CHAPTER XVI.

GENERAL, ARTIFICIAL, AND COMPULSORY DRINKING USAGES, WHICH ARE COMMON TO THE THREE KINGDOMS.

Besides a vitiated Appetite, a metaphysical Enginery at WorkCase of Negroes and Hindoos contrasted-Usages of other Lands-Ladies and Gentlemen-Conventional Connexion of Courtesy with strong Drink-Drinking of Healths and Toasts -Public Dinners.

FROM the above deduction, it appears that there is in the United Kingdom, besides the physical craving of appetite, a vast moral enginery at work in favour of intemperance, greater by far than in any other nation; so much so, that although an individual in this country is considered in the last stage, when he drinks solitarily; yet a nation whose individuals drink in solitude, is a much more hopeful case for temperance reformation, than one whose whole rules, etiquettes, courtesies, and complimentary usages are impregnated with the give and take of spirituous liquors. In the one case, we have merely a corporal indulgence to get rid of; in the other, we have over and besides a most incessant metaphysical agency to combat at every point. Among

the other nations of Europe, drink is not often the instrument of compliment and courtesy, and very seldom in America; at the same time, it is not meant to affirm, that this difference between our country and others is altogether one of kind, for it is doubtless one of degree only. The secret cause, however, of Americans holding faster to temperance obligations once engaged in, than is usual with us, may be, that they have not the hundredth part of the mental temptation of etiquette and compliment soliciting them at every corner,—with some minds far more difficult to resist than physical craving. It is now time that our societies for promoting temperance should be founded on principles that will, in fact, meet the case of our native country; they ought to be British, not American; and this should be written as with a sunbeam.

I had intended to state at length in this work, a case which has struck me forcibly, as exhibiting a near resemblance to the contrasted circumstances of the Americans and the British, as I have endeavoured to represent them. It is the very opposite condition in which the negroes of our West Indies are found, compared with that of the Hindoos, in our Eastern dominions, in regard to their respective state of mental preparation for receiving the gospel; and the very dissimilar and opposite means that missions of various denominations, employed in promoting Christianity in the West Indies and Hindostan, have now found it necessary to adopt; based on the different intellectual circumstances of these two races of men; and on the contrast of

their preconceived and existing opinions, manners, modes of thought, and usages.

But it will be impossible, at present, to do any thing more than to request the attention of intelligent readers to this point, and their investigation of a subject highly interesting in itself; and particularly so to those who regard it as of importance to attend to the difference of national character, and its actual effects on life and conduct. Some account of this subject will be met with in the Rev. Mr. Waddell's speeches on West Indian Missions, and in the address of the Rev. Mr. Duff, to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, both reported in the Scottish Missionary Register, for June, 1835. Men and women who are tainted with habits of inebriation, with the utmost difficulty only can retrieve themselves amid this mesh of entangling and overwhelming drinking obligation and coercion. In some cases it might be prudent, that reforming inebriates should absolutely leave the country, and reside in some nation where such a prodigious barrier to regaining habits of sobriety is unknown.

Although I am of opinion that it may now be safely stated, that the artificial conjunction of liquor with etiquette and courtesy, has been, in the general case, nearly abolished among the continental nations of Europe, yet remains of the old barbarous connexion are still to be found, especially in Sweden and Norway. Something like bestowing wine in particular transactions of sale, has been discovered in a remote corner of southern France, after rather

a diligent search; but I have never seen drinking of healths in France, Germany, or Italy. At the same time, my acquaintance with these countries is too slight to make my experience decisive of the point. About Le Sage's time (who was born 1668), health-drinking was customary in some quarters.— (See Gil Blas).

Sir Stamford Raffles states, that in Batta, at a criminal trial, when evidence has been heard, sentence is pronounced, and the chiefs drink a dram each, which last ceremony is equivalent to signing and sealing. Dr. Meyer, of Berlin, mentions that in drinking wine, the Chinese observe somewhat the same rules, as to wishing health and happiness, as the English do. The Tour of a German Prince also admits a similar custom at a marriage at Eisenach. There are a few ancient German wine courtesies recorded in Grimm's Teutonic Legal Antiquities; and among the Persian Jews of the present day, healths in arrack are drunk to the bride at a marriage. I incline to think, that the

66

drink-money" allowed to German postillions is such now in name only, speaking generally. On the whole, in Great Britain, we seem to be behind the more refined nations of modern Europe, in our progress of getting quit of these barbarisms; and there appears no parallel elsewhere to the multiplicity and complication of our drinking usages. But although all Europe were involved in a similar mesh of customs, still if the principle of mere imitation ought to be discarded as the rule of manners, our argument, that drinking usage should be abolished here,

would hold good on its own separate and irrefragable merits.

We shall conclude our examples of this unhappy national propensity to interweave strong drink and courtesy together, with the case of five-sixths of that class of the population which is designated, in its different ranks and degrees, that of ladies and gentlemen; entreating the reader to notice, by way of preliminary, that the state of matters above detailed, among the operatives, is by no means a thing of mere chance; that it must have had its source somewhere, and that the practices of the upper ranks have ever been, and are ever likely to be, the spring from which the fashions and etiquettes of the lower are originally derived. We entreat the upper ranks to observe, that they are the source of etiquette and form of compliment among their inferiors; and wherever they make drink the instrument of mere courtesy, they continue and enforce a wide-spread evil. This must be confessed on the surface of things, not to be an obvious truth; and most people, at first, will think it an inconsequent conclusion at which to arrive. In different ages of the world, small things have been erroneously thought great, and great things small. Nominalism and Realism have created national wars; sugar colonies have produced contention among empires; forms of church government have been thought of more consequence than the religion of the heart; the depression and abasement of neighbouring kingdoms, and the balance of power in Europe, have engrossed all minds; while the time has been,