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 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.