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,
shop-keepers, 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 providence.

The young labourers over a great part of the south and east, at
least of England--though never so well off, for several
generations, as they are now--are growing up thriftless,
shiftless; inferior, it seems to me, to their grandfathers in
everything, save that they can usually read and write, and their
grandfathers could not; and that they wear smart cheap cloth
clothes, instead of their grandfathers' smock-frocks.

And if it be so in the country, how must it be in towns? There
must come a thorough change in the present licensing system, in
spite of all the "pressure" which certain powerful vested
interests may bring to bear on governments. And it is the duty of
every good citizen, who cares for his countrymen, and for their
children after them, to help in bringing about that change as
speedily as possible.

Again: I said just now that a probable cause of increasing
drunkenness was the increasing material prosperity of thousands
who knew no recreation beyond low animal pleasure. If I am right-