. For the sake of a good cause I
beg the abstainers to tell the plain, brutal truth as I do, and refrain
from scandalising a decent class of citizens. Why on earth should the
landlord be named as a pariah among the virtuous classes? He is a
capitalist who is tempted to invest money in a trade which is the
mainstay of our revenue; he is hedged in with restrictions, and the
faintest slip ruins him for ever. The very nature of his business
compels him to be smart, obliging, ostentatiously friendly; yet with all
this the Government treat him as if he were by nature a thief, while
thousands of earnest but ignorant and foolish people reckon him an enemy
of society.

Pray who is forced or solicited to buy the landlord's wares? Your
butcher cries "Buy, buy, buy!" your draper sends out bills and
sandwich-men; but the publican would be scouted if he went out touting
for custom. If a man asks for drink he knows quite well what he is
doing, and if he takes too much it is because of some morbid taint or
unlucky weakness.

Take away the taint, and strengthen the weakness; but do not pour
blackguard and unfair abuse on business men who are in no way answerable
for human frailty.

When I hear (as I often do) some flabby boozer whining and ascribing his
trouble to the drinkshop, I despise him. Who took him to the drinkshop?
Was it not to please himself that he went? Did he care for any other
being's gratification but his own when he slipped the alcohol down his
throat? Yet he appeals for pity. I reckon that I know England and
Scotland as well as most commercial travellers, and I have been
compelled to depend for my comfort and well-being on the men whom some
of the Alliance folk call pariahs. In all my experience I have come
across less than a dozen men whom I should imagine to rank among the
shady division. I should be a liar if I said that many public-houses are
highly moral and useful institutions; but the abuses are due to the rank
faults of human nature, and not to the class of traders who are
alternately described as venal sycophants or robbers. Let us be fair.
The Devil has enough to bear, and for any harm which we bring to
ourselves we should not lay the blame on him or fate.

The whole Raveloe scene is full of typical errors. It is too pretty, too
decent, too neat, too humourous. There is very little fun to be got out
of public-house humours, because the vanity of the various talkers is
offensive, and their stupidity has n