The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74
Notable Indictment
Notable Indictment.
[unclear: State] Cardinal Archbishop Manning, who was a devoted member of the [unclear: d] Kingdom Alliance, and warmly advocated the popular direct veto, vividly [unclear: ated] the fruits of the Drink Traffic everywhere when he wrote in an article [unclear: in] fortnightly Review of September, 1886, the following indictment against [unclear: ing] in the United Kingdom, and accused the licensed Liquor Traffic of being [unclear: uce] of the evil. His Eminence said :—
Is there then any one dominant vice of our nation ? To answer this let us [unclear: an].
[unclear: 1.] | Is there any vice in the United Kingdom that slays at least 60,000, or, as [unclear: un] believe and affirm, 120,000 every year ? |
[unclear: 2.] | Or that lays the seed of a whole harvest of diseases of the most fatal [unclear: and] renders all other lighter diseases more acute, and perhaps even fatal in [unclear: all]? |
[unclear: 3.] | Or that causes at the least one-third of all the madness confined in our [unclear: ers]? |
[unclear: 4.] | Or that prompts, directly or indirectly, seventy-five per cent. of all crime? |
[unclear: 5.] | Or that produces an unseen and secret world of all kinds of moral evil, [unclear: and] personal degradation, which no Police Court ever knows and no human eye [unclear: hear] reach? |
[unclear: 6.] | Or that, in the midst of our immense and multiplying wealth, produces [unclear: powerty], which is honourable, but pauperism, which is a degradation to a [unclear: and] people ? |
[unclear: 7.] | Or that ruins men of every class and condition of life, from the highest to [unclear: swest], men of every degree of culture and education, of every honourable [unclear: vison], public officials, military and naval officers and men, railway and house-[unclear: servants], and, what is worse than all, that ruins women of every class, from [unclear: act] rude to the most refined ? |
[unclear: 8.] | Or that above all other evils is the most potent cause of destruction to the [unclear: pratice] life of all classes ? |
[unclear: 9.] | Or that has already wrecked, and is continually wrecking, the homes of [unclear: aprri] culturai and factory workmen ? |
[unclear: 10.] | Or that has already been found to paralyse the productiveness of our [unclear: arise] in comparison with other countries, especially the United States. |
[unclear: 11.] | Or, as we are officially informed, renders our commercial seamen less [unclear: monthly] on board ship ? |
[unclear: 12.] | Or that spreads these accumulating evils throughout the British Empire, [unclear: in] blighting our fairest colonies ? |
[unclear: 13.] | Or that has destroyed, and is destroying, the indigenous races where so the British Empire is in contact with them, so that from the hem of its [unclear: point] there goes out not the virtue of civilisation and of Christianity, but [unclear: edation] and death ? " |
He further wrote—"The safety of the commercial world is being sacrificed to [unclear: all] the profits of the drink trade. But the safety of the commonwealth is above [unclear: the] and ought to interpose its mandate."
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