1 in 12 of the adult population. This may be an excessive estimate,
but, if we take half of a million, we shall not be accused of
exaggeration. Of these some are in the last stage of confirmed
dipsomania; others are but over the verge; but the procession tends
ever downwards.

The loss which the maintenance of this huge standing army of a half of
a million of men who are more or less always besotted men whose
intemperance impairs their working power, consumes their earnings, and
renders their homes wretched, has long been a familiar theme of the
platform. But what can be done for them? Total abstinence is no doubt
admirable, but how are you to get them to be totally abstinent? When a
man is drowning in mid-ocean the one thing that is needful, no doubt,
is that he should plant his feet firmly on terra firma. But how is he
to get there? It is just what he cannot do. And so it is with the
drunkards. If they are to be rescued there must be something more done
for them than at present is attempted, unless, of course, we decide
definitely to allow the iron laws of nature to work themselves out in
their destruction. In that case it might be more merciful to
facilitate the slow workings of natural law. There is no need of
establishing a lethal chamber for drunkards like that into which the
lost dogs of London are driven, to die in peaceful sleep under the
influence of carbonic oxide. The State would only need to go a little
further than it goes at present in the way of supplying poison to the
community. If, in addition to planting a flaming gin palace at each
corner, free to all who enter, it were to supply free gin to all who
have attained a certain recognised standard of inebriety, delirium
tremens would soon reduce our drunken population to manageable
proportions. I can imagine a cynical millionaire of the scientific
philanthropic school making a clearance of all the drunkards in a