-have
been the cause of the Red Indians' extinction: then how is it, let me
ask, that the Irishman and the Scotsman have, often to their great harm,
been drinking as much whisky--and usually very bad whisky--not merely
twice a year, but as often as they could get it, during the whole "iron
age;" and, for aught any one can tell, during the "bronze age," and the
"stone age" before that: and yet are still the most healthy, able,
valiant, and prolific races in Europe? Had they drunk less whisky they
would, doubtless, have been more healthy, able, valiant, and perhaps even
more prolific, than they are now. They show no sign, however, as yet, of
going the way of the Red Indian.

But if the craving for stimulants and narcotics is a token of deficient
vitality: then the deadliest foe of that craving, and all its miserable
results, is surely the Sanatory Reformer; the man who preaches, and--as
far as ignorance and vested interests will allow him, procures--for the
masses, pure air, pure sunlight, pure water, pure dwelling-houses, pure
food. Not merely every fresh drinking-fountain: but every fresh public
bath and wash-house, every fresh open space, every fresh growing tree,
every fresh open window, every fresh flower in that window--each of these
is so much, as the old Persians would have said, conquered for Ormuzd,
the god of light and life, out of the dominion of Ahriman, the king of
darkness and of death; so much taken from the causes of drunkenness and
disease, and added to the causes of sobriety and health.

Meanwhile one thing is clear: that if this present barbarism and anarchy
of covetousness, miscalled modern civilisation, were tamed and drilled
into something more like a Kingdom of God on earth: then we should not
see the reckless and needless multiplication of liquor shops, which
disgraces this country now.

As a single instance: in one country parish of nine hundred inhabitants,
in which the population has increased only one-ninth in the last fifty
years, there are now practically eight public-houses, where fifty years
ago there were but two. One, that is, for every hundred and ten--or
rather, omitting children, farmers, shopkeepers, gentlemen, and their
households, one for every fifty of the inhabitants. In the face of the
allurements, often of the basest kind, which these dens offer, the
clergyman and the schoolmaster struggle in vain to keep up night-schools
and young men's clubs, and to inculcate habits of