true, what becomes of all moral
discipline and all self-restraint? It is not through my own convictions
that I am sober; it is through no sense of the degradation that pertains
to drunkenness, and the loss of social estimation that follows it, that
I am temperate. It is because four-fifths of the ratepayers declare that
I shall have no drink nearer than the next parish; and this reminds of
another weak point in the plan.

The Americans, who understand something of the evils of drink, on the
principle that made Doctor Panloss a good man, because he knew what
wickedness was, lately passed a law in Congress forbidding the use of
fermented liquors on board all the ships of war. It was one of those
sweeping pieces of legislation that men enact when driven to do
something, they know not exactly what, by the enormity of some great
abuse. Now, I have taken considerable pains to inquire how the plan
operates, and what success has waited on it. From every officer that I
have questioned I have received the same exact testimony: so long as the
ships are at sea the men only grumble at the privation; but once they
touch port, and boats' crews are permitted to go ashore, drunkenness
breaks out with tenfold violence. For a while all real discipline is at
an end; parties are despatched to bring back defaulters, who themselves
get reeling drunk; petty officers are insulted, and scenes of violence
enacted that give the unhappy locality where they have landed the
aspect of a town taken by assault and given up to pillage. I am not now
describing altogether from hearsay; I have witnessed something of what I
speak.

As drunkenness, when the ship was at sea, was the rarest of all events,
and the good conduct of the men when on shore was the great object to
be obtained, this system may be, so far as the navy is concerned,
pronounced a decided failure. Whatever may be said about the policy of
sowing a man's wild oats, nobody, so far as I know, ever hinted that the
crop should be perennial.

Legislation can no more make men temperate than it can make them cleanly
or courteous. If Parliament could work miracles of this sort, it would
make one really in love with constitutional government. But what a
crotchety thing all this amateur lawmaking is! Why did it not occur to
this well-intentioned gentleman to inquire how it is that drunkenness is
unknown, or nearly unknown, in what are called the better classes? How
is it that the orgies our grandfat