mania. Life seems as insupportable without alcohol as without food.
It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as
clearly a disease as ophthalmia or stone.

All this should predispose us to charity and sympathy.
While recognising that the primary responsibility must always rest upon
the individual, we may fairly insist that society, which, by its
habits, its customs, and its laws, has greased the slope down which
these poor creatures slide to perdition, shall seriously take in hand
their salvation. How many are there who are, more or less, under the
dominion of strong drink? Statistics abound, but they seldom tell us
what we want to know. We know how many public-houses there are in the
land, and how many arrests for drunkenness the police make in a year;
but beyond that we know little. Everyone knows that for one man who is
arrested for drunkenness there are at least ten and often twenty--who
go home intoxicated. In London, for instance, there are 14,000 drink
shops, and every year 20,000 persons are arrested for drunkenness. But
who can for a moment believe that there are only 20,000, more or less,
habitual drunkards in London? By habitual drunkard I do not mean one
who is always drunk, but one who is so much under the dominion of the
evil habit that he cannot be depended upon not to get drunk whenever
the opportunity offers.

In the United Kingdom there are 190,000 public-houses, and every year
there are 200,000 arrests for drunkenness. Of course, several of these
arrests refer to the same person, who is locked up again and again.
Were this not so, if we allowed six drunkards to each house as an
average, or five habitual drunkards for one arrested for drunkenness,
we should arrive at a total of a million adults who are more or less
prisoners of the publican--as a matter of fact, Isaac Hoyle gives