第21章 THE VICIOUS.(1)

There are many vices and seven deadly sins.But of late years many of the seven have contrived to pass themselves off as virtues.Avarice,for instance;and Pride,when re-baptised thrift and self-respect,have become the guardian angels of Christian civilisation;and as for Envy,it is the corner-stone upon which much of our competitive system is founded.There are still two vices which are fortunate,or unfortunate,enough to remain undisguised,not even concealing from themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues.One is drunkenness;the other fornication.The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised,even from those who habitually practise them,that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name.Why not say prostitution?For this reason:

Prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice,and that the most pitiable.Fornication hits both sinners alike.Prostitution applies only to the woman.

When,however,we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of morality and religion,and look at it solely as a factor in the social problem,the word prostitution is less objectionable.For the social burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women.The male sinner does not,by the mere fact of his sin,find himself in a worse position in obtaining employment,in finding a home,or even in securing a wife.

His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse,or,perhaps,in his health.

His incontinence,excepting so far as it relates to the woman whose degradation it necessitates,does not add to the number of those for whom society has to provide.It is an immense addition to the infamy of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost exclusively by woman.The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and harlots is almost insurmountable.Were it not that I utterly repudiate as a fundamental denial of the essential principle of the Christian religion the popular pseudo-scientific doctrine that any man or woman is past saving by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contemplating these victims of the Devil.The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of Irresponsibility come perilously near re-establishing,on scientific bases,the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a shadow over the Christian Church.For thousands upon thousands of these poor wretches are,as Bishop South truly said,"not so much born into this world as damned into it."The bastard of a harlot,born in a brothel,suckled on gin,and familiar from earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch,violated before she is twelve,and driven out into the streets by her mother a year or two later,what chance is there for such a girl in this world--I say nothing about the next?

Yet such a case is not exceptional.There are many such differing in detail,but in essentials the same.And with boys it is almost as bad.

There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink,whose mothers saturated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy,who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mothers'milk,and who were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink.How can we marvel that the constitution thus disposed to intemperance finds the stimulus of drink indispensable?Even if they make a stand against it,the increasing pressure of exhaustion and of scanty food drives them back to the cup.Of these poor wretches,born slaves of the bottle,predestined to drunkenness from their mother's womb,there are--who can say how many?Yet they are all men;all with what the Russian peasants call "a spark of God"in them,which can never be wholly obscured and destroyed while life exists,and if any social scheme is to be comprehensive and practical it must deal with these men.It must provide for the drunkard and the harlot as it provides for the improvident and the out-of-work.But who is sufficient for these things?

I will take the question of the drunkard,for the drink difficulty lies at the root of everything.Nine-tenths of our poverty,squalor,vice,and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root.Many of our social evils,which overshadow the land like so many upas trees,would dwindle away and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink.

There is universal agreement on that point;in fact,the agreement as to the evils of intemperance is almost as universal as the conviction that politicians will do nothing practical to interfere with them.

In Ireland,Mr.Justice Fitzgerald says that intemperance leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crime in that country,but no one proposes a Coercion Act to deal with that evil.In England,the judges all say the same thing.Of course it is a mistake to assume that a murder,for instance,would never be committed by sober men,because murderers in most cases prime themselves for their deadly work by a glass of Dutch courage.But the facility of securing a reinforcement of passion undoubtedly tends to render always dangerous,and sometimes irresistible,the temptation to violate the laws of God and man.

Mere lectures against the evil habit are,however,of no avail.

We have to recognise,that the gin-palace,like many other evils,although a poisonous,is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions.The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour.

Many a man takes to beer,not from the love of beer,but from a natural craving for the light,warmth,company,and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer,and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer.

Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.