A. Select Committee appointed to take evidence as to the
best treatment for habitual drunkards has submitted a very wild report. It recommends that drunkenness should be prevented by punishing " casual " or " initial " drunkenness with great
severity. The first conviction should render an unhappy village lout liable to a month's imprisonment, and after three convictions he should be sent to a reformatory for a year, and deprived, like a madman, of all control of his property. The drunkenness need not be public, or accompanied by any breach of the peace, or productive of any result except an avenging head- ache ; but it is to be punished all the same, the object being to reclaim the man, not to protect the offender. Not to mention such trifles as the right of the individual to drink or abstain as he pleases, the enormous expense of locking-up people by the ten thousand, and the still more enormous expense of keeping their wives and families, we will just put one question to the Com- mittee. Which do they think will degrade an ordinary man most, getting drunk perhaps once a year when "out on a spree," or being imprisoned for one month ? or which do they think will de- stroy family happiness most—for they plead this also—occasional annoyance from a drunken husband or father, or life in a workhouse for a year ? Drunkards must be very far gone indeed, to be such utter fools as these fanatics of sobriety.
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