however, the “infallibility” connotes certainty only in so far as anything human can be certain. In the language of the Christian Church the word “infallibility” is used in a more absolute sense, as the freedom from ail possibility of error guaranteed by the direct action of the Spirit of God. This belief in the infallibility of revelation is involved in the very belief in revelation itself, and is common to all sections of Christians, who differ mainly as to the kind and measure of infallibility residing in the human instruments by which this revelation is interpreted to the world. Some see the guarantee, or at least the indication, of infallibility in the consensus of the Church (quod semper, ubique, et ab omnibus) expressed from time to time in general councils; others see it in the special grace conferred upon St Peter and his successors, the bishops of Rome, as heads of the Church; others again see it in the inspired Scriptures, God’s Word. This last was the belief of the Protestant Reformers, for whom the Bible was in matters of doctrine the ultimate court of appeal. To the translation and interpretation of the Scriptures men might bring a fallible judgment, but this would be assisted by the direct action of the Spirit of God in proportion to their faith. As for infallibility, this was a direct grace of God, given only to the few. “What ever was perfect under the sun,” ask the translators of the Authorized Version (1611) in their preface, “where apostles and apostolick men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand?” In modern Protestantism, on the other hand, the idea of an infallible authority whether in the Church or the Bible has tended to disappear, religious truths being conceived as valuable only as they are apprehended and made real to the individual mind and soul by the grace of God, not by reason of any submission to an external authority. (See also [Inspiration].)
At the present time, then, the idea of infallibility in religious matters is most commonly associated with the claim of the Roman Catholic Church, and more especially of the pope personally as head of that Church, to possess the privilege of infallibility, and it is with the meaning and limits of this claim that the present article deals.
The substance of the claim to infallibility made by the Roman Catholic Church is that the Church and the pope cannot err when solemnly enunciating, as binding on all the faithful, a decision on a question of faith or morals. The infallibility of the Church, thus limited, is a necessary outcome of the fundamental conception of the Catholic Church and its mission. Every society of men must have a supreme authority, whether individual or collective, empowered to give a final decision in the controversies which concern it. A community whose mission it is to teach religious truth, which involves on the part of its members the obligation of belief in this truth, must, if it is not to fail of its object, possess an authority capable of maintaining the faith in its purity, and consequently capable of keeping it free from and condemning errors. To perform this function without fear of error, this authority must be infallible in its own sphere. The Christian Church has expressly claimed this infallibility for its formal dogmatic teaching. In the very earliest centuries we find the episcopate, united in council, drawing up symbols of faith, which every believer was bound to accept under pain of exclusion, condemning heresies, and casting out heretics. From Nicaea and Chalcedon to Florence and Trent, and to the present day, the Church has excluded from her communion all those who do not profess her own faith, i.e. all the religious truths which she represents and imposes as obligatory. This is infallibility put into practice by definite acts.
The infallibility of the pope was not defined until 1870 at the Vatican Council; this definition does not constitute, strictly speaking, a dogmatic innovation, as if the pope had not hitherto enjoyed this privilege, or as if the Church, as a whole, had admitted the contrary; it is the newly formulated definition of a dogma which, like all those defined by the Councils, continued to grow into an ever more definite form, ripening, as it were, in the always living community of the Church. The exact formula for the papal infallibility is given by the Vatican Council in the following terms (Constit. Pastor aeternus, cap. iv.); “we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma, that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra—i.e. when, in his character as Pastor and Doctor of all Christians, and in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he lays down that a certain doctrine concerning faith or morals is binding upon the universal Church,—possesses, by the Divine assistance which was promised to him in the person of the blessed Saint Peter, that same infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer thought fit to endow His Church, to define its doctrine with regard to faith and morals; and, consequently, that these definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable in themselves, and not in consequence of the consent of the Church.” A few notes will suffice to elucidate this pronouncement.