The late Mr. Clay, chaplain of the Preston House of Correction, after
characterizing drunkenness as the GREAT SIN, proceeds: "It still rises
in savage hostility, against everything allied to order and religion; it
still barricades every avenue by which truth and peace seek to enter the
poor man's home and heart.... Whatever may be the predominant cause of
crime, it is very clear that ignorance, religious ignorance, is the
chief ingredient in the character of the criminal. This combines with
the passion for liquor, and offences numberless are engendered by the
union."
The late Sir Arthur Helps, when speaking of high and low wages, and of
the means of getting and spending money, thus expresses himself on the
subject, in his "Friends in Council":"My own conviction is, that
throughout England every year there is sufficient wages given, even at
the present low rate, to make the condition of the labouring poor quite
different from what it is. But then these wages must be well spent. I do
not mean that the poor could of themselves alone effect this change; but
were they seconded by the advice, the instruction, and the aid (not
given in money, or only in money lent to produce the current interest of
the day) of the classes above them, the rest the poor might accomplish
for themselves. And, indeed, all that the rich could do to elevate the
poor could hardly equal the advantage that would be gained by the poor
themselves, if they could thoroughly subdue that one vice of
drunkenness, the most wasteful of all the vices.
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