The Distracted Preacher
Author: Thomas Hardy
Date: 1879-01-02 04:57:00+00:00
Keywords: Classics; Fiction; Novella; Short Stories; 19th Century; Humor; British Literature; Literature
Description: From the master of Victorian tragedy, the surprisingly comic adventures of a man caught between romance and religion. When young Mr. Stockdale arrives in a small village to fill in for the Methodist minister, he finds himself pining for his comely new landlady. But she leads a mysterious life, keeping odd hours and speaking in hushed tones. As his love for her grows, he’s soon at the center of a hilarious high-stakes adventure, complete with slapstick, hijinks, and a marauding band of cross-dressers. And he’s forced to choose: follow his heart or his higher purpose?***This is a Hybrid Book.Mel
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Copyright

THE DISTRACTED PREACHER by Thomas Hardy

First appeared in HARPER’S WEEKLY, NEW YORK,
AND NEW QUARTERLY MAGAZINE, LONDON, 1879

© 2012 Melville House Publishing

First Melville House printing: June 2012

Melville House Publishing

145 Plymouth Street

Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.mhpbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61219-112-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
A catalog record is available from the Library of Congress

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

I. How His Cold Was Cured

II. How He Saw Two Other Men

III. The Mysterious Great-Coat

IV. At the Time of the New Moon

V. How They Went to Lullstead Cove and Back

VI. The Great Search at Nether-Moynton

VII. The Walk to Warm’ell Cross; and Afterwards

Illuminations

CHAPTER I
HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED

Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January, 183-, that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred and forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea—as many as a hundred and ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up the street at seven o’clock—which, to be just to him, he was never anxious to do.

It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around Nether-Moynton; how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in all?

The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and caused them to say, “Why didn’t we know of this before he came, that we might have gied him a warmer welcome!”

The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as indifferent about his advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in the country, and he their true and appointed parson. Thus when Stockdale set foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though his journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to that business himself. On inquiry he found that the only possible accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs. Lizzy Newberry, at the upper end of the street.

It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him who Mrs. Newberry might be.

The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because he was dead. Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough, as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline. As regarded Mrs. Newberry’s serious side, Stockdale gathered that she was one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both.

“I’ll go there,” said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.

“She’s a little particular, and won’t hae gover’ment folks, or curates, or the pa’son’s friends, or such like,” said the lad, dubiously.

“Ah, that may be a promising sign. I’ll call. Or no; just you go up and ask first if she can find room for me. I have to see one or two persons on another matter. You will find me down at the carrier’s.”

In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs. Newberry would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon Stockdale called at the house. It stood within a garden hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable. He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the neighborhood. He forthwith sent his luggage to Mrs. Newberry’s from the carrier’s, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to his temporary home.

As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the door; and entering quietly, he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps scudding away like mice into the back quarters. He advanced to the parlor, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was scarcely disguised by the carpet, which overlaid only the trodden areas, leaving sandy deserts under the furniture. But the room looked snug and cheerful. The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the bulging mouldings of the table-legs, playing with brass knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under surface of the chimney-piece. A deep arm-chair, covered with horse-hair, and studded with a countless throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the fireplace. The tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand.

Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell. A little girl crept in at the summons, and made tea for him. Her name, she said, was Marther Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village generally. Before Stockdale had got far with his meal a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his head. He saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls.

“Can I get you anything else for tea?” she said, coming forward a step or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving the door by its edge.

“Nothing, thank you,” said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied than of what might be her relation to the household.

“You are quite sure?” said the young woman, apparently aware that he had not considered his answer.

He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there. “Quite sure, Miss Newberry,” he said.

“It is Mrs. Newberry,” said she. “Lizzy Newberry. I used to be Lizzy Simpkins.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.” And before he had occasion to say more she left the room.

Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the table. “Whose house is this, my little woman,” said he.

“Mrs. Lizzy Newberry’s, sir.”

“Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?”

“No. That’s Mrs. Newberry’s mother. It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.”

Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came again. “I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,” she said. The minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honor. “I am afraid little Marther might not make you understand. What will you have for supper? There’s cold rabbit, and there’s a ham uncut.”

Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was laid. He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door again. The minister had already learned that this particular rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive blandness.

“We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale; I quite forgot to mention it just now. Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?”

Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister. In three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the hands of Martha Sarah. Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be.

He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs. Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before. Stockdale’s gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not appearing when expected. It happened that the cold in the head from which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing, which he could not anyhow repress.

Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity. “Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr. Stockdale.”

Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.

“And I’ve a good mind—” she added, archly, looking at the cheerless glass of water on the table, which the abstemious young minister was going to drink.

“Yes, Mrs. Newberry?”

“I’ve a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it than that cold stuff.”

“Well,” said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, “as there is no inn here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will do.”

To this she replied, “There is something better, not far off, though not in the house. I really think you must try it, or you may be ill. Yes, Mr. Stockdale, you shall.” She held up her finger, seeing that he was about to speak. “Don’t ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.”

Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood. Presently she returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, “I am so sorry, but you must help me to get it. Mother has gone to bed. Will you wrap yourself up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?”

Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even tenderness, was not sorry to join her, and followed his guide through the back door, across the garden to the bottom, where the boundary was a wall. This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale discerned in the night-shades several gray headstones, and the outlines of the church roof or tower.

“It is easy to get up this way,” she said, stepping upon a bank which abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stone-work, and descending by a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is the manner of grave-yards to be. Stockdale did the same, and followed her in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower door, which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.

“You can keep a secret?” she said, in a musical voice.

“Like an iron chest!” said he, fervently.

Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which the minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The light showed them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework, pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been removed from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and replaced by new.

“Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?” she said, holding the lantern over her head to light him better. “Or will you take the lantern while I move them?”

“I can manage it,” said the young man; and acting as she ordered, he uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a common wagon-wheel. When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered what he would say.

“You know what they are?” she asked, finding that he did not speak.

“Yes, barrels,” said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the ministry, and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such articles were there.

“You are quite right; they are barrels,” she said, in an emphatic tone of candor that was not without a touch of irony.

Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. “Not smugglers’ liquor?” he said.

“Yes,” said she. “They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come over in the dark from France.”

In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading,; and these little tubskegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as turnips. So that Stockdale’s innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she wished to produce upon him.

“Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,” she said, in a gentle, apologetic voice. “It has been their practice for generations, and they think it no harm. Now, will you roll out one of the tubs?”

“What to do with it?” said the minister.

“To draw a little from it to cure your cold,” she answered. “It is so burning strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy. Oh, it is all right about our taking it. I may have what I like; the owner of the tubs says so. I ought to have had some in the house, and then I shouldn’t ha’ been put to this trouble; but I drink none myself, and so I often forget to keep it in-doors.”

“You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not inform where their hiding-place is?”

“Well, no, not that particularly, but I may take some if I want it. So help yourself.”

“I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,” murmured the minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the performance, he rolled one of the tubs out from the corner into the middle of the tower floor. “How do you wish me to get it out—with a gimlet, I suppose?”

“No; I’ll show you,” said his interesting companion. And she held up with her other hand a shoemaker’s awl and a hammer. “You must never do these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the buyers pour out the brandy, that would tell them that the tub had been broached. An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again. Now tap one of the hoops forward.”

Stockdale took the hammer and did so.

“Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.”

He made the hole as directed. “It won’t run out,” he said.

“Oh yes it will,” said she. “Take the tub between your knees and squeeze the heads, and I’ll hold the cup.”

Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which seemed to be thin, the spirits spurted out in a stream. When the cup was full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped. “Now we must fill up the keg with water,” said Lizzy, “or it will cluck like forty hens when it is handled, and show that ’tis not full.”

“But they tell you you may take it?”

“Yes, the smugglers; but the buyers must not know that the smugglers have been kind to me at their expense.”

“I see,” said Stockdale, doubtfully. “I much question the honesty of this proceeding.”

By her direction he held the tub with the hole upward, and while he went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press she produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, then putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was sucked in at each recovery of the cask from pressure. When it was again full he plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried the tub in the lumber as before.

“Aren’t the smugglers afraid that you will tell?” he asked as they recrossed the church-yard.

“Oh no; they are not afraid of that. I couldn’t do such a thing.”

“They have put you into a very awkward corner,” said Stockdale, emphatically. “You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel that it is your duty to inform—really, you must.”

“Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my first husband—” She stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice. Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once discern why she paused; but at last he did perceive that the words were a slip, and that no woman would have uttered “first husband” by accident unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second. He felt for her confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed. “My husband,” she said, in a self-corrected tone, “used to know of their doings, and so did my father, and kept the secret. I cannot inform, in fact, against anybody.”

“I see the hardness of it,” he continued, like a man who looked far into the moral of things. “And it is very cruel that you should be tossed and tantalized between your memories and your conscience. I do hope, Mrs. Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant position.”

“Well, I don’t just now,” she murmured.

By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own reflections. He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in doing this thing. A sneeze settled the question; and he found that when the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the year.

Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again. He then felt that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would, in an emotional sense, be very long before to-morrow came, and walked restlessly round the room. His eye was attracted by a framed and glazed sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded the following pretty bit of sentiment:

“Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,

Here’s my work while I’m alive;

Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,

Here’s my work when I am dead.

“Lizzy Simpkins. Fear God. Honor the King. Aged 11 years.”

“’Tis hers,” he said to himself. “Heavens, how I like that name!”

Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to Zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her seductive eyes.

“Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of your cold?”

The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-chastisement. “No, I thank you,” he said firmly; “it is not necessary. I have never been used to one in my life, and it would be giving way to luxury too far.”

“Then I won’t insist,” she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing instantly.

Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days. However, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof with Lizzy—her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow.

The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone. He had never in his life so longed for the breakfast-hour as he did that day, and punctually at eight o’clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling. Breakfast passed, and Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to gratify. He was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at dinner. Dinner-time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that moment waiting at the chapel door to speak to him by appointment. It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-broaching in the neighboring church tower, which proceeding he resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in Christendom. But nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in his serious duties.

However, compunction vanished with the decline of day. Night came, and his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet temptations. At last the minister could bear it no longer, and said to his quaint little attendant, “Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?” judiciously handing a penny as he spoke.

“She’s busy,” said Martha.

“Anything serious happened?” he asked, handing another penny, and revealing yet additional pennies in the background.

“Oh no, nothing at all!” said she, with breathless confidence. “Nothing ever happens to her. She’s only biding up-stairs in bed, because ’tis her way sometimes.”

Being a young man of some honor, he would not question further, and assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight ailment, in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed dissatisfied, not even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins. “I said last night that I should see her to-morrow,” he reflected; “but that was not to be!”

Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of the stairs in the morning, and being favored by a visit or two from her during the day—once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries about his comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and savored more of pride than of vanity.

As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not denied to Dissenters. He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for the space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was useless to struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation. “The other minister will be here in a month,” he said to himself when sitting over the fire. “Then I shall be off, and she will distract my mind no more! . . . And then, shall I go on living by myself forever? No; when my two years of probation are finished, I shall have a furnished house to live in, with a varnished door and a brass knocker; and I’ll march straight back to her, and ask her flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser!”

Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during which time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever since the beginning of history. He saw the object of attachment several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an appointment. This mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and Stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able. Being in her own house, she could, after vexing or disappointing him of her presence, easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with those little attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her power to bestow. When he had waited in-doors half the day to see her, and on finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore equilibrium in the evening with “Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you must feel draught o’ nights from your bedroom window, and so I have been putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;” or “I noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr. Stockdale. Depend upon it, that cold is hanging about you yet; I am sure it is—I have thought of it continually; and you must let me make a posset for you.”

Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged, chairs placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented with the few fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this season, so as to add a novelty to the room. At times she would be standing on a chair outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of the monthly rose which the winter wind had blown down; and of course he stepped forward to assist her, when their hands got mixed in passing the shreds and nails. Thus they became friends again after a disagreement. She would utter on these occasions some pretty and deprecatory remark on the necessity of her troubling him anew; and he would straightway say that he would do a hundred times as much for her if she should so require.

CHAPTER II
HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN

Matters being in this advanced state, Stockdale was rather surprised one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing her speak in low tones of expostulation to some one at the door. It was nearly dark, but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the candles lighted; and Stockdale was tempted to stretch his head towards the window. He saw outside the door a young man in clothes of a whitish color, and upon reflection judged their wearer to be the well-built and rather handsome miller who lived below. The miller’s voice was alternately low and firm, and sometimes it reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the words were Stockdale could in no way hear.

Before the colloquy had ended, the minister’s attention was attracted by a second incident. Opposite Lizzy’s home grew a clump of laurels, forming a thick and permanent shade. One of the laurel boughs now quivered against the light background of sky, and in a moment the head of a man peered out, and remained still. He seemed to be also much interested in the conversation at the door, and was plainly lingering there to watch and listen. Had Stockdale stood in any other relation to Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone out and investigated the meaning of this; but being as yet but an unprivileged ally, he did nothing more than stand up and show himself in the lighted room, whereupon the listener disappeared, and Lizzy and the miller spoke in lower tones.

Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance that as soon as the miller was gone, he said, “Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you were watched just now, and your conversation heard?”

“When?” she said.

“When you were talking to that miller. A man was looking from the laurel-tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.”

She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand, and he added, “Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish to be overheard?”

“I was talking only on business,” she said.

“Lizzy, be frank!” said the young man. “If it was only on business, why should anybody wish to listen to you?”

She looked curiously at him. “What else do you think it could be, then?”

“Well, the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to amuse an eavesdropper.”

“Ah yes,” she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation. “Well, Cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then, that’s true; but he was not speaking of it then. I wish he had been speaking of it, with all my heart. It would have been much less serious for me.”

“Oh, Mrs. Newberry!”

“It would. Not that I should ha’ chimed in with him, of course. I wish it for other reasons. I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have told me of that listener. It is a timely warning, and I must see my cousin again.”

“But don’t go away till I have spoken,” said the minister. “I’ll out with it at once, and make no more ado. Let it be Yes or No between us, Lizzy, please do!” And he held out his hand, in which she freely allowed her own to rest, but without speaking.

“You mean Yes by that?” he asked, after waiting a while.

“You may be my sweetheart, if you will.”

“Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and can come back to marry you?”

“Because I am thinking—thinking of something else,” she said with embarrassment. “It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one thing at a time.”

“At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall not be allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never directly encouraged him?”

She parried the question by saying, “You see, he and his party have been in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as I have not denied him, it makes him rather forward.”

“Things—what things?”

“Tubs—they are called things here.”

“But why don’t you deny him, my dear Lizzy?”

“I cannot well.”

“You are too timid. It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and get your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks. Promise me that the next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me roll them into the street?”

She shook her head. “I would not venture to offend the neighbors so much as that,” said she, “or do anything that would be so likely to put poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.”

Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity when it extended to assisting those who cheated the King of his dues. “At any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover, and tell him flatly that you are not for him?”

“Please not, at present,” she said. “I don’t wish to offend my old neighbors. It is not only Owlett who is concerned.”

“This is too bad,” said Stockdale, impatiently.

“On my honor, I won’t encourage him as my lover,” Lizzy answered earnestly. “A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.”

“Well, so I am,” said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.

CHAPTER III
THE MYSTERIOUS GREAT-COAT

Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of his fair landlady which he had casually observed, but scarcely ever thought of before. It was that she was markedly irregular in her hours of rising. For a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven; then suddenly she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till half-past three in the afternoon. The second time that this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. The former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health, that she had never had a moment’s heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since the previous January twelvemonth.

“I am glad to hear it,” said he. “I thought quite otherwise.”

“What, do I look sickly?” she asked, turning up her face to show the impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a moment.

“Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to keep your room through the best part of the day.”

“Oh, as for that—it means nothing,” she murmured, with a look which some might have called cold, and which was the look that he worst liked to see upon her. “It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.”

“Never!”

“It is, I tell you. When I stay in my room till half-past three in the afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till three, or I shouldn’t have stayed there.”

“It is dreadful,” said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a habit of every-day occurrence.

“But then,” she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, “it only happens when I stay awake all night. I don’t go to sleep till five or six in the morning sometimes.”

“Ah, that’s another matter,” said Stockdale. “Sleeplessness to such an alarming extent is real illness. Have you spoken to a doctor?”

“Oh no, there is no need for doing that; it is all natural to me.” And she went away without further remark.

Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which unintentionally occupied him for a considerable time after the other members of the household had retired. He did not get to bed till one o’clock. Before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder. Nobody answered it, and the person knocked again. As the house still remained undisturbed, Stockdale got out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there.

A young woman’s voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that she had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to make a plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.

The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act in person. “I will call Mrs. Newberry,” he said. Partly dressing himself, he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy’s door. She did not answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of sleep, he thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its moving ajar under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed to. As there was now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked no longer, but said in firm tones, “Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.”

The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from any part of it. Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the open space of the door: “Mrs. Newberry!” still no answer, or movement of any kind within. Then he heard sounds from the opposite room, that of Lizzy’s mother, as if she had been aroused by his uproar though Lizzy had not, and was dressing herself hastily. Stockdale softly closed the younger woman’s door and went on to the other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins before he could reach it. She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a light in her hand.

“What’s the person calling about?” she said, in alarm.

Stockdale told the girl’s errand, adding seriously, “I cannot wake Mrs. Newberry.”

“It is no matter,” said her mother. “I can let the girl have what she wants as well as my daughter.” And she came out of the room and went down-stairs.

Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to Mrs. Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, “I suppose there is nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not wake her?”

“Oh no,” said the old lady, hastily. “Nothing at all.”

Still the minister was not satisfied. “Will you go in and see?” he said. “I should be much more at ease.”

Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter’s room, and came out again almost instantly. “There is nothing at all the matter with Lizzy,” she said, and descended again to attend to the applicant, who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during this interval.

Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before. He heard Lizzy’s mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the murmured discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for the medicament required. The girl departed, the door was fastened, Mrs. Simpkins came up-stairs, and the house was again in silence. Still the minister did not fall asleep. He could not get rid of a singular suspicion, which was all the more harassing in being, if true, the most unaccountable thing within his experience. That Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he made such a clamor at her door he could not possibly convince himself, notwithstanding that he had heard her come up-stairs at the usual time, go into her chamber, and shut herself up in the usual way. Yet all reason was so much against her being elsewhere that he was constrained to go back again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.

Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and did not awake till day. He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the morning, before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to do when the weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual, he took no notice of it. At breakfast-time he knew that she was not far off by hearing her in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of her person, that back apartment being rigorously closed against his eyes, she seemed to be talking, ordering, and bustling about among the pots and skimmers in so ordinary a manner that there was no reason for his wasting more time in fruitless
surmise.

The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized sermons were not improved thereby. Already he often said Romans for Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped metres that hitherto had always been skipped because the congregation could not raise a tune to fit them. He fully resolved that as soon as his few weeks of stay approached their end he would cut the matter short, and commit himself by proposing a definite engagement, repenting at leisure if necessary.

With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before dark, the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they might return home unseen. She consented to go; and away they went over a stile, to a shrouded foot-path suited for the occasion. But, in spite of attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much spirit into the ramble. She looked rather paler than usual, and sometimes turned her head away.

“Lizzy,” said Stockdale, reproachfully, when they had walked in silence a long distance.

“Yes,” said she.

“You yawned—much my company is to you!” He put it in that way, but he was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to do with physical weariness from the night before than mental weariness of that present moment. Lizzy apologized, and owned that she was rather tired, which gave him an opening for a direct question on the point; but his modesty would not allow him to put it to her, and he uncomfortably resolved to wait.

The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost, rain and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales. The hollow places in the ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water, which had settled there from the higher levels, and had not yet found time to soak away. The birds began to get lively, and a single thrush came just before sunset each evening, and sang hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood nearest to Mrs. Newberry’s house. Cold blasts and brittle earth had given place to an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost; but it suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable kind.

Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding with Lizzy at least half a dozen times; but what with the mystery of her apparent absence on the night of the neighbor’s call, and her curious way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a check within him whenever he wanted to speak out. Thus they still lived on as indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly acknowledged the other’s claim to the name of chosen one. Stockdale persuaded himself that his hesitation was owing to the postponement of the ordained minister’s arrival, and the consequent delay in his own departure, which did away with all necessity for haste in his courtship; but perhaps it was only that his discretion was reasserting itself, and telling him that he had better get clearer ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the grand contract of his life with her. She, on her part, always seemed ready to be urged further on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go; but she was none the less independent, and to a degree which would have kept from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man.

On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his bedroom about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a great-coat, hat, and breeches. Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his own in that spot, he went and examined them as well as he could in the twilight, and found that they did not belong to him. He paused for a moment to consider how they might have got there. He was the only man living in the house; and yet these were not his garments, unless he had made a mistake. No, they were not his. He called up Martha Sarah.

“How did these things come in my room?” he said, flinging the objectionable articles to the floor.

Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and that she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr. Stockdale’s, as there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.

“Of course you did,” said Stockdale. “Now take them down to your mis’ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know nothing about.”

As the door was left open he heard the conversation down-stairs. “How stupid!” said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion. “Why, Marther Sarer, I did not tell you to take ’em to Mr. Stockdale’s room?”

“I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,” said Martha, humbly.

“You should have left ’em on the clothes-horse,” said the young mistress, severely; and she came up-stairs with the garments on her arm, quickly passed Stockdale’s room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the end of a passage. With this the incident ended, and the house was silent again.

There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a widow’s house had they been clean, or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing. However, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance.

One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry herself brushing the tails of a long drab great-coat, which, if he mistook not, was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his room. It was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with neighboring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its color, the spots being distinctly visible to him in the sunlight. The previous day or two having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had quite recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes and fields. Stockdale opened the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry turned her head. Her face became slowly red; she never had looked prettier, or more incomprehensible. He waved his hand affectionately, and said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat half cleaned.

Stockdale shut the window. Some simple explanation of her proceeding was doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then.

But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting. She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that it happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that had belonged to her poor husband.

“You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?” said Stockdale, tentatively.

“I air and dust them sometimes,” she said, with the most charming innocence in the world.

“Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?” murmured the minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.

“What did you say?” asked Lizzy.

“Nothing, nothing,” said he, mournfully. “Mere words—a phrase that will do for my sermon next Sunday.” It was too plain that Lizzy was unaware that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts of the telltale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it had come direct from some chest or drawer.

The aspect of the case was now considerably darker. Stockdale was so much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation, or threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or reproach her in any way whatever. He simply parted from her when she had done talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees his natural manner became sad and constrained.

CHAPTER IV
AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON

The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy, and the night threatened to be windy and unpleasant. Stockdale had gone away to Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy in the passage. Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness which had attended him that day, or by the drive through the open air, or whether from a natural disposition to let by-gones alone, he allowed himself to be fascinated into forgetfulness of the great-coat incident, and, upon the whole, passed a pleasant evening; not so much in her society as within sound of her voice, as she sat talking in the back parlor to her mother, till the latter went to bed. Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry retired, and then Stockdale prepared to go up-stairs himself. But before he left the room he remained standing by the dying embers a while, thinking long of one thing and another, and was only aroused by the flickering of his candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out. Knowing that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his bedroom, he felt his way up-stairs without a light. On reaching his chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the tinder-box, but for a long time in vain. Discovering it at length, Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he fancied that he heard a movement in the passage. He blew harder at the lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light through the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was surprised to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the staircase with the evident intention of escaping unobserved. The personage wore the clothes which Lizzy had been brushing, and something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister that the wearer was Lizzy herself.

But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale determined to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for doing it. He blew out the match without lighting the candle, went into the passage, and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy’s room. A faint gray square of light in the direction of the chamber window as he approached told him that the door was open, and at once suggested that the occupant was gone. He turned and brought down his fist upon the hand-rail of the staircase: “It was she; in her late husband’s coat and hat!”

Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case, yet none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs, softly put on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front door. It was fastened as usual; he went to the back door, found this unlocked, and emerged into the garden. The night was mild and moonless, and rain had lately been falling, though for the present it had ceased. There was a sudden dropping from the trees and bushes every now and then, as each passing wind shook their boughs. Among these sounds Stockdale heard the faint fall of feet upon the road outside, and he guessed from the step that it was Lizzy’s. He followed the sound, and, helped by the circumstance of the wind blowing from the direction in which the pedestrian moved, he got nearly close to her, and kept there, without risk of being overheard. While he thus followed her up the street or lane, as it might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than houses on either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the cottage doors. Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and stopped also.

“Is that Mrs. Newberry?” said the man who had come out, whose voice Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of his congregation.

“It is,” said Lizzy.

“I be quite ready—I’ve been here this quarter-hour.”

“Ah, John,” said she, “I have bad news; there is danger to-night for our venture.”

“And d’ye tell o’t! I dreamed there might be.”

“Yes,” she said, hurriedly; “and you must go at once round to where the chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till to-morrow night at the same time. I go to burn the lugger off.”

“I will,” he said, and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy continuing her way.

On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for Ringsworth. Here she ascended the hill without the least hesitation, passed the lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the vale on the other side. Stockdale had never taken any extensive walks in this direction, but he was aware that if she persisted in her course much longer she would draw near to the coast, which was here between two and three miles distant from Nether-Moynton; and as it had been about a quarter-past eleven o’clock when they set out, her intention seemed to be to reach the shore about
midnight.

Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and afterwards sat down. Stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still.

The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he did not care to remain long. However, before he had decided to leave it, the young man heard voices behind him. What they signified he did not know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as if she had become part of it. She had evidently heard the men as well as he. They passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they were not engaged in any business at their own risk. This proved to be the fact; some of their words floated across to him, and caused him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.

“What’s the vessel?”

“A lugger, about fifty tons.”

“From Cherbourg, I suppose?”

“Yes, a b’lieve.”

“But it don’t all belong to Owlett?”

“Oh no. He’s only got a share. There’s another or two in it—a farmer and such-like, but the names I don’t know.”

The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.

“My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,” groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name. “That’s why she’s here,” he said to himself. “Oh, it will be the ruin of her!”

His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding. A few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the direction of home. The light now flared high and wide, and showed its position clearly. She had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as the bough. Stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman. His intention was to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing of her. Thus he flew across the open country about Holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was forced to pause to get breath. There was no audible movement either in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him pass by.

He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village. On reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them. Stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the passage. In about ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door-latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.

Stockdale went forward and said at once, “Lizzy, don’t be frightened. I have been waiting up for you.”

She started, though she had recognized the voice. “It is Mr. Stockdale, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe in-doors, and not alarmed. “And a nice game I’ve found you out in to-night. You are in man’s clothes, and I am ashamed of you!”

Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.

“I am only partly in man’s clothes,” she faltered, shrinking back to the wall. “It is only his great-coat and hat and breeches that I’ve got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only because a cloak blows about so, and you can’t use your arms. I have got my own dress under just the same—it is only tucked in. Will you go away up-stairs and let me pass? I didn’t want you to see me at such a time as this.”

“But I have a right to see you. How do you think there can be anything between us now?” Lizzy was silent. “You are a smuggler,” he continued, sadly.

“I have only a share in the run,” she said.

“That makes no difference. Whatever did you engage in such a trade as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?”

“I don’t do it always. I do it only in winter-time when ’tis new moon.”

“Well, I suppose that’s because it can’t be done anywhen else . . . You have regularly upset me, Lizzy.”

“I am sorry for that,” Lizzy meekly replied.

“Well now,” said he, more tenderly, “no harm is done as yet. Won’t you for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice altogether?”

“I must do my best to save this run,” said she, getting rather husky in the throat. “I don’t want to give you up—you know that; but I don’t want to lose my venture. I don’t know what to do now! Why I have kept it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be angry if you knew.”

“I should think so. I suppose if I had married you without finding this out you’d have gone on with it just the same?”

“I don’t know. I did not think so far ahead. I only went to-night to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the tubs were to be landed.”

“It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,” said the distracted young minister. “Well, what will you do now?”

Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was burned off from the first point, which was Ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night, the crew should attempt to make the second, which was Lullstead, on the second night; and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night try the third place, which was behind a headland farther west.

“Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?” he said, his attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his concern at her share in it.

“Then we sha’n’t try anywhere else all this dark—that’s what we call the time between moon and moon—and perhaps they’ll string the tubs to a stray-line, and sink ’em a little ways from shore, and take the bearings; and then when they have a chance they’ll go to creep for ’em.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, they’ll go out in a boat and drag a creeper—that’s a grapnel—along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.”

The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within-doors but the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could discern against its whitewashed surface the great-coat and broad hat which covered her.

“Lizzy, all this is very wrong,” he said. “Don’t you remember the lesson of the tribute-money?—‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ Surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?”

“He’s dead,” she pouted.

“But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.”

“My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in Nether-Moynton lives by it; and life would be so dull if it wasn’t for that, that I should not care to live at all.”

“I am nothing to live for, of course,” he replied, bitterly. “You would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me alone?”

“I have never looked at it like that.”

“And you won’t promise and wait till I am ready?”

“I cannot give you my word to-night.” And, looking thoughtfully down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room, and closing the door between them. She remained there in the dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber.

Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the discoveries of the night before. Lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating young woman, but as a minister’s wife she was hardly to be contemplated. “If I had only stuck to father’s little grocery business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!” he said, sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have come from his distant home to Nether-Moynton, and never have known her.

The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to keep them out of each other’s company. Once during the day he met her in the garden path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, “Do you promise, Lizzy?” But she did not reply. The evening drew on, and he knew well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night—her half-offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans at present. He did not wish to repeat his own share of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account increased with the decline of day. Supposing that an accident should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful escapades.

CHAPTER V
HOW THEY WENT TO LULLSTEAD COVE AND BACK

As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure. He was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost as soon as she.

“Then you will go, Lizzy?” he said, as he stood on the step beside her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited to his clothes.

“I must,” she said, repressed by his stern manner.

“Then I shall go too,” said he.

“And I am sure you will enjoy it!” she exclaimed, in more buoyant tones. “Everybody does who tries it.”

“God forbid that I should,” he said. “But I must look after you.”

They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them. The evening was rather less favorable to smuggling enterprise than the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the north.

“It is rather lighter,” said Stockdale.

“’Tis, unfortunately,” said she. “But it is only from those few stars over there. The moon was new to-day at four o’clock, and I expected clouds. I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to sink ’em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don’t like it so well.”

Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off to the left over Lord’s Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane and crossed the highway. By the time they reached Chaldon Down, Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavor to keep her from such practices in future. It occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.

They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they sought. Lizzy broke the silence this time: “I have to wait here to meet the carriers. I don’t know if they have come yet. As I told you, we go to Lullstead to-night, and it is two miles farther than Ringsworth.”

It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of men at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait. These carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland. They were all young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and the neighborhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labor for which they were fairly well paid.

At a word from her, they closed in together. “You had better take it now,” she said to them, and handed to each a packet. It contained six shillings, their remuneration for the night’s undertaking, which was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was successfully made. As soon as it was done, she said to them, “The place is the old one near Lullstead;” the men till that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for obvious reasons. “Owlett will meet you there,” added Lizzy. “I shall follow behind, to see that we are not watched.”

The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a distance of a stone’s-throw. “What do these men do by day?” he said.

“Twelve or fourteen of them are laboring men. Some are brickmakers, some carpenters, some masons, some thatchers. They are all known to me very well. Nine of ’em are of your own congregation.”

“I can’t help that,” said Stockdale.

“Oh, I know you can’t. I only told you. The others are more church-inclined, because they supply the pa’son with all the spirits he requires, and they don’t wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.”

“How do you choose them?” said Stockdale.

“We choose ’em for their closeness, and because they are strong and sure-footed, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being tired.” Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted with its conditions and needs. And yet he felt more tenderly towards her at this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day. Perhaps it was that her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration in spite of himself.

“Take my arm, Lizzy,” he murmured.

“I don’t want it,” she said. “Besides, we may never be to each other again what we once have been.”

“That depends upon you,” said he, and they went on again as before.

The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork called Round Pound. An hour’s brisk walking brought them within sound of the sea, not many hundred yards from Lullstead Cove. Here they paused, and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to the verge of the cliff. One of the men now produced an iron bar, which he drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a rope that he had uncoiled from his body. They all began to descend, partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped through their hands.

“You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?” said Stockdale, anxiously.

“No; I stay here to watch,” she said. “Owlett is down there.”

The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the dashing of waves against a boat’s bow. In a moment the keel gently touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six carriers running forward over the pebbles towards the point of landing.

There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in, showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs, or even their waists, dry from the brine; but it was impossible to see what they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled again. The iron bar sustaining the rope, on which Stockdale’s hand rested, began to swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared climbing up the sloping cliff, dripping audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves by the guide-rope. Each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung together by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the carrier’s shoulders. Some of the stronger men carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five miles.

“Where is Owlett?” said Lizzy to one of them.

“He will not come up this way,” said the carrier. “He’s to bide on shore till we be safe off.” Then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost men plunged across the down; and when the last had ascended, Lizzy pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the sod, and turned to follow the carriers.

“You are very anxious about Owlett’s safety,” said the minister.

“Was there ever such a man!” said Lizzy. “Why, isn’t he my cousin?”

“Yes. Well, it is a bad night’s work,” said Stockdale, heavily. “But I’ll carry the bar and rope for you.”

“Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,” said she.

Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side towards the down, and the moan of the sea was heard no more.

“Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business with Owlett?” the young man asked.

“This is it,” she replied. “I never see him on any other matter.”

“A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.”

“It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.”

Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and pursuits were so akin as Lizzy’s and Owlett’s, and where risks were shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar appropriateness in her answering Owlett’s standing question on matrimony in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of conduct and a minister’s parlor in some far-removed inland county.

They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a direction of its own. One company, the smaller of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the church-yard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass within.

“I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church again,” observed Lizzy. “Do you remember my taking you there the first night you came?”

“Yes, of course,” said Stockdale. “No wonder you had permission to broach the tubs—they were his, I suppose?”

“No, they were not—they were mine; I had permission from myself. The day after that they went several miles inland in a wagon-load of manure, and sold very well.”

At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy’s house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.

“Mrs. Newberry, isn’t it?” he said, hastily.

“Yes, Jim,” said she. “What’s the matter?”

“I find that we can’t put any in Badger’s Clump to-night, Lizzy,” said Owlett. “The place is watched. We must sling the apple-tree in the orchet if there’s time. We can’t put any more under the church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is safe.”

“Very well,” she said. “Be quick about it—that’s all. What can I do?”

“Nothing at all, please. Ah, it is the minister!—you two that can’t do anything had better get in-doors and not be seed.”

While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and so free from lover’s jealousy, the men who followed him had been descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord which sustained his tubs slipped; the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them being stove in by the blow.

“’Od drown it all!” said Owlett, rushing back.

“It is worth a good deal, I suppose?” said Stockdale.

“Oh no—about two guineas and half to us now,” said Lizzy, excitedly. “It isn’t that—it is the smell! It is so blazing strong before it has been lowered by water that it smells dreadfully when spilled in the road like that! I do hope Latimer won’t pass by till it is gone off.”

Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible; and then they all entered the gate of Owlett’s orchard, which adjoined Lizzy’s garden on the right. Stockdale did not care to follow them, for several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence, though they said nothing. Lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of the garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could be dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs. All was done noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the church having already gone off to their homes.

Lizzy returned to the garden gate, over which Stockdale was still abstractedly leaning. “It is all finished: I am going in-doors now,” she said, gently. “I will leave the door ajar for you.”

“Oh no, you needn’t,” said Stockdale; “I am coming too.”

But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses’ hoofs broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track across the down joined the hard road.

“They are just too late!” cried Lizzy, exultingly.

“Who?” said Stockdale.

“Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his. We had better go in-doors.”

They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door. “Please don’t get a light, Mr. Stockdale,” she said.

“Of course I will not,” said he.

“I thought you might be on the side of the King,” said Lizzy, with faintest sarcasm.

“I am,” said Stockdale. “But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you know it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I have suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!”

“I guess very well,” she said, hurriedly. “Yet I don’t see why. Ah, you are better than I!”

The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair of listeners touched each other’s fingers in the cold “good-night” of those whom something seriously divided. They were on the landing, but before they had taken three steps apart the tramp of the horsemen suddenly revived, almost close to the house. Lizzy turned to the staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face close to the aperture. “Yes, one of ’em is Latimer,” she whispered. “He always rides a white horse. One would think it was the last color for a man in that line.”

Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by; but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined in his horse, and said something to his companion which neither Stockdale nor Lizzy could hear. Its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses’ heads they cautiously retraced their steps. When they were again opposite Mrs. Newberry’s garden, Latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did the same.

Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings, naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks came positively into contact. They went on listening, as if they did not know of the singular circumstance which had happened to their faces, and the pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse of time.

They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced slowly along. When they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both stopped on the instant.

“Ay, ay, ’tis quite strong here,” said the second officer. “Shall we knock at the door?”

“Well, no,” said Latimer. “Maybe this is only a trick to put us off the scent. They wouldn’t kick up this stink anywhere near their hiding-place. I have known such things before.”

“Anyhow, the things, or some of ’em, must have been brought this way,” said the other.

“Yes,” said Latimer, musingly. “Unless ’tis all done to tole us the wrong way. I have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word, and come the first thing in the morning with more hands. I know they have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl’s light. We will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, John; and if all is quiet, we will do as I
say.”

They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction. This way the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away.

“What will you do?” said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.

She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamed of than done. “Oh, nothing,” she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under her disappointment at his manner. “We often have such storms as this. You would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are. Fancy riding o’ horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get off, in case some of our fellows should burst out upon ’em, and tie them up to the gate-post, as they have done before now. Good-night, Mr. Stockdale.”

She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers.

CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON

Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday. As soon as the gray light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects in his bedroom, he arose, dressed himself, and went down-stairs into the road.

The village was already astir. Several of the carriers had heard the well-known tramp of Latimer’s horse while they were undressing in the dark that night, and had already communicated with one another and Owlett on the subject. The only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those tubs which had been left under the church gallery stairs, and after a short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a double hedge bordering the adjoining field. However, before anything could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard coming down the lane from the highway.

“D—— it, here they be,” said Owlett, who, having already drawn the hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill door covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in the shaking walls around him.

The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual work, and when the excise officers and the formidable body of men they had hired reached the village cross, between the mill and Mrs. Newberry’s house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place beginning its morning labors.

“Now,” said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all, “what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here place. We have got the day before us, and ’tis hard if we can’t light upon ’em and get ’em to Budmouth Custom-house before night. First we will try the fuel-houses, and then we’ll work our way into the chimmers, and then to the ricks and stables, and so creep round. You have nothing but your noses to guide ye, mind, so use ’em to-day if you never did in your lives before.”

Then the search began. Owlett, during the early part, watched from his mill window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self-possession. A farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer and his myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a question. Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some question or other on the consequences to her of the tubs being found.

“The consequences,” she said, quietly, “are simply that I shall lose ’em. As I have none in the house or garden, they can’t touch me personally.”

“But you have some in the orchard?”

“Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others. So it will be hard to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.”

There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day. All was done methodically, and mostly on hands and knees. At different hours of the day they had different plans. From daybreak to breakfast-time the officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be supposed to be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on the following night. Among the places tested and examined were:

Hollow trees. Cupboards. Culverts.

Potato-graves. Clock-cases. Hedge-rows.

Fuel-houses. Chimney-flues. Fagot-ricks.

Bedrooms. Rain-water butts. Haystacks.

Apple-lofts. Pigsties. Coppers and ovens.

After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigor, taking a new line; that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirits, owing to its oozing between the staves. They now sniffed at

Smock-frocks. Smiths’ and
shoemakers’ aprons.

Old shirts and waistcoats. Knee-naps and hedging-gloves.

Coats and hats. Tarpaulins.

Breeches and leggings. Market-cloaks.

Women’s shawls and gowns. Scarecrows.

And, as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:

Horse-ponds. Mixens. Sinks in yards.

Stable-drains. Wet ditches. Road-scrapings.

Cinder-heaps. Cesspools. Back-door gutters.

But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the original telltale smell in the road opposite Lizzy’s house, which even yet had not passed off.

“I’ll tell ye what it is, men,” said Latimer, about three o’clock in the afternoon, “we must begin over again. Find them tubs I will.”

The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their noses, as if they had had almost enough of it; for the quantity of bad air which had passed into each one’s nostril had rendered it nearly as insensible as a flue. However, after a moment’s hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day.

By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. Owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the wheelwright’s shop was silent.

“Where the divil are the folk gone?” said Latimer, waking up to the fact of their absence, and looking round. “I’ll have ’em up for this! Why don’t they come and help us? There’s not a man about the place but the Methodist parson, and he’s an old woman. I demand assistance in the King’s name!”

“We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,” said his lieutenant.

“Well, well, we shall do better without ’em,” said Latimer, who changed his moods at a moment’s notice. “But there’s great cause of suspicion in this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I’ll bear it in mind. Now we will go across to Owlett’s orchard, and see what we can find there.”

Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden gate, over which he had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the villagers to keep so completely out of the way. He himself, like the excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have become of them. Some laborers were of necessity engaged in distant fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone off for the day. He went in to Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing, and said, “Lizzy, where are the men?”

Lizzy laughed. “Where they mostly are when they are run so hard as this.” She cast her eyes to heaven. “Up there,” she said.

Stockdale looked up. “What—on the top of the church tower?” he asked, seeing the direction of her glance.

“Yes.”

“Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,” said he, gravely. “I have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.”

Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time. “Will you go and tell our folk?” she said. “They ought to be let know.” Seeing his conscience struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, “No, never mind, I’ll go myself.”

She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the church-yard wall at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the orchard. Stockdale could do no less than follow her. By the time that she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered together.

Nether-Moynton church- tower was, as in many villages, without a turret, and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers’ gallery, and thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the bells to a hole in the roof. When Lizzy and Stockdale reached the gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for the bell-ropes appeared. The ladder was gone.

“There’s no getting up,” said Stockdale.

“Oh yes, there is,” said she. “There’s an eye looking at us at this moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.”

And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was seen descending against the whitewashed wall. When it touched the bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, “If you’ll go up, I’ll follow.”

The young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the Stockdale blood for some generations. He eyed them uneasily, and looked round for Lizzy. Owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder. “What, be you really one of us?” said the miller.

“It seems so,” said Stockdale, sadly.

“He’s not,” said Lizzy, who overheard. “He’s neither for nor against us. He’ll do us no harm.”

She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage, which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky appeared, and into the open air. Owlett remained behind for a moment, to pull up the lower ladder.

“Keep down your heads,” said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the flat.

Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet. Stockdale did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crab-like object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disk in the centre of him. Some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher’s figure arose among them.

“What, Mr. Stockdale?” said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.

“I’d as lief that it hadn’t been,” said Jim Clarke. “If the pa’son should see him a trespassing here in his tower, ’twould be none the better for we, seeing how a do hate chapel members. He’d never buy a tub of us again, and he’s as good a customer as we have got this side o’ Warm’ll.”

“Where is the pa’son?” said Lizzy.

“In his house, to be sure, that he may see nothing of what’s going on—where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.”

“Well, he has brought some news,” said Lizzy. “They are going to search the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?”

“Yes,” said her cousin Owlett. “That’s what we’ve been talking o’, and we have settled our line. Well, be dazed!”

The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers, having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest was growing. They drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground.

“Oh, my tubs!” said Lizzy, faintly, as she peered through the parapet at them.

“They have got ’em, a b’lieve,” said Owlett.

The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to their feet and went towards the church-yard wall. At the same time those of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived by the smugglers cried aloud, “Here be some of ’em at last.”

The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether “some of ’em” meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the church-yard from their hiding-place under the gallery stairs.

“They are going to put ’em on Hinton’s vault till they find the rest,” said Lizzy, hopelessly. The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing by them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard.

The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies became painfully intense. Only about thirty tubs had been secreted in the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night’s operations. The excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they were determined to find before nightfall. They spread themselves out round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round every apple-tree in the enclosure. The young tree in the middle again led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same results as the first.

When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton’s pickaxe and shovel, with which they set to work.

“Are they really buried there?” said the minister, for the grass was so green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been disturbed. The smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand two on each side of the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it. The apple-tree now showed itself to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each of the four sides. Under the site of the tree a square hole was revealed, and an exciseman went and looked down.

“It is all up now,” said Owlett, quietly. “And now all of ye get down before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move. I had better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion, as ’tis on my ground. I’ll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to pink in.”

“And I?” said Lizzy.

“You please look to the linchpins and screws; then go in-doors and know nothing at all. The chaps will do the rest.”

The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men passing off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on their respective errands. Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the minister.

“You are going in-doors, Mrs. Newberry?” he said.

She knew from the words “Mrs. Newberry” that the division between them had widened yet another degree.

“I am not going home,” she said. “I have a little thing to do before I go in. Martha Sarah will get your tea.”

“Oh, I don’t mean on that account,” said Stockdale. “What can you have to do further in this unhallowed affair?”

“Only a little,” she said.

“What is that? I’ll go with you.”

“No, I shall go by myself. Will you please go in-doors? I shall be there in less than an hour.”

“You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?” said the young man, his tenderness reasserting itself.

“None whatever—worth mentioning,” answered she, and went down towards the Cross.

Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on. The excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was tempted to enter, and watch their proceedings. When he came closer he found that the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been totally unaware, was formed by timbers placed across from side to side about a foot under the ground, and grassed over.

The excisemen looked up at Stockdale’s fair and downy countenance, and evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work again. As soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing up the turf, pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides, till the cellar was wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree lying with its roots high to the air. But the hole which had in its time held so much contraband merchandise was never completely filled up, either then or afterwards, a depression in the greensward marking the spot to this day.

CHAPTER VII
THE WALK TO WARM’ELL CROSS; AND AFTERWARDS

As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the excisemen’s next object was to find horses and carts for the journey, and they went about the village for that purpose. Latimer strode hither and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking broad arrows so vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that he came across that it seemed as if he would chalk broad arrows on the very hedges and roads. The owner of every conveyance so marked was bound to give it up for Government purposes. Stockdale, who had had enough of the scene, turned in-doors, thoughtful and depressed. Lizzy was already there, having come in at the back, though she had not yet taken off her bonnet. She looked tired, and her mood was not much brighter than his own. They had but little to say to each other; and the minister went away and attempted to read; but at this he could not succeed, and he shook the little bell for tea.

Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the proceedings to remember her state of life. However, almost before the sad lovers had said anything to each other, Martha came in in a steaming
state.

“Oh, there’s such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale! The King’s excisemen can’t get the carts ready nohow at all! They pulled Thomas Ballam’s, and William Rogers’s, and Stephen Sprake’s carts into the road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the carts; and they found there was no linchpins in the arms; and then they tried Samuel Shane’s wagon, and found that the screws were gone from he, and at last they looked at the dairyman’s cart, and he’s got none neither! They have gone now to the blacksmith’s to get some made, but he’s nowhere to be found!”

Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out of the room, followed by Martha Sarah; but before they had got through the passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale recognized Latimer’s voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned
back.

“For God’s sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith up this way? If we could get hold of him, we’d e’en a’most drag him by the hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.”

“He’s an idle man, Mr. Latimer,” said Lizzy, archly. “What do you want him for?”

“Why, there isn’t a horse in the place that has got more than three shoes on, and some have only two. The wagon-wheels be without strakes, and there’s no linchpins to the carts. What with that, and the bother about every set of harness being out of order, we sha’n’t be off before nightfall—upon my soul we sha’n’t. ’Tis a rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that you’ve got about you here; but they’ll play at this game once too often, mark my words they will! There’s not a man in the parish that don’t deserve to be whipped.”

It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little farther up the lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush. When Latimer had done speaking he went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the exciseman’s steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence. He peeped out from the bush at the very moment that Latimer’s glance was on it. There was nothing left for him to do but to come forward with unconcern.

“I’ve been looking for you for the last hour!” said Latimer, with a glare in his eye.

“Sorry to hear that,” said Hardman. “I’ve been out for a stroll, to look for more hid tubs, to deliver ’em up to Gover’ment.”

“Oh yes, Hardman, we know it,” said Latimer, with withering sarcasm. “We know that you’ll deliver ’em up to Gover’ment. We know that all the parish is helping us, and have been all day! Now, you please walk along with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in the King’s name.”

They went down the lane together, and presently there resounded from the smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung. However, the carts and horses were got into some sort of travelling condition, but it was not until after the clock had struck six, when the muddy roads were glistening under the horizontal light of the fading day. The smuggled tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and Latimer, with three of his assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port of Budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they knew to have been sunk somewhere between Ringsworth and Lullstead Cove, and to unearth Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the discovery of the cave.

Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked with the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy expression that told only too plainly the relation which they bore to the trade.

“Well, Lizzy,” said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had nearly died away. “this is a fit finish to your adventure. I am truly thankful that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss only of the liquor. Will you sit down and let me talk to you?”

“By-and-by,” she said. “But I must go out now.”

“Not to that horrid shore again?” he said, blankly.

“No, not there. I am only going to see the end of this day’s business.”

He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as if waiting for him to say something more.

“You don’t offer to come with me,” she added at last. “I suppose that’s because you hate me after all this?”

“Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from such practices? Come with you? Of course I will, if it is only to take care of you. But why will you go out again?”

“Because I cannot rest in-doors. Something is happening, and I must know what. Now, come!” And they went into the dusk together.

When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he soon perceived that they were following the direction of the excisemen and their loads. He had given her his arm, and every now and then she suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt a moment and listen. They had walked rather quickly along the first quarter of a mile, and on the second or third time of standing still she said, “I hear them ahead—don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said; “I hear the wheels. But what of that?”

“I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighborhood.”

“Ah,” said he, a light breaking upon him. “Something desperate is to be attempted—and now I remember, there was not a man about the village when we left.”

“Hark!” she murmured. The noise of the cart-wheels had stopped, and given place to another sort of sound.

“’Tis a scuffle!” said Stockdale. “There’ll be murder! Lizzy, let go my arm; I am going on. On my conscience, I must not stay here and do nothing!”

“There’ll be no murder, and not even a broken head,” she said. “Our men are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.”

“Then there is an attack!” exclaimed Stockdale; “and you knew it was to be. Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?”

“Why should you side with men who take from country traders what they have honestly bought wi’ their own money in France?” said she, firmly.

“They are not honestly bought,” said he.

“They are,” she contradicted. “I and Owlett and the others paid thirty shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal our property, we have a right to steal it back again.”

Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side. “Don’t you interfere, will you, dear Richard?” she said, anxiously, as they drew near. “Don’t let us go any closer; ’tis at Warm’ell Cross where they are seizing ’em. You can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!”

“Let us see first what is going on,” he said. But before they had got much farther the noise of the cart-wheels began again, and Stockdale soon found that they were coming towards him. In another minute the three carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the ditch to let them pass.

Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale perceived to his astonishment, had blackened faces. Among them walked six or eight huge female figures, whom, from their wide strides, Stockdale guessed to be men in disguise. As soon as the party discerned Lizzy and her companion four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed came close to the pair.

“There is no walking up this way for the present,” said one of the gaunt women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face, in the fashion of the time. Stockdale recognized this lady’s voice as Owlett’s.

“Why not?” said Stockdale. “This is the public highway.”

“Now look here, youngster,” said Owlett—“oh, ’tis the Methodist parson!—what, and Mrs. Newberry! Well, you’d better not go up that way, Lizzy. They’ve all run off, and folks have got their own again.”

The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades. Stockdale and Lizzy also turned back. “I wish all this hadn’t been forced upon us,” she said, regretfully. “But if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.”

Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, “I don’t think I can go back like this. Those four poor excisemen may be murdered, for all I know.”

“Murdered!” said Lizzy, impatiently. “We don’t do murder here.”

“Well, I shall go as far as Warm’ell Cross to see,” said Stockdale, decisively; and without wishing her safe home or anything else, the minister turned back. Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the direction of Nether-Moynton.

The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there was often not a passer for hours. Stockdale pursued his way without hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps, and in due time he passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the Warm’ell Cross-road. Before he had reached the point of intersection he heard voices from the thicket.

“Hoi-hoi-hoi! Help! Help!”

The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were unmistakably anxious. Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge to use in case of need. When he got among the trees he shouted, “What’s the matter—where are you?”

“Here!” answered the voices; and pushing through the brambles in that direction, he came near the objects of his search.

“Why don’t you come forward?” said Stockdale.

“We be tied to the trees.”

“Who are you?”

“Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!” said one, plaintively. “Just come and cut these cords, there’s a good man! We were afraid nobody would pass by to-night.”

Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and stood at their ease.

“The rascals!” said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up. “’Tis the same set of fellows. I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.”

“But we can’t swear to ’em,” said another. “Not one of ’em spoke.”

“What are you going to do?” said Stockdale.

“I’d fain go back to Moynton, and have at ’em again!” said Latimer.

“So would we!” said his comrades.

“Fight till we die!” said Latimer.

“We will, we will!” said his men.

“But,” said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation, “we don’t know that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men. And proof is a hard thing.”

“So it is,” said the rest.

“And therefore we won’t do nothing at all,” said Latimer, with complete dispassionateness. “For my part, I’d sooner be them than we. The clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two strapping women tied round ’em. My opinion is, now I have had time to think o’t, that you may serve your gover’ment at too high a price. For these two nights and days I have not had an hour’s rest; and, please God, here’s for home-along.”

The other officers agreed heartily to this course, and thanking Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the cross, taking themselves the western road and Stockdale going back to Nether-Moynton.

During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful kind. As soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlor in which Lizzy usually sat with her mother. He found her there alone. Stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak still on. As he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye.

“Where are they gone?” he then said, listlessly.

“Who?—I don’t know. I have seen nothing of them since. I came straight in here.”

“If your men can manage to get off with those tubs it will be a great profit to you, I suppose?”

“A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett’s, a share to each of the two farmers, and a share divided among the men who helped us.”

“And you still think,” he went on slowly, “that you will not give this business up?”

Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder. “Don’t ask that,” she whispered. “You don’t know what you are asking. I must tell you, though I meant not to do it. What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my mother and myself with.”

He was astonished. “I did not dream of such a thing,” he said. “I would rather have swept the streets, had I been you. What is money compared with a clear conscience?”

“My conscience is clear. I know my mother, but the King I have never seen. His dues are nothing to me. But it is a great deal to me that my mother and I should live.”

“Marry me, and promise to give it up. I will keep your mother.”

“It is good of you,” she said, trembling a little. “Let me think of it by myself. I would rather not answer now.”

She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a solemn face. “I cannot do what you wished!” she said, passionately. “It is too much to ask. My whole life ha’ been passed in this way.” Her words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.

Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly. “Then, Lizzy, we must part. I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my profession a mockery. You know how I love you, and what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.”

“But why should you belong to that profession?” she burst out. “I have got this large house; why can’t you marry me, and live here with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more? I assure you, Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do! We only carry it on in winter; in summer it is never done at all. It stirs up one’s dull life at this time o’ the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly know how to do ’ithout it. At nights, when the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and down the room, and look out o’ window, and then you go out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have hair-breadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.”

“He frightened you a little last night, anyhow; and I would advise you to drop it before it is worse.”

She shook her head. “No, I must go on as I have begun. I was born to it. It is in my blood, and I can’t be cured. Oh, Richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for ’ee!”

Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes. “We ought never to have met, Lizzy,” he said. “It was an ill day for us. I little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this. Well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way. I have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.”

“You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,” she said, “and I don’t see why we are not well matched.”

He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow.

That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days. Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. But Lizzy, who passed her days in-doors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.

Thus uncertainly the week passed on, till one morning Stockdale said to her, “I have had a letter, Lizzy. I must call you that till I am gone.”

“Gone?” said she, blankly.

“Yes,” he said. “I am going from this place. I felt it would be better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened. In fact, I couldn’t stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming weak and faltering in my course. I have just heard of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in about a week, and let me go elsewhere.”

That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise. “You never loved me!” she said, bitterly.

“I might say the same,” he returned; “but I will not. Grant me one favor. Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.”

Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended Stockdale’s chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded, and she promised.

It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it. The intervening days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time. The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them. His hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion. In truth, his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were too much for the young man’s equanimity. He hardly knew how he ended. He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the rest of the congregation, and shortly afterwards followed her home.

She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.

“We will part friends, won’t we?” said Lizzy, with forced gayety, and never alluding to the sermon—a reticence which rather disappointed him.

“We will,” he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.

It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives, and probably the last that they would so share. When it was over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and took her hand. “Lizzy,” he said, “do you say we must part—do you?”

“You do,” she said, solemnly. “I can say no more.” “Nor I,” said he. “If that is your answer, good-by!”

Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned his kiss. “I shall go early,” he said, hurriedly. “I shall not see you again.”

And he did leave early. He fancied, when stepping forth into the gray morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy’s window; but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure. Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.

One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original way. Jogging along in the van that afternoon, he had put questions to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the minister deeply. The result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his former lodging. It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy’s snow-drops were raising their heads in the border under the wall.

Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that he reached the door she was there holding it open; and then, as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself back, saying, with some constraint, “Mr. Stockdale!”

“You knew it was,” said Stockdale, taking her hand. “I wrote to say I should call.”

“Yes, but you did not say when,” she answered.

“I did not. I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these parts.”

“You only came because business brought you near?”

“Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come on purpose to see you. But what’s all this that has happened? I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.”

“I would not,” she said, sadly. “But I had been brought up to that life, and it was second nature to me. However, it is all over now. The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade is going to nothing. We were hunted down like rats.”

“Owlett is quite gone, I hear.”

“Yes, he is in America. We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when they tried to take him. It is a perfect miracle that he lived through it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed. I was shot in the hand. It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting, and it healed after a time. You know how he suffered?”

“No,” said Stockdale. “I only heard that he just escaped with his life.”

“He was shot in the back, but a rib turned the ball. He was badly hurt. We would not let him be took. The men carried him all night across the meads to Bere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. He had gied up his mill for some time, and at last he got to Bristol, and took a passage to America, and he’s settled in Wisconsin.”

“What do you think of smuggling now?” said the minister, gravely.

“I own that we were wrong,” said she. “But I have suffered for it. I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months. But won’t you come in, Mr. Stockdale?”

Stockdale went in; and it is to be presumed that they came to an understanding, for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy’s furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighboring town.

He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a minister’s wife with praiseworthy assiduity. It is said that in after-years she wrote an excellent tract called “Render unto Caesar; or, The Repentant Villagers,” in which her own experience was anonymously used as the introductory story. Stockdale got it printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.

April 1879.

Table of Contents

1. Hardy’s Fictional Universe
a. The Wessex of Thomas Hardy’s Novels & Poems—Map from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New
b. Introductory—Introduction from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New
c. Lulworth Cove—Illustration from Hardy Country Water-Colours by Walter Tyndale
d. Budmouth to Lulstead—Selection from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New

2. Reading I

“A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four” by Thomas Hardy

3. Reading II

“The Thieves Who Couldn’t Stop Sneezing” by Thomas Hardy

4. British Liquor Laws
a. Metropolitan Police Act of 1839—Selections from original legislation pertaining to liquor and drunkenness
b. Licensing Act of 1872—Selection pertaining to liquor and drunkenness from original legislation

Illustration—“Appeal of the Liquor Traffic Interest to the Working Men of England”—Political Cartoon from the March 16, 1872 issue of The Leisure Hour: An Illustrated Magazine for Home Reading

5. Contemporary Media
a. “Drunkenness and Legislation”—Article by Charles Beard from the April, 1872 issue The Theological Review: A Journal of Religious Thought and Life
b. “Habitual Drunkenness: A Vice Crime, or Disease?—Article by John Charles Bucknill from the February, 1877 issue of The Contemporary Review
c. “The Liquor Question”—Article from the March 15, 1879 issue of The Saturday Review

Illustration: “How to Prevent Drunkenness—A Problem”—Political cartoon from the March 27, 1878 issue of Fun

Reading III

“On the Abolition of Malt Liquor in Public Offices” from the September, 1860 issue of the Theatrical Journal

Reading IV

Hungry Johnny from the March, 1862 issue of the religious periodical Quiver

6. Smugglers Smuggling

Illustration: “Cask for Smuggling Cider”—Illustration from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700–1855 By E. Kebel Chatterton

Illustration: “How the Deal Boatmen used to Smuggle Tea Ashore”—Ilustration from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700–1855 By E. Kebel Chatterton

Reading V

An excerpt from Memoirs of a Smuggler compiled from the journal of John Rattenbury

Recipe—“Household Receipt” for Rhubarb Wine from the February 15th, 1871 issue of Bow Bells: A Magazine of General Literature for Family Reading

Hardy’s Fictional Universe

The Wessex of Thomas Hardy’s Novels & Poems
Map from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.

Introductory

Introduction from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by
B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.

Whilst Thackeray was engaged upon his story “The Virginians,” he confided to Motley that “he intended to write a novel of the time of Henry V., which would be his capo d’opera, in which the ancestors of all his present characters, Warringtons, Pendennises, and the rest, should be introduced. It would be a most magnificent performance,” he said, “and nobody would read it.” This idea, which was probably never seriously entertained and certainly never was realized, would, had it been carried out, have been quite in harmony with Thackeray’s plan of linking novel to novel by a use, if not always of identical characters in successive books, at least of members of the same family. The genealogist can easily trace the family tree of the Esmond Warringtons from “Henry Poyns, gent., who married Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis Esmond, and Lord of Castlewood,” through the Georgian Esmonds and Warringtons, down to “the Stunner,” friend and mentor of Pendennis—of Pendennis, who is himself the hero of one novel, the putative author of another, and a prominent figure in a third. Then, again, amongst minor personages, there is Voelcker or Foker the brewer, whose son was pupil to George Warrington, of “ The Virginians,” and whose better known descendant Harry Foker appears in “Pendennis” to frustrate on two occasions the love-affairs of the young gentleman after whom the book is named. Such a plan of welding into one organic whole what would otherwise be the isolated efforts of a novelist’s imagination, imparts without doubt a considerable air of verisimilitude to the series. It was not, of course, the sole property of the greatest of this century’s novelists, but has been employed by other writers, and notably by Zola in his Rougon Macquart memoirs. Mr. Hardy himself has used it to some extent, for the name of William Dewey, that fine old man, of whom his author seems to be particularly fond, occurs in several of the novels, whilst in “The Mayor of Casterbridge” mention is made of James Everdene, the uncle from whom Bathsheba, of “Far from the Madding Crowd,” inherited her farm, and of Boldwood, then “a silent, reserved young man,” as figuring amongst the creditors of the unfortunate Henchard. But Mr. Hardy has his own plan for binding together the links of his chain of tales—a different plan from that of Thackeray, but not less effectual. The former may perhaps be spoken of as the method of genealogical, the latter of scenic continuity. For Mr. Hardy has annexed unto himself a small—a relatively small—stretch of country, and has steadily, in novel after novel, proceeded to people it with a new population, a population which never had any existence outside the dreamland of its creator’s thoughts, but a population made so real to us by his genius, that the pilgrim through Wessex can scarcely bring himself to believe that Bathsheba and Oak, Dick Dewey and his wife Fancy, with all the other characters which pass before the inner eye when one thinks of the Wessex novels, might not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, were it possible to pierce the veil which, it seems, must hide them as one strolls through the little country towns and villages to which they belong. The late William Morris once said that we must no more expect to see the rustics of Hardy than those of Mason and Walker, both being ideal creations without actual existence; yet how much more real are they to many of us than those flesh-and-blood rustics with whom it may have been our fate to have been brought in contact! Whilst peopling these scenes with the creatures of his imagination, Mr. Hardy has achieved a feat which he was probably far from contemplating when he first commenced his series of novels. For incidentally he has resuscitated, one may even say re-created, the old half-forgotten kingdom of Wessex. Before his time, those who used this term at all were thinking of a land made memorable by the ravages of a horde of sea-borne adventurers, who gradually drove before them, in conflict after conflict of those “battles of kites and crows” of which Milton scornfully spoke, the earlier possessors of the country-side. It was the land which later was ruled over by Ine, the law-giver, the founder of Taunton, the land of Alfred, greatest and wisest of early kings. But Wessex as a living, breathing reality, Wessex as a part of nineteenth-century life, sprang first into existence under the touch of the magic wand of its novelist. In the introduction to the last edition of “Far from the Madding Crowd,” its author, reminding himself and his readers that it was in its pages that he first made use of the ancient name of Wessex in the sense in which he has made us understand it, explains the reasons which led him to make choice of that title.

“The series of novels I projected,” he writes, “being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria—a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, labourers who could read and write, and National School children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been heard of, and that the expression, ‘a Wessex peasant,’ or ‘a Wessex custom,’ would theretofore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman Conquest. . . . Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country, has become more and more popular as a practical provincial definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from.”

This feat, the re-creation of an old territory, Mr. Hardy has achieved as much by his marvellous powers of describing natural objects and scenery, as by his skill in delineating rustic character. Indeed, it is chiefly by the former great and excellent gift that the deed has been done. Others can draw character, even rustic character—might not Master Gammon occupy a place on the line in any gallery of British yokels?—but who is Mr. Hardy’s rival in description of nature? Here those who believe in him as one of the great masters in the art of fiction may take their stand and fear the attack of no opponent.

The knowledge of rustic character must not be left out of count, though it is no part of the purpose of this book to dwell upon that aspect of the question, nor must the way in which the characters belong to and form the complement of their environment be forgotten. Can any reader fail to recognize that Marty South and Giles Winterborne would have been impossible elsewhere than in the regions of Little Hintock; or can he ramble over Egdon Heath without being constrained to feel that it has existed from ages long gone by, in order to form a setting for that noble tale, “The Return of the Native”?

It is the opinion of some of those who have written on the Wessex novels that the thin veil which the author has cast over the localities which he describes should not be lifted, and that readers do better to remain in ignorance of the actual scenes, contenting themselves with the descriptions to be found within the pages of the books.

Such is not the experience of the present writer, nor is it that of other lovers of the novels in whose company he has explored the district with which they deal, for he and they have learnt how much a knowledge of the country helps the reader to appreciate and realize the stories. Those who desire to follow in this path will, it is hoped and believed, find in these pages a guide, which will enable them to trace the scenes described in the novels, and visit the houses in which his characters have played their parts in the comedy or tragedy of life.

Mr. Hardy has himself given some account of the method on which his topographical scheme was worked out—an account which may be quoted here before any comment is made upon it. In the introduction to the last edition of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” he tells us, “In response to inquiries from readers interested in landscape, prehistoric antiquities, and especially Old English architecture, it may be said that the description of these backgrounds in this and its companion novels has been drawn from the real. Many features of the first two kinds have been given under their existing names; for instance, the Vale of Blackmore or Blakemore, Hambledown Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecomb Tout, Dogbury Hill, High Stoy, Bubb-Down Hill, The Devil’s Kitchen, Cross-in-Hand, Long-Ash Lane, Benvill Lane, Giant’s Hill, Crimmercrock Lane, and Stonehenge. The rivers Froom or Frome and Stour are, of course, well known as such. And in planning the stories, the idea was that large towns and points tending to mark the outline of Wessex, such as Bath, Plymouth, The Start, Portland Bill, Southampton, etc., should be named outright. The scheme was not greatly elaborated, but, whatever its value, the names remain still. In respect of places described under fictitious or ancient names—for reasons that seemed good at the time of writing—discerning persons have affirmed in print that they clearly recognize the originals;” and then follows a list, which need not be reproduced here, terminating with the observation, “I shall not be the one to contradict them: I accept their statements as at least an indication of their real and kindly interest in the scenes.”

In visiting the localities associated with the novels, it must ever be borne in mind that Mr. Hardy is a story-writer and not a guide-book maker, an artist and not a photographer. Il prend son bien ou il le trouve; and if he fails to find, in the village in which the scene of his story is laid, some adequate house for its centrepiece, he does not scruple to import one which falls in with his idea and the needs of the story from a greater or less distance. Thus the house from which the description of Bathsheba’s farm is taken is not to be found in Puddletown, the Weatherbury of “ Far from the Madding Crowd,” but at a spot some two miles distant from that place; and Great Hintock House, Mrs. Charmond’s residence, is not in the country of “The Woodlanders,” but in quite another part of the county. Again, some places are of the nature of composite pictures, such as the Tower in “Two on a Tower,” which has features borrowed, as Mr. Hardy himself has pointed out in the introduction to the last edition of that novel, from two of the several obelisks and towers which are to be found in the county of Dorset. But in every case—or in almost every case—the houses described are real edifices, whether they occupy the sites allotted to them in the novels or not, and are drawn for us, as a general rule, with that architectural accuracy which Mr. Hardy’s early studies in that profession have enabled him to impart to them. With regard to natural scenery the case is different. Here the descriptions paint for us the scenes as they are, and as we should wish to describe them, when we see them, were we endowed with the pen of a master. Instances of this may be found in the pictures of the Vale of Blackmore, the valley of the Frome as seen by Tess on her way to Talbothays, and the various accounts of Egdon Heath.

In certain cases Mr. Hardy has given an easy clue to the place which he had in his mind when writing, by transferring the name of the locality to his hero or some other character in the book. Thus Fawley, Jude’s surname, is the real name of the village which figures in the book as Marygreen; Melbury, the timber-merchant of “The Woodlanders,” takes his name from the real appellation of one of the Hintocks; and Phillotson’s friend and fellow-schoolmaster, Gillingham, is called after the place in which he taught, the Leddenton of the tale.

True to his devotion to Wessex, the names of many, perhaps of most, of Mr. Hardy’s characters—to diverge for a moment into a bypath—are taken from the names of villages in the district, or will be found on tombstones, over shop-doors, or in pedigrees belonging to the same region. Thus the Chickerells are villages near Weymouth; the name of Tullidge, that hero who “fout at Valencien,” and showed his ruined arm to Maidy Anne in “The Trumpet-Major,” is on a tombstone at Abbotsbury; Derriman presides over a shop at Cerne Abbas; and Keyte finds a place in the pedigree of those descended from the old Jerseyman, Thomas Hardy, of whose stock are the novelist and that other celebrated Thomas Hardy, who sailed the ship which carried Nelson to death and glory at Trafalgar.

The visitor to Dorsetshire, who knows his Wessex novels, will constantly be struck with the small touches betraying the intimate knowledge which its novelist possesses of his country. Many of these will be alluded to in subsequent pages, and one only need here be mentioned as an example. It will be remembered that Tess, on her journey to Marlott, after her betrayal by Stoke-D’Urberville, met with a man whose simple method of evangelization was to paint texts, mostly of a denunciatory character, on the top bars of gates and stiles and other such places. Many such inscriptions may be found in the country around Dorchester, though the present writer, with a fair knowledge of rural England, has never come across them elsewhere. Thus, on a stile near Stinsford, as Mr. New shows in his picture, is inscribed, “Speak Evil of No Man;” and on a gate near Maiden Newton—one of several inscriptions in that part of the world—is, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.”

Lulworth Cove
Illustration from Hardy Country Water-Colours by Walter Tyndale.

Budmouth to Lulstead

Selection from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by
B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.

In this excursion the road leads east instead of west, and crossing that gentle slope which is called Greenhill, takes us past the malodorous marsh called Lodmore and under Jordan Hill, once the site of a Roman watering-place, where many relics of imperial times have been turned up by the plough and spade. A couple of miles further, the road crosses a stream, and looking to our left there is to be seen a little one-arched bridge of exceedingly rude construction. This may date back to Roman times, though some authorities have been inclined to assign it to the Norman period. It may possibly have been the bridge without a parapet under which Anne Garland and Matilda Johnson hid Bob Loveday from the press-gang, for the houses near which it stands form part of the village of Sutton Poyntz, the Overcombe of “The Trumpet-Major.” The village may be approached by the footpath near this bridge, or by taking the next turn on the left beyond it. Whichever way is chosen, the visitor will eventually reach a flour-mill driven by the waters of the little stream running through the valley in which the village nestles. The Hardyite, who is really familiar with the novels, will at first experience a sense of disappointment, for in no way can what he sees be made to fit in with the details given in the story. His mind will, however, be relieved when he learns that the mill of the story has been pulled down, that which now occupies its site being a modern erection. Modern, too, is the tall chimney of the waterworks, which ensure to Weymouth a constant and excellent supply of that fluid, to the serious detriment of the scene, and the great attenuation of the stream which drives the mill. If one passes the mill and halts upon the tiny bridge which spans the stream a little higher up the road, and then endeavours to eliminate from the prospect the aforesaid chimney and a new and obtrusive inn, too often noisy with hordes of trippers from the neighbouring watering-place, a good idea can be obtained of what the village and the mill-pond looked like on the day when John Loveday and the troopers descended from the hill to water their horses in the pool.

This is the prospect which Anne surveyed from her chamber window. “Immediately before her was the large, smooth mill-pond, over-full, and intruding into the hedge and into the road. The water, with its flowing leaves and spots of froth, was stealing away, like Time, under the dark arch, to tumble over the great slimy wheel within. On the other side of the mill-pond was an open place called the Cross, because it was three-quarters of one, two lanes and a cattle-drive meeting there. It was the general rendezvous and arena of the surrounding village. Behind this a steep slope rose high into the sky, merging in a wide and open down, now littered with sheep newly shorn. The upland by its height completely sheltered the mill and village from north winds, making summers of springs, reducing winters to autumn temperatures, and permitting myrtles to flourish in the open air.” John Loveday pointed out to Anne one day that the soldiers were “cutting out a huge picture of the king on horseback in the earth of the hill. The king’s head is to be as big as our mill-pond, and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre.” Those who wish to climb up and closely examine this work of art had better do so from here. Those who are content with a distant view of it can obtain it from the long hill which has to be climbed after the main road has been regained. This hill climbed and the descent of its opposite side accomplished, the village of Osmington, where there is nothing to detain us, is reached.

The next village is Poxwell, whose name is a corruption of Puck’s well. It is the Oxwell of “The Trumpet-Major,” and contains the fine Jacobean manor-house of the Hennings at which old Derriman lived—though, for the purposes of his story, Mr. Hardy has placed it considerably nearer to Overcombe than it really is. Like Waterston, it was once the residence of one of the smaller families of the country, and, like it, has descended in the social scale to the status of a farmhouse. It closely corresponds with the description given in the story, though it is in a better state of repair than in the days of the penurious Derriman. The eye will at once be caught by the arched gateway which screens the main front, and the porter’s lodge above it, reached by a spiral staircase. The visitor should, after having examined the front of this fine old house, walk round to the east side, with its row of gable-ends, and investigate, if he is allowed, the yard at the back, after which he will come to the conclusion that few modern houses can compete in beauty with this ancient residence.

A mile or so beyond Poxwell the road meets that from Dorchester at Warmwell Cross, and here we are on ground which we have already traversed. We pass the road which turns down to Owermoigne, and take the turn by the Red Lion leading to Lulworth, through Winfrith Newburgh. Beyond West Lulworth is Lulworth Cove, the goal of our journey. This is the “small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs” in which Troy bathed after his night in Puddletown church porch, and at its mouth can be seen “the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean.” It is the Lulstead of the novels, where the dead bodies of Stephen Hardcome and his cousin’s wife were washed up, and where Cytherea Graye met Edward Springrove for the first time. It is also one of the places where Mrs. Lizzie Newberry’s associates were in the habit of running their cargoes of smuggled spirit, and seems, indeed, by nature to have been intended for clandestine operations of one sort or another. During the time when the Catholic religion was proscribed in this country, and those who professed it were subjected to the rigours of a harsh penal code, the introduction of priests into England was one of the things most strictly forbidden. Yet many a seminary priest did find his way into the country, and a large number of these were landed, under cover of night, in this secluded basin, and hurried off to the neighbouring Catholic house of Lulworth Castle, the seat of the Weld family. Finally, this is “the three-quarter round Cove, screened from every mortal eye,” where old Solomon Selby, when a young man, saw Bonaparte exploring the land in search of a suitable place for the landing of his fleet of flat-bottomed boats, as narrated in the “Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four.” It is difficult, until one examines the broadsheets and other ephemeral literature of the day, to realize how great was the terror of a French descent upon these shores. Some idea we gain of it from the scenes in “The Trumpet-Major;” but, then, Mr. Hardy has had the advantage of hearing accounts of that time from the lips of actual eye-witnesses, who are now laid to rest. In the novel just mentioned there is a transcription of a Proclamation to the people of England, telling them how they should prepare for the expected invasion. An original copy of this Proclamation may be seen in the Museum at Salisbury, and by it hangs another document of the same kind, which is less well known. It throws so much light upon the state of feeling at the period, that it will not be loss of space to quote it here in extenso.

“Fellow-Citizens,—Bonaparte threatens to invade us. He promises to enrich his soldiers with our property: To glut their lust with our Wives and Daughters: To incite his Hell-hounds to execute his vengeance he has sworn to permit everything. Shall we merit, by our cowardice, the titles of Sordid Shopkeepers, Cowardly Scum and Dastardly Wretches, which in every proclamation he gives us: No; we will loudly give him the lie: let us make ourselves ready to shut our Shops and march to give him the reception his malicious calumnies deserve: let every brave young fellow instantly join the Army or Navy; and those among us, who, from being married or so occupied in business, cannot, let us join some Volunteer Corps, where we may learn the use of arms and yet attend our business; let us encourage recruiting in our neighbourhood, and loudly silence the tongues of those whose Ignorance or Defection (if any such there be) lead them to doubt of the attempt to invade, or inveigh against the measures taken to resist it. By doing this, and feeling confidence in ourselves, we shall probably prevent the attempt, or, if favoured by a dark night, the enemy should reach our shores, our Unanimity and Strength will paralize his efforts and render him an easy prey to our brave Army. Let us in our families and neighbourhood, thus contribute to so desirable an event, and the blood-stained banners of the vaunted Conquerors of Europe will soon be hung up in our Churches, the humble trophies of our brave Army: an Army ever victorious when not doubled in numbers; and the only Army who can stand the charge of Bayonets.What Army ever stood THEIRS !!!—let the welfare of our country animate all—and ‘come the world in arms against us, we’ll shock ‘em.’

A Shopkeeper.

Thee Haughty Tyrants ne’er shall tame,

All their attempts to pull thee down

Shall but arouse thy gen’rous flame

To light their woe and thy renown.—R.B.

Rule Brittannia.

Printed for J. Ginger,169, Piccadilly.

Price Sixpence per Dozen for Distribution.

W. Marchant, Printer, 3, Greville St., Holborn.”

One more instance of the careful study of the literature of the time which Mr. Hardy has made, and of the vivid picture which he has thus been enabled to throw upon the canvas of his tale, may be found in the data on which are based Corporal Tullidge’s instructions for firing his beacon.

“‘Did you get your signal to fire it from the east?’ said the miller hastily.

“‘No; from Abbotsea Beach.’

“‘But you are not to go by a coast signal!’

“‘Chok’ it all, wasn’t the Lord-Lieutenant’s direction, whenever you see Rainbarrow’s Beacon burn to the nor’-east’ard, or Haggardon to the nor’-west’ard, or the actual presence of the enemy on the shore?’”

Now, in Bankes’ “Story of Corfe Castle,” will be found a copy of a letter sent by the Earl of Dorchester, the Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Dorset, to Henry Bankes, Esq., then member of Parliament for Corfe Castle, which, with a substitution of names, contains very much the same directions which Tullidge recited.

Private.

Milton Abbey, Blandford,

October 12, 1803.

“My Dear Bankes,— The spring-tides take place next Saturday, and the information to Government is so precise that the Isle of Wight is the enemy’s object, that it is not improbable they may avail themselves of this ensuing spring-tide; if they do not, their attempt must be postponed another month. Under these circumstances I would not fail of giving you this notice in confidence, that you will keep it to yourself, and only so far prepare Mrs. Bankes and your family as to be able to remove them upon the first intelligence of the enemy’s being off the coast. I have to beg of you that you will give directions for an assemblage of fagots, furze, and other fuel, also of straw to be stacked and piled on the summit of Badbury Rings, so as the whole may take fire instantly, and the fire be maintained for two hours. The general direction, if you will take the trouble of ordering the execution, is that this beacon may be fired whenever the beacon off St. Catherine’s (Christ Church) is fired to the eastward, or whenever the beacons on Lytchet Heath or Woodbury Hill are fired to the westward, but not from the demonstration of any coast signal.

I am, my dear Bankes,

Yours most sincerely,

Dorchester.”

One word more to the visitor to Lulworth. It is a good plan to time one’s visit to that spot so as to catch the steamer from Weymouth, which visits that place on certain days during the summer, on its return trip. Thus the fatigue of the journey will be avoided, and an opportunity will be afforded for seeing the coast scenery between the two places. The rocks near Lulworth, Durdle Door, that strange natural archway, and Ringstead Cove, where the smuggling parishioners of the Distracted Preacher ran their tubs, will all be seen on this short voyage.

Reading I

“A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four”
by Thomas Hardy

The widely discussed possibility of an invasion of England through a Channel tunnel has more than once recalled old Solomon Selby’s story to my mind.

The occasion on which I numbered myself among his audience was one evening when he was sitting in the yawning chimney-corner of the inn-kitchen, with some others who had gathered there, and I entered for shelter from the rain. Withdrawing the stem of his pipe from the dental notch in which it habitually rested, he leaned back in the recess behind him and smiled into the fire. The smile was neither mirthful nor sad, not precisely humorous nor altogether thoughtful. We who knew him recognized it in a moment: it was his narrative smile. Breaking off our few desultory remarks we drew up closer, and he thus began:

“My father, as you mid know, was a shepherd all his life, and lived out by the Cove four miles yonder, where I was born and lived likewise, till I moved here shortly afore I was married. The cottage that first knew me stood on the top of the down, near the sea; there was no house within a mile and a half of it; it was built o’ purpose for the farm-shepherd, and had no other use. They tell me that it is now pulled down, but that you can see where it stood by the mounds of earth and a few broken bricks that are still lying about. It was a bleak and dreary place in winter-time, but in summer it was well enough, though the garden never came to much, because we could not get up a good shelter for the vegetables and currant bushes; and where there is much wind they don’t thrive.

“Of all the years of my growing up the ones that bide clearest in my mind were eighteen hundred and three, four, and five. This was for two reasons: I had just then grown to an age when a child’s eyes and ears take in and note down everything about him, and there was more at that date to bear in mind than there ever has been since with me. It was, as I need hardly tell ye, the time after the first peace, when Bonaparte was scheming his descent upon England. He had crossed the great Alp mountains, fought in Egypt, drubbed the Turks, the Austrians, and the Proossians, and now thought he’d have a slap at us. On the other side of the Channel, scarce out of sight and hail of a man standing on our English shore, the French army of a hundred and sixty thousand men and fifteen thousand horses had been brought together from all parts, and were drilling every day. Bonaparte had been three years a-making his preparations; and to ferry these soldiers and cannon and horses across he had contrived a couple of thousand flat-bottomed boats. These boats were small things, but wonderfully built. A good few of ‘em were so made as to have a little stable on board each for the two horses that were to haul the cannon carried at the stern. To get in order all these, and other things required, he had assembled there five or six thousand fellows that worked at trades—carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, and what not. O ‘twas a curious time!

“Every morning Neighbour Boney would muster his multitude of soldiers on the beach, draw ‘em up in line, practise ‘em in the manoeuvre of embarking, horses and all, till they could do it without a single hitch. My father drove a flock of ewes up into Sussex that year, and as he went along the drover’s track over the high downs thereabout he could see this drilling actually going on—the accoutrements of the rank and file glittering in the sun like silver. It was thought and always said by my uncle Job, sergeant of foot (who used to know all about these matters), that Bonaparte meant to cross with oars on a calm night. The grand query with us was, Where would my gentleman land? Many of the common people thought it would be at Dover; others, who knew how unlikely it was that any skilful general would make a business of landing just where he was expected, said he’d go either east into the River Thames, or west’ard to some convenient place, most likely one of the little bays inside the Isle of Portland, between the Beal and St. Alban’s Head—and for choice the three-quarter-round Cove, screened from every mortal eye, that seemed made o’ purpose, out by where we lived, and which I’ve climmed up with two tubs of brandy across my shoulders on scores o’ dark nights in my younger days. Some had heard that a part o’ the French fleet would sail right round Scotland, and come up the Channel to a suitable haven. However, there was much doubt upon the matter; and no wonder, for after-years proved that Bonaparte himself could hardly make up his mind upon that great and very particular point, where to land. His uncertainty came about in this wise, that he could get no news as to where and how our troops lay in waiting, and that his knowledge of possible places where flat-bottomed boats might be quietly run ashore, and the men they brought marshalled in order, was dim to the last degree. Being flat-bottomed, they didn’t require a harbour for unshipping their cargo of men, but a good shelving beach away from sight, and with a fair open road toward London. How the question posed that great Corsican tyrant (as we used to call him), what pains he took to settle it, and, above all, what a risk he ran on one particular night in trying to do so, were known only to one man here and there; and certainly to no maker of newspapers or printer of books, or my account o’t would not have had so many heads shaken over it as it has by gentry who only believe what they see in printed lines.

“The flocks my father had charge of fed all about the downs near our house, overlooking the sea and shore each way for miles. In winter and early spring father was up a deal at nights, watching and tending the lambing. Often he’d go to bed early, and turn out at twelve or one; and on the other hand, he’d sometimes stay up till twelve or one, and then turn in to bed. As soon as I was old enough I used to help him, mostly in the way of keeping an eye upon the ewes while he was gone home to rest. This is what I was doing in a particular month in either the year four or five—I can’t certainly fix which, but it was long before I was took away from the sheepkeeping to be bound prentice to a trade. Every night at that time I was at the fold, about half a mile, or it may be a little more, from our cottage, and no living thing at all with me but the ewes and young lambs. Afeard? No; I was never afeard of being alone at these times; for I had been reared in such an out-step place that the lack o’ human beings at night made me less fearful than the sight of ‘em. Directly I saw a man’s shape after dark in a lonely place I was frightened out of my senses.

“One day in that month we were surprised by a visit from my uncle Job, the sergeant in the Sixty-first foot, then in camp on the downs above King George’s watering-place, several miles to the west yonder. Uncle Job dropped in about dusk, and went up with my father to the fold for an hour or two. Then he came home, had a drop to drink from the tub of sperrits that the smugglers kept us in for housing their liquor when they’d made a run, and for burning ‘em off when there was danger. After that he stretched himself out on the settle to sleep. I went to bed: at one o’clock father came home, and waking me to go and take his place, according to custom, went to bed himself. On my way out of the house I passed Uncle Job on the settle. He opened his eyes, and upon my telling him where I was going he said it was a shame that such a youngster as I should go up there all alone; and when he had fastened up his stock and waist-belt he set off along with me, taking a drop from the sperrit-tub in a little flat bottle that stood in the corner-cupboard.

“By and by we drew up to the fold, saw that all was right, and then, to keep ourselves warm, curled up in a heap of straw that lay inside the thatched hurdles we had set up to break the stroke of the wind when there was any. To-night, however, there was none. It was one of those very still nights when, if you stand on the high hills anywhere within two or three miles of the sea, you can hear the rise and fall of the tide along the shore, coming and going every few moments like a sort of great snore of the sleeping world. Over the lower ground there was a bit of a mist, but on the hill where we lay the air was clear, and the moon, then in her last quarter, flung a fairly good light on the grass and scattered straw.

“While we lay there Uncle Job amused me by telling me strange stories of the wars he had served in and the wownds he had got. He had already fought the French in the Low Countries, and hoped to fight ‘em again. His stories lasted so long that at last I was hardly sure that I was not a soldier myself, and had seen such service as he told of. The wonders of his tales quite bewildered my mind, till I fell asleep and dreamed of battle, smoke, and flying soldiers, all of a kind with the doings he had been bringing up to me.

“How long my nap lasted I am not prepared to say. But some faint sounds over and above the rustle of the ewes in the straw, the bleat of the lambs, and the tinkle of the sheep-bell brought me to my waking senses. Uncle Job was still beside me; but he too had fallen asleep. I looked out from the straw, and saw what it was that had aroused me. Two men, in boat-cloaks, cocked hats, and swords, stood by the hurdles about twenty yards off.

“I turned my ear thitherward to catch what they were saying, but though I heard every word o’t, not one did I understand. They spoke in a tongue that was not ours—in French, as I afterward found. But if I could not gain the meaning of a word, I was shrewd boy enough to find out a deal of the talkers’ business. By the light o’ the moon I could see that one of ‘em carried a roll of paper in his hand, while every moment he spoke quick to his comrade, and pointed right and left with the other hand to spots along the shore. There was no doubt that he was explaining to the second gentleman the shapes and features of the coast. What happened soon after made this still clearer to me.

“All this time I had not waked Uncle Job, but now I began to be afeared that they might light upon us, because uncle breathed so heavily through’s nose. I put my mouth to his ear and whispered, ‘Uncle Job.’

“‘What is it, my boy?’ he said, just as if he hadn’t been asleep at all.

“‘Hush!’ says I. ‘Two French generals—’

“‘French?’ says he.

“‘Yes,’ says I. ‘Come to see where to land their army!’

“I pointed ‘em out; but I could say no more, for the pair were coming at that moment much nearer to where we lay. As soon as they got as near as eight or ten yards, the officer with a roll in his hand stooped down to a slanting hurdle, unfastened his roll upon it, and spread it out. Then suddenly he sprung a dark lantern open on the paper, and showed it to be a map.

“‘What be they looking at?’ I whispered to Uncle Job.

“‘A chart of the Channel,’ says the sergeant (knowing about such things).

“The other French officer now stooped likewise, and over the map they had a long consultation, as they pointed here and there on the paper, and then hither and thither at places along the shore beneath us. I noticed that the manner of one officer was very respectful toward the other, who seemed much his superior, the second in rank calling him by a sort of title that I did not know the sense of. The head one, on the other hand, was quite familiar with his friend, and more than once clapped him on the shoulder.

“Uncle Job had watched as well as I, but though the map had been in the lantern-light, their faces had always been in shade. But when they rose from stooping over the chart the light flashed upward, and fell smart upon one of ‘em’s features. No sooner had this happened than Uncle Job gasped, and sank down as if he’d been in a fit.

“‘What is it—what is it, Uncle Job?’ said I.

“‘O good God!’ says he, under the straw.

“‘What?’ says I.

“‘Boney!’ he groaned out.

“‘Who?’ says I.

“‘Bonaparty,” he said. ‘The Corsican ogre. O that I had got but my new-flinted firelock, that there man should die! But I haven’t got my new-flinted firelock, and that there man must live. So lie low, as you value your life!’

“I did lie low, as you mid suppose. But I couldn’t help peeping. And then I too, lad as I was, knew that it was the face of Bonaparte. Not know Boney? I should think I did know Boney. I should have known him by half the light o’ that lantern. If I had seen a picture of his features once, I had seen it a hundred times. There was his bullet head, his short neck, his round yaller cheeks and chin, his gloomy face, and his great glowing eyes. He took off his hat to blow himself a bit, and there was the forelock in the middle of his forehead, as in all the draughts of him. In moving, his cloak fell a little open, and I could see for a moment his white-fronted jacket and one of his epaulets.

“But none of this lasted long. In a minute he and his general had rolled up the map, shut the lantern, and turned to go down toward the shore.

“Then Uncle Job came to himself a bit. ‘Slipped across in the night-time to see how to put his men ashore,’ he said. ‘The like o’ that man’s coolness eyes will never again see! Nephew, I must act in this, and immediate, or England’s lost!’

“When they were over the brow, we crope out, and went some little way to look after them. Half-way down they were joined by two others, and six or seven minutes brought them to the shore. Then, from behind a rock, a boat came out into the weak moonlight of the Cove, and they jumped in; it put off instantly, and vanished in a few minutes between the two rocks that stand at the mouth of the Cove as we all know. We climmed back to where we had been before, and I could see, a little way out, a larger vessel, though still not very large. The little boat drew up alongside, was made fast at the stern as I suppose, for the largest sailed away, and we saw no more.

“My uncle Job told his officers as soon as he got back to camp; but what they thought of it I never heard—neither did he. Boney’s army never came, and a good job for me; for the Cove below my father’s house was where he meant to land, as this secret visit showed. We coast-folk should have been cut down one and all, and I should not have sat here to tell this tale.”

We who listened to old Selby that night have been familiar with his simple grave-stone for these ten years past. Thanks to the incredulity of the age his tale has been seldom repeated. But if anything short of the direct testimony of his own eyes could persuade an auditor that Bonaparte had examined these shores for himself with a view to a practicable landing-place, it would have been Solomon Selby’s manner of narrating the adventure which befell him on the down.

Christmas 1882.

Reading II

“The Thieves Who Couldn’t Stop Sneezing”
by Thomas Hardy

Many years ago, when oak-trees now past their prime were about as large as elderly gentlemen’s walking-sticks, there lived in Wessex a yeoman’s son, whose name was Hubert. He was about fourteen years of age, and was as remarkable for his candour and lightness of heart as for his physical courage, of which, indeed, he was a little vain.

One cold Christmas Eve his father, having no other help at hand, sent him on an important errand to a small town several miles from home. He travelled on horseback, and was detained by the business till a late hour of the evening. At last, however, it was completed; he returned to the inn, the horse was saddled, and he started on his way. His journey homeward lay through the Vale of Blackmore, a fertile but somewhat lonely district, with heavy clay roads and crooked lanes. In those days, too, a great part of it was thickly wooded.

It must have been about nine o’clock when, riding along amid the overhanging trees upon his stout-legged cob Jerry, and singing a Christmas carol, to be in harmony with the season, Hubert fancied that he heard a noise among the boughs. This recalled to his mind that the spot he was traversing bore an evil name. Men had been waylaid there. He looked at Jerry, and wished he had been of any other colour than light grey; for on this account the docile animal’s form was visible even here in the dense shade. “What do I care?” he said aloud, after a few minutes of reflection. “Jerry’s legs are too nimble to allow any highwayman to come near me.”

“Ha! ha! indeed,” was said in a deep voice; and the next moment a man darted from the thicket on his right hand, another man from the thicket on his left hand, and another from a tree-trunk a few yards ahead. Hubert’s bridle was seized, he was pulled from his horse, and although he struck out with all his might, as a brave boy would naturally do, he was overpowered. His arms were tied behind him, his legs bound tightly together, and he was thrown into the ditch. The robbers, whose faces he could now dimly perceive to be artificially blackened, at once departed, leading off the horse.

As soon as Hubert had a little recovered himself, he found that by great exertion he was able to extricate his legs from the cord; but, in spite of every endeavour, his arms remained bound as fast as before. All, therefore, that he could do was to rise to his feet and proceed on his way with his arms behind him, and trust to chance for getting them unfastened. He knew that it would be impossible to reach home on foot that night, and in such a condition; but he walked on. Owing to the confusion which this attack caused in his brain, he lost his way, and would have been inclined to lie down and rest till morning among the dead leaves had he not known the danger of sleeping without wrappers in a frost so severe. So he wandered further onwards, his arms wrung and numbed by the cord which pinioned him, and his heart aching for the loss of poor Jerry, who never had been known to kick, or bite, or show a single vicious habit. He was not a little glad when he discerned through the trees a distant light. Towards this he made his way, and presently found himself in front of a large mansion with flanking wings, gables, and towers, the battlements and chimneys showing their shapes against the stars.

All was silent; but the door stood wide open, it being from this door that the light shone which had attracted him. On entering he found himself in a vast apartment arranged as a dining-hall, and brilliantly illuminated. The walls were covered with a great deal of dark wainscoting, formed into moulded panels, carvings, closet-doors, and the usual fittings of a house of that kind. But what drew his attention most was the large table in the midst of the hall, upon which was spread a sumptuous supper, as yet untouched. Chairs were placed around, and it appeared as if something had occurred to interrupt the meal just at the time when all were ready to begin.

Even had Hubert been so inclined, he could not have eaten in his helpless state, unless by dipping his mouth into the dishes, like a pig or cow. He wished first to obtain assistance; and was about to penetrate further into the house for that purpose when he heard hasty footsteps in the porch and the words, “Be quick!” uttered in the deep voice which had reached him when he was dragged from the horse. There was only just time for him to dart under the table before three men entered the dining-hall. Peeping from beneath the hanging edges of the tablecloth, he perceived that their faces, too, were blackened, which at once removed any remaining doubts he may have felt that these were the same thieves.

“Now, then,” said the first—the man with the deep voice—“let us hide ourselves. They will all be back again in a minute. That was a good trick to get them out of the house—eh?”

“Yes. You well imitated the cries of a man in distress,” said the second.

“Excellently,” said the third.

“But they will soon find out that it was a false alarm. Come, where shall we hide? It must be some place we can stay in for two or three hours, till all are in bed and asleep. Ah! I have it. Come this way! I have learnt that the further closet is not opened once in a twelvemonth; it will serve our purpose exactly.”

The speaker advanced into a corridor which led from the hall. Creeping a little farther forward, Hubert could discern that the closet stood at the end, facing the dining-hall. The thieves entered it, and closed the door. Hardly breathing, Hubert glided forward, to learn a little more of their intention, if possible; and, coming close, he could hear the robbers whispering about the different rooms where the jewels, plate, and other valuables of the house were kept, which they plainly meant to steal.

They had not been long in hiding when a gay chattering of ladies and gentlemen was audible on the terrace without. Hubert felt that it would not do to be caught prowling about the house, unless he wished to be taken for a robber himself; and he slipped softly back to the hall, out at the door, and stood in a dark corner of the porch, where he could see everything without being himself seen. In a moment or two a whole troop of personages came gliding past him into the house. There were an elderly gentleman and lady, eight or nine young ladies, as many young men, besides half-a-dozen men-servants and maids. The mansion had apparently been quite emptied of its occupants.

“Now, children and young people, we will resume our meal,” said the old gentleman. “What the noise could have been I cannot understand. I never felt so certain in my life that there was a person being murdered outside my door.”

Then the ladies began saying how frightened they had been, and how they had expected an adventure, and how it had ended in nothing after all.

“Wait a while,” said Hubert to himself. “You’ll have adventure enough by-and-by, ladies.”

It appeared that the young men and women were married sons and daughters of the old couple, who had come that day to spend Christmas with their parents.

The door was then closed, Hubert being left outside in the porch.

He thought this a proper moment for asking their assistance; and, since he was unable to knock with his hands, began boldly to kick the door.

“Hullo! What disturbance are you making here?” said a footman who opened it; and, seizing Hubert by the shoulder, he pulled him into the dining-hall. “Here’s a strange boy I have found making a noise in the porch, Sir Simon.”

Everybody turned.

“Bring him forward,” said Sir Simon, the old gentleman before mentioned. “What were you doing there, my boy?”

“Why, his arms are tied!” said one of the ladies.

“Poor fellow!” said another.

Hubert at once began to explain that he had been waylaid on his journey home, robbed of his horse, and mercilessly left in this condition by the thieves.

“Only to think of it!” exclaimed Sir Simon.

“That’s a likely story,” said one of the gentleman-guests, incredulously.

“Doubtful, hey?” asked Sir Simon.

“Perhaps he’s a robber himself,” suggested a lady.

“There is a curiously wild wicked look about him, certainly, now that I examine him closely,” said the old mother.

Hubert blushed with shame; and, instead of continuing his story, and relating that robbers were concealed in the house, he doggedly held his tongue, and half resolved to let them find out their danger for themselves.

“Well, untie him,” said Sir Simon. “Come, since it is Christmas Eve, we’ll treat him well. Here, my lad; sit down in that empty seat at the bottom of the table, and make as good a meal as you can. When you have had your fill we will listen to more particulars of your story.”

The feast then proceeded; and Hubert, now at liberty, was not at all sorry to join in. The more they eat and drank the merrier did the company become; the wine flowed freely, the logs flared up the chimney, the ladies laughed at the gentlemen’s stories; in short, all went as noisily and as happily as a Christmas gathering in old times possibly could do.

Hubert, in spite of his hurt feelings at their doubts of his honesty, could not help being warmed both in mind and in body by the good cheer, the scene, and the example of hilarity set by his neighbours. At last he laughed as heartily at their stories and repartees as the old Baronet, Sir Simon, himself. When the meal was almost over one of the sons, who had drunk a little too much wine, after the manner of men in that century, said to Hubert, “Well, my boy, how are you? Can you take a pinch of snuff?” He held out one of the snuff-boxes which were then becoming common among young and old throughout the country.

“Thank you,” said Hubert, accepting a pinch.

“Tell the ladies who you are, what you are made of, and what you can do,” the young man continued, slapping Hubert upon the shoulder.

“Certainly,” said our hero, drawing himself up, and thinking it best to put a bold face on the matter. “I am a travelling magician.”

“Indeed!”

“What shall we hear next?”

“Can you call up spirits from the vasty deep, young wizard?”

“I can conjure up a tempest in a cupboard,” Hubert replied.

“Ha—ha!” said the old Baronet, pleasantly rubbing his hands. “We must see this performance. Girls, don’t go away: here’s something to be seen.”

“Not dangerous, I hope?” said the old lady.

Hubert rose from the table. “Hand me your snuff-box, please,” he said to the young man who had made free with him. “And now,” he continued, “without the least noise, follow me. If any of you speak it will break the spell.”

They promised obedience. He entered the corridor, and, taking off his shoes, went on tiptoe to the closet door, the guests advancing in a silent group at a little distance behind him. Hubert next placed a stool in front of the door, and, by standing upon it, was tall enough to reach to the top. He then, just as noiselessly, poured all the snuff from the box along the upper edge of the door, and, with a few short puffs of breath, blew the snuff through the chink into the interior of the closet. He held up his finger to the assembly, that they might be silent.

“Dear me, what’s that?” said the old lady, after a minute or two had elapsed.

A suppressed sneeze had come from inside the closet.

Hubert held up his finger again.

“How very singular,” whispered Sir Simon. “This is most interesting.”

Hubert took advantage of the moment to gently slide the bolt of the closet door into its place. “More snuff,” he said, calmly.

“More snuff,” said Sir Simon. Two or three gentlemen passed their boxes, and the contents were blown in at the top of the closet. Another sneeze, not quite so well suppressed as the first, was heard: then another, which seemed to say that it would not be suppressed under any circumstances whatever at length there arose a perfect storm of sneezes.

“Excellent, excellent for one so young!” said Sir Simon. “I am much interested in this trick of throwing the voice—called, I believe, ventriloquism.”

“More snuff,” said Hubert

“More snuff,” said Sir Simon. Sir Simon’s man brought a large jar of the best scented Scotch.

Hubert once more charged the upper chink of the closet, and blew the snuff into the interior, as before. Again he charged, and again, emptying the whole contents of the jar. The tumult of sneezes became really extraordinary to listen to—there was no cessation. It was like wind, rain, and sea battling in a hurricane.

“I believe there are men inside, and that it is no trick at all!” exclaimed Sir Simon, the truth flashing on him.

“There are,” said Hubert. “They are come to rob the house; and they are the same who stole my horse.”

The sneezes changed to spasmodic groans. One of the thieves, hearing Hubert’s voice, cried, “Oh! mercy! mercy! let us out of this!”

“Where’s my horse? said Hubert.

“Tied to the tree in the hollow behind Short’s Gibbet. Mercy! mercy! let us out, or we shall die of suffocation!”

All the Christmas guests now perceived that this was no longer sport, but serious earnest. Guns and cudgels were procured; all the men-servants were called in, and arranged in position outside the closet. At a signal Hubert withdrew the bolt, and stood on the defensive. But the three robbers, far from attacking them, were found crouching in the corner, gasping for breath. They made no resistance; and, being pinioned, were placed in an out-house till the morning.

Hubert now gave the remainder of his story to the assembled company, and was profusely thanked for the services he had rendered. Sir Simon pressed him to stay over the night, and accept the use of the best bed-room the house afforded, which had been occupied by Queen Elizabeth and King Charles successively when on their visits to this part of the country. But Hubert declined, being anxious to find his horse Jerry, and to test the truth of the robbers’ statements concerning him.

Several of the guests accompanied Hubert to the spot behind the gibbet, alluded to by the thieves as where Jerry was hidden. When they reached the knoll and looked over, behold! there the horse stood, uninjured, and quite unconcerned. At sight of Hubert he neighed joyfully; and nothing could exceed Hubert’s gladness at finding him. He mounted, wished his friends “Good-night!” and cantered off in the direction they pointed out as his nearest way, reaching home safely about four o’clock in the morning.

British Liquor Laws

Metropolitan Police Act of 1839

Selections from original legislation pertaining
to liquor and drunkenness

Metropolitan Police Act 1839

1839 Chapter 47

An Act for further improving the Police in and near the Metropolis. [17th August 1839]

WHEREAS an Act was passed in the Tenth Year of the Reign of King George the Fourth, intituled An Act for improving the Police in and near the Metropolis, for the Purpose of establishing a new and more efficient System of Police in the Room of the inadequate local Establishments of nightly Watch and nightly Police, within the Limits in the said Act specified, therein called “The Metropolitan police District:” And whereas the System of Police established under the said Act hath been found very efficient, and may be yet further improved : Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That so much of an Act passed in the Twenty-ninth Year of the Reign of King George the Second, intituled An Act for appointing a sufficient Number of Constables for the Service of the City and Liberty of Westminster, and to compel proper Persons to take upon them the Office of Jurymen, to prevent Nuisances and other Offences within the said City and Liberty, or of any other Act, as requires or authorizes the Appointment of any Constables or High Constable at any Court Leet, shall be repealed from the passing of this Act.

XXX. Possessing Instruments for Unlawfully Procuring and Carrying Away Wine, &c.

And be it enacted, That every Person who shall be found within the Metropolitan Police District in or upon any Canal, Dock, Warehouse, Wharf, Quay, or Bank, or on board any Ship or Vessel, having in his or her Possession any Tube or other Instrument for the Purpose of unlawfully obtaining any Wine, Spirits, or other Liquors, or having in his or her Possession any Skin, Bladder, or other Material or Utensil for the Purpose of unlawfully secreting or carrying away any such Wine, Spirits, or other Liquors, and any Person who shall attempt unlawfully to obtain any such Wine, Spirits, or other Liquors, shall be deemed guilty of a Misdemeanor.

XXXI. Piercing Casks, opening Packages, &c.

And be it enacted, That every Person who shall, within the Metropolitan Police District, bore, pierce, break, cut open, or otherwise injure any Cask, Box, or Package containing Wine, Spirits, or other Liquors, on board any Ship, Boat, or Vessel, or in or upon any Warehouse, Wharf, Quay, or Bank, with Intent feloniously to steal or otherwise unlawfully obtain any Part of the Contents thereof, or who shall unlawfully drink or wilfully Spill or allow to run to waste any Part of the Contents thereof, shall be deemed guilty of a Misdemeanor.

XXXII. Breaking Packages with Intent to spill Contents.

And be it enacted, That every Person who shall, within the Metropolitan Police District, wilfully cause to be broken, pierced, started, cut, torn, or otherwise injured, any Cask, Chest, Bag, or other Package containing or prepared for containing any Goods while on board of any Barge, Lighter, or other Craft lying in the said River, or any Dock, Creek, Quay, Wharf, or Landing Place adjacent to the same, or in the Way to or from any Warehouse, with Intent that the Contents of such Package or any Part thereof may be spilled or dropped from such Package, shall be deemed guilty of a Misdemeanor.

LVIII. Drunkards guilty of riotous or indecent Behaviour may be imprisoned.

And be it enacted, That every Person who shall be found drunk in any Street or public Thoroughfare within the said District, and who while drunk shall be guilty of any riotous or indecent Behaviour, and also every Person who shall be guilty of any violent or indecent Behaviour in any Police Station House, shall be liable to a Penalty of not more than Forty Shillings for every such Offence, or may be committed, if the Magistrate before whom he shall be convicted shall think fit, instead of inflicting on him any pecuniary Penalty, to the House of Correction for any Time not more than Seven Days.

Licensing Act of 1872

Selections from original legislation pertaining
to liquor and drunkenness

Licensing Act 1872

1872 Chapter 94

An Act for regulating the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors. [10th August 1872]

Whereas it is expedient to amend the law for the sale by retail of intoxicating liquors, and the regulation of public-houses and other places in which intoxicating liquors are sold, and to make further provision in respect of the grant of new licenses for the sale of intoxicating liquors, and the better prevention of drunkenness:

Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Illicit Sales

Prohibition of sale of intoxicating liquors without license.

3 No person shall sell or expose for sale by retail any intoxicating liquor without being duly licensed to sell the same, or at any place where he is not authorised by his license to sell the same. Any person selling or exposing for sale by retail any intoxicating liquor which he is not licensed to sell by retail, or selling or exposing for sale any intoxicating liquor at any place where he is not authorised by his license to sell the same, shall be subject to the following penalties ; that is to say,

(1) For the first offence he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding fifty pounds, or to imprisonment with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding one month:

(2) For the second offence he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding one hundred pounds, or to imprisonment with or without hard labour for a term not exceeding three months, and he may, by order of the court by which he is tried, be disqualified for any term not exceeding five years from holding any license for the sale of intoxicating liquors:

(3) For the third and any subsequent offence he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding one hundred pounds, or to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding six months, and may by order of the court by which he is tried be disqualified for any term of years or for ever from holding any license for the sale of intoxicating liquors:

In addition to any other penalty imposed by this section any person convicted of a second or any subsequent offence under this section shall, if he be the holder of a license, forfeit such license, and in the case of a conviction for any offence under this section, the court may, if it thinks expedient so to do, declare all intoxicating liquor found in the possession of any such person as last aforesaid, and the vessels containing such liquor, to be forfeited.

No penalty shall be incurred under this section by the heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns of any licensed person who dies before the expiration of his license, or by the trustee of any licensed person who is adjudged a bankrupt, or whose affairs are liquidated by arrangement before the expiration of his license in respect of the sale or exposure for sale of any intoxicating liquor, so that such sale or exposure for sale be made on the premises specified in such license, and take place prior to the special session then next ensuing, or (if such special session be holden within fourteen days next after the death of the said person or the appointment of a trustee in the case of his bankruptcy, or the liquidation of his affairs by arrangement) take place prior to the special session holden next after such special session as last aforesaid.

Occupier of unlicensed premises liable for sale of liquor.

4 The occupier of any unlicensed premises on which any intoxicating liquor is sold, or if such premises are occupied by more than one person, every occupier thereof, shall, if it be proved that he was privy or consenting to the sale, be subject to the penalties imposed upon persons for the sale of intoxicating liquors without license.

Seller liable for drinking on premises contrary to license.

5 If any purchaser of any intoxicating liquor from a person who is not licensed to sell the same to be drunk on the premises drinks such liquor on the premises where the same is sold, or on any highway adjoining or near such premises, the seller of such liquor shall, if it shall appear that such drinking was with his privity or consent, be subject to the following penalties; (that is to say,) For the first offence he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds:

For the second and any subsequent offence he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds.

For the purposes of this section the expression “ premises where “ the same is sold” shall include any premises adjoining or near the premises where the liquor is sold, if belonging to the seller of the liquor or under his control, or used by his permission.

Any conviction for an offence under this section shall be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

Evasion of law as to drinking on premises contrary to license.

6 If any person having a license to sell intoxicating liquors not to be drunk on the premises, himself takes or carries, or employs or suffers any other person to take or carry, any intoxicating liquor out of or from the premises of such licensed person for the purpose of being sold on his account, or for his benefit or profit, and of being drunk or consumed in any other house, or in any tent, shed, or other building of any kind whatever, belonging to such licensed person, or hired, used, or occupied by him, or on or in any place, whether enclosed or not, and whether or not a public thoroughfare, such intoxicating liquor shall be deemed to have been consumed by the purchasers thereof on the premises of such licensed person, with his privity and consent, and such licensed person shall be punished accordingly in manner provided by this Act.

Any conviction for an offence under this section shall be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

In any proceeding under this section it shall not be necessary to prove that the premises or place or places to which such liquor is taken to be drunk belonged to, or were hired, used, or occupied by the seller, if proof be given to the satisfaction of the court hearing the case that such liquor was taken to be consumed thereon or therein with intent to evade the conditions of his license.

Sale of spirits to children.

7 Every holder of a license who sells or allows any person to sell, to be consumed on the premises, any description of spirits to any person apparently under the age of sixteen years, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty shillings for the first offence, and not exceeding forty shillings for the second and any subsequent offence.

Sale to be by standard measure.

8 Every person shall sell all intoxicating liquor which is sold by retail and not in cask or bottle, and is not sold in a quantity less than half a pint, in measures marked according to the imperial standards.

Every person who acts or suffers any person under his control or in his employment to act in contravention of this section shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding, for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for any subsequent offence twenty pounds, and shall also be liable to forfeit the illegal measure in which the liquor was sold.

Penalty on internal communication between licensed premises and house of public resort.

9 Every person who makes or uses, or allows to be made or used, any internal communication between any licensed premises and any unlicensed premises which are used for public entertainment or resort, or as a refreshment house, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds for every day during which such communication remains open.

In addition to any penalty imposed by this section any person convicted of an offence under this section shall, if he be the holder of a license, forfeit such license.

Penalty on illicit storing of liquor.

10 If any licensed person has in his possession on the premises in respect of which his license is granted, any description of intoxicating liquor which he is not authorised to sell, unless he shall account for the possession of the same to the satisfaction of the court by which he is tried, he shall forfeit such liquor and the vessels containing the same, and shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for any subsequent offence twenty pounds.

Names of licensed persons to be affixed to premises.

11 Every licensed person shall cause to be painted or fixed, and shall keep painted or fixed on the premises in respect of which his license is granted, in a conspicuous place and in such form and manner as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may from time to time direct, his name, with the addition after the name of the word “licensed,” and of words sufficient, in the opinion of the said commissioners, to express the business for which his license has been granted, and in particular of words expressing whether the license authorises the sale of intoxicating liquor to be consumed on or off the premises only, as the case may be; and no person shall have any words or letters on his premises importing that he is authorised as a licensed person to sell any intoxicating liquor which he is not in fact duly authorised to sell. Every person who acts in contravention of the provisions of this section shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for the second and any subsequent offence twenty pounds.

Offences against Public Order

Penalty on persons found drunk.

12 Every person found drunk in any highway or other public place, whether a building or not, or on any licensed premises, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten shillings, and on a second conviction within a period of twelve months shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty shillings, and on a third or subsequent conviction within such period of twelve months be liable to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings. Every person who in any highway or other public place, whether a building or not, is guilty while drunk of riotous or disorderly behaviour, or who is drunk while in charge on any highway or other public place of any carriage, horse, cattle, or. steam engine, or who is drunk when in possession of any loaded fire-arms, may be apprehended, and shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings, or in the discretion of the court to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any term not exceeding one month. Where the court commits any person to prison for nonpayment of any penalty under this section, the court may order him to be imprisoned with hard labour.

Penalty for permitting drunkenness.

13 If any licensed person permits drunkenness or any violent, quarrelsome, or riotous conduct to take place on his premises, or sells any intoxicating liquor to any drunken person, he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for the second and any subsequent offence twenty pounds. Any conviction for an offence under this section shall be recorded on the license of the person convicted, unless the convicting magistrate or justices shall otherwise direct.

Penalty for keeping disorderly house.

14 If any licensed person knowingly permits his premises to be the habitual resort of or place of meeting of reputed prostitutes, whether the object of their so resorting or meeting is or is not prostitution, he shall, if he allow them to remain thereon longer than is necessary for the purpose of obtaining reasonable refreshment, be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for the second and any subsequent offence twenty pounds. Any conviction for an offence under this section shall, unless the convicting magistrate or justices shall otherwise direct, be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

Penalty for permitting premises to be a brothel.

15 If any licensed person is convicted of permitting his premises to be a brothel, he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, and shall forfeit his license, and he shall be disqualified for ever from holding any license for the sale of intoxicating liquors.

Penalty for harbouring constable.

16 If any licensed person —

(1) Knowingly harbours or knowingly suffers to remain on his premises any constable during any part of the time appointed for such constable being on duty, unless for the purpose of keeping or restoring order or in execution of his duty; or

(2) Supplies any liquor or refreshment, whether by way of gift or sale, to any constable on duty unless by authority of some superior officer of such constable; or

(3) Bribes or attempts to bribe any constable, be shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding, for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for the second or any subsequent offence twenty pounds. Any conviction for an offence under this section shall, unless the convicting magistrate or justices shall otherwise direct, be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

Penalty for permitting gaming.

17 If any licensed person —

(1) Suffers any gaming or any unlawful game to be carried on his premises; or

(2) Opens, keeps, or uses, or suffers his house to be opened, kept, or used in contravention of the

Act of the session of the sixteenth and seventeenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter one hundred and nineteen, intituled “ An Act for the suppression of betting houses,” he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence ten pounds, and not exceeding for the second and any subsequent offence twenty pounds. Any conviction for an offence under this section shall, unless the convicting magistrates shall otherwise direct, be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

Power to exclude drunkards from licensed premises.

18 Any licensed person may refuse to admit to and may turn out of the premises in respect of which his license is granted any person who is drunken, violent, quarrelsome, or disorderly, and any person whose presence on his premises would subject him to a penalty under this Act. Any such person who upon being requested in pursuance of this section by such licensed person, or his agent or servant, or any constable, to quit such premises, refuses or fails so to do, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding five pounds, and all constables are required on the demand of such licensed person, agent, or servant to expel or assist in expelling every such person from such premises, and may use such force as may be required for that purpose. The court committing any person to prison for nonpayment of any penalty under this, section may order him to be imprisoned with bard labour.

Adulteration

Penalty on adulteration of intoxicating liquor.

19 (1) Every person who mixes or causes to be mixed with any intoxicating liquor sold or exposed for sale by him any deleterious ingredient, that is to say, any of the ingredients specified in the First Schedule to this Act, or added to such schedule by any Order in Council made under this Act, or any ingredient deleterious to health; and

(2) Every person who knowingly sells or keeps or exposes for sale any intoxicating liquor mixed with any deleterious ingredient (in this Act referred to as adulterated liquor), shall be liable for the first offence to a penalty not exceeding twenty pounds, or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month, with or without hard labour; and for the second and any subsequent offence to a penalty not exceeding one hundred pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months, with or without hard labour, and to be declared to be a disqualified person for a period of not less than two years nor exceeding ten years, and shall also in the case of the first as well as any subsequent offence forfeit all adulterated liquor in his possession, with the vessels containing the same. Where the person so convicted is a licensed person, he shall further, in the case of a second or any subsequent offence, be liable to forfeit his license, and the premises in respect of which such license is granted shall be liable to be declared to be disqualified premises for a period of not less than two years nor exceeding five years. In the case of a first offence and any subsequent offence until the license is forfeited, the conviction shall be recorded on the license of the person convicted. Where a licensed person is convicted of any offence under this section and his license is not forfeited for such offence, the police authority of the district shall cause a placard stating such conviction to be affixed to the premises. Such placard shall be of such size and form, and shall be printed with such letters, and shall contain such particulars, and shall be affixed to such part of the licensed premises as the police authority may think fit, and such licensed person shall keep the same affixed during two weeks after the same is first affixed; and if he fails to comply with the provisions of this section with respect to keeping affixed such placard, or defaces or allows such placard to be defaced, or if the same is defaced and he fails forthwith to renew the same, he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding forty shillings for every day on which the same is not so undefaced, and any constable may affix or re-affix such placard during the said two weeks, or such further time as may be directed by a court of summary jurisdiction.

Possession of adulterated liquor or deleterious ingredients.

20 Every licensed person who has in his possession or in any part of his premises any adulterated liquor knowing it to be adulterated, or any deleterious ingredient, specified in the First Schedule hereto or added to such schedule by Order of Her Majesty in Council, for the possession of which he is unable to account to the satisfaction of the court, shall be deemed knowingly to have exposed for sale adulterated liquor on such premises.

Schedule of deleterious ingredients.

21 It shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in Council from time to time to add to the First Schedule to this Act any ingredient which appears to Her Majesty in Council to be deleterious to health, and to remove any ingredient from the said schedule, and to revoke or alter any order previously made. Every such order shall be published in the London Gazette, and shall take effect at the expiration of seven days from the date of such publication or at any later date mentioned in the order, and shall have effect as if it were enacted in this Act. Every such order shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament within three weeks after it is made, or if Parliament be not then sitting within three weeks after the commencement of the then next session of Parliament.

Analysis of intoxicating liquor.

22 Any of the following officers, that is to say, any superintendent of police or other constable authorised in writing by the police authority so to do, and any officer of Inland Revenue, may procure samples of any intoxicating liquor from any person selling or keeping or exposing the same for sale (in this section referred to as the vendor); he may procure such samples either by purchasing the same, or by requiring the vendor to show him and allow him to inspect all or any of the vessels in which any intoxicating liquor in the possession of the vendor is stored, and the place of the storage thereof, and to give him samples of such intoxicating liquor on payment or tender of the value of such samples. If the vendor or his agent or servant, when required in pursuance of this section, refuses or fails to admit the officer or refuses or wilfully omits to show all or any of the vessels in which intoxicating liquor is stored, or the place of the storage thereof, or to permit the officer to inspect the same, or to give any samples thereof, or to furnish the officer with such light or assistance as he may require, he shall be liable to the same penalty, forfeiture, and disqualification as if he knowingly sold or exposed for sale adulterated liquor. When the officer has by either of the means aforesaid procured samples of intoxicating liquor, he shall cause the same to be analysed, at such convenient place and time and by such person as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may appoint; provided always, that a reasonable notice shall have been given by such officer to the vendor by whom such sample was furnished, to enable such vendor, if he think fit, to attend at the time when such sample is open for analysis; and if it appear to the person so analysing that the said samples of intoxicating liquor are adulterated liquor within the meaning of this Act, he shall certify such fact, and the certificate so given shall be receivable as evidence in any proceedings that may be taken against any person in pursuance of this Act, subject to the right of any person against whom proceedings are taken to require the attendance of the person making the analysis for the purpose of cross-examination. The vendor may require the officer, in his presence, to annex to every vessel containing any samples for analysis the name and address of the vendor, and to secure with a seal or seals belonging to the vendor the vessel containing such samples, and the name and address annexed thereto, in such manner that the vessel cannot be opened, or the name and address taken off, without breaking such seals; and a corresponding sample sealed by such officer with his own seal shall, if required, be left with the vendor for reference in case of disputes as to the correctness of the analysis or otherwise; and the certificate of the person who analyses such samples shall state the name and address of the vendor, and that the vessels were not open, and that the seals securing to the vessels the name and address of the vendor were not broken until such time as he opened the vessels for the purpose of making his analysis; and in such case as aforesaid no certificate shall be receivable in evidence unless there is contained therein such statement as above, or to the like effect. Any expenses incurred in analysing any intoxicating liquor of a vendor in pursuance of this section shall, if such vendor be convicted of selling or keeping, or exposing for sale, or having in his possession adulterated liquor in contravention of this Act, be deemed to be a portion of the costs of the proceedings against him, and shall be paid by him accordingly. In any other event such expenses shall be paid as part of the expenses of the officer who procured the sample.

Closing Licensed Premises in case of Riot

Power of justices to close licensed premises in case of riot.

23 Any two justices of the peace acting for any county or place where any riot or tumult happens or is expected to happen may order every licensed person in or near the place where such riot or tumult happens or is expected to happen to close his premises during any time which the justices may order ; and any person who keeps open his premises for the sale of intoxicating liquors during any time at which the justices have Ordered them to be closed shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding fifty pounds; and it shall be lawful for any person acting by order of any justices to use such force as may be necessary for the purpose of closing such premises.

Entry on Premises

Entry on premises by constables.

35 A constable may at all times enter on any licensed premises, he may also examine every room and part of such premises, and take an account of all intoxicating liquor stored therein. Any justice of the peace, if satisfied by information on oath that there is reasonable ground to believe that any intoxicating liquor is sold by retail or exposed or kept for sale by retail at any place “within his jurisdiction, whether a building or not in which such liquor is not authorised to be sold by retail, may in his discretion grant a warrant under his hand, by virtue whereof it shall be lawful for any constable named in such warrant, at any time or times within one month from the date thereof, to enter, and, if need be, by force, the place named in the warrant, and every part thereof, and examine the same and search for intoxicating liquor therein, and seize and remove any intoxicating liquor found therein, which there is reasonable ground to suppose is in such place for the purpose of unlawful sale at that or any other place, and the vessels” containing such liquor. Every person who, by himself, or by any person in his employ or acting by his direction or with his consent, refuses or fails to admit any constable demanding to enter in pursuance of this section into any premises or place occupied by or under the control of such person, or who having admitted such constable refuses or fails to allow him to take an account of any intoxicating liquor found therein, or to furnish him with such light or assistance as he may require, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding for the first offence five pounds, and for the second and every subsequent offence ten pounds. Any conviction for an offence under this section shall, in the case of a licensed person, be recorded on the license of the person convicted.

Legal Proceedings

Summary proceedings for offences under this Act, &c.

51 Except as in this Act otherwise expressly provided, every offence under this Act may he prosecuted, and every penalty and forfeiture may he recovered and enforced, in manner provided by the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1848, subject to the following provisions:

(1) The court of summary jurisdiction, when hearing and determining an information or complaint, other than in a case where the offence charged is that of being found drunk in any highway or other public place, or any licensed premises, shall be constituted either of two or more justices of the peace in petty sessions sitting at a place appointed for holding petty sessions, or of a stipendiary magistrate, or some other officer for the time being empowered by law to do alone any act authorised to be done by more than one justice of the peace, and sitting alone or with others at some court or other place appointed for the administration of justice:

(2) Where the court of summary jurisdiction orders that a distress shall be made in default of payment of any penal sum exceeding five pounds, including under that expression costs actually adjudged in respect of an offence, the court may order that in default of the said sum being paid as directed, the person liable to pay the same shall be imprisoned for any term not exceeding the period specified in the following scale:

For any sum exceeding five pounds but not exceeding ten pounds, three months;

For any sum exceeding ten pounds but not exceeding thirty pounds, four months ;

For any sum exceeding thirty pounds but not exceeding fifty pounds, six months ;

For any sum exceeding fifty pounds, one year:

(3) The description of any offence under this Act in the words of such Act, or in similar words, shall be sufficient in law:

(4) Any exception, exemption, proviso, excuse, or qualification, whether it does or does not accompany the description of the offence in this Act, may be proved by the defendant, but need not be specified or negatived in the information, and if so specified or negatived, no proof in relation to the matters so specified or negatived shall be required on the part of the informant or complainant; and in all cases of summary proceedings under this Act, the defendant and his wife shall be competent to give evidence:

(5) All forfeitures shall be sold or otherwise disposed of in such manner as the court may direct, and the proceeds of such sale or disposal (if any) shall be applied in the like manner as penalties, but the court may direct that such proceeds may be applied in the first instance in paying the expenses of and incidental to any search and seizure which resulted in such forfeiture:

(6) Penalties and forfeitures under this Act shall not, for the purpose of any Act respecting the application of such penalties, or the costs, charges, and expenses attending proceedings for recovery of such penalties or of forfeitures, be deemed to be penalties or forfeitures under any Act relating to the Inland Revenue. Any officer appointed by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may sue for any penalties under this Act, and when so sued for any penalties which may be recovered shall be applied in the manner in which excise penalties are for the time being applicable by law. Where under this Act any sum for costs (other than costs upon a conviction or order of dismissal of an information) or for compensation, or both, is ordered or awarded to be paid by any person, the amount thereof shall be recovered in manner directed by “The Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1848,” for the recovery of costs awarded upon the dismissal of an information or complaint.

Appeal to quarter sessions.

52 If any person feels aggrieved by any order or conviction made by a court of summary jurisdiction, the person so aggrieved may appeal therefrom, subject to the conditions and regulations following:

(1) The appeal shall be made to the next court of quarter sessions for the county or place in which the cause of appeal has arisen, holden not less than fifteen days after the decision of the court from which the appeal is made;

(2) The appellant shall, within seven days after the cause of appeal has arisen, give notice to the other party and to the court of summary jurisdiction of his intention to appeal, and of the ground thereof:

(3) The appellant, immediately after such notice, shall enter into a recognizance before a justice of the peace, with two sufficient sureties, conditioned personally to try such appeal, and to abide the judgment of the court thereon, and to pay such costs as may be awarded by the court, or shall give such other security by deposit of money or otherwise as the justice may allow:

(4) Where the appellant is in custody the justice may, if he think fit, on the appellant entering into such recognizance or giving such other security as aforesaid, release him from custody:

(5) The court of appeal may adjourn the appeal, and upon the hearing thereof may confirm, reverse, or modify the decision of the court of summary jurisdiction, or remit the matter to the court of summary jurisdiction with the opinion of the court of appeal thereon, or make such other order in the matter as the court thinks just. The court of appeal may also make such order as to costs to he paid by either party as the court thinks just.

Continuance of license during pendency of appeal against justices refusal to renew.

53 “Where the justices refuse to renew a license, and an appeal against such refusal is duly made, and such license expires before the appeal is determined, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may, by order, permit the person whose license is refused to carry on his business during the pendency of the appeal upon such conditions as they think just; and, subject to such conditions, any person so permitted may, during the continuance of such order, carry on his business in the same manner as if the renewal of the license had not been refused. Where a license is forfeited on or in pursuance of a conviction for an offence, and an appeal is duly made against such conviction, the court by whom the conviction was made may, by order, grant a temporary license to be in force during the pendency of the appeal upon such conditions as they think just.

Conviction, &c. not to be quashed for want of form, or removed by certiorari.

54 No conviction or order made in pursuance of this Act, originally or on appeal, relative to any offence, penalty, forfeiture, or summary order, shall he quashed for want of form, or, if made by a court of summary jurisdiction, he removed by certiorari or otherwise, either at the instance of the Crown or of any private party, into any superior court. Moreover, no warrant of commitment in any such matter shall be held void by reason of any defect therein, provided that there is a valid conviction to maintain such warrant, and it is alleged in the warrant that the party has been convicted.

As to record of convictions of licensed persons for offences under Act.

55 With respect to the record of convictions of licensed persons for offences under this Act committed by them as such, the following provisions shall have effect in cases where this Act requires the conviction to he recorded on the license; that is to say,

(1) The court before whom any licensed person is accused shall require such person to produce and deliver to the clerk of the court the license under which such person carries on business, and the summons shall state that such production will be required:

(2) If such person is convicted, the court shall cause the short particulars of such conviction, and the penalty imposed, to be endorsed on his license before it is returned to the offender:

(3) The clerk to the licensing justices shall enter the particulars respecting such conviction, or such of them as the case may require, in the register of licenses, kept by him under this Act:

(4) If the clerk to the court he not the clerk to the licensing justices, he shall send forthwith to the last-mentioned clerk notice of such conviction, and of the particulars thereof :

(5) Where the conviction of any such person has the effect of forfeiting the license, or of disqualifying any person or premises for the purposes of this Act, the license shall he retained by the clerk of the court, and notice of such forfeiture and disqualification shall be sent to the licensing officer of the district, and if the clerk to the court is not the clerk to the licensing justices to such last-mentioned clerk, together with the forfeited license.

For protection of owners of licensed premises in cases of offences committed by tenants.

56 Where any tenant of any licensed premises is convicted of an offence against this Act, and such offence is one the repetition of which may render the premises liable to be disqualified from receiving a license for any period, it shall be the duty of the clerk of the licensing justices to serve, in manner provided by this Act, notice of every such conviction on the owner of the premises. Where any order of a court of summary jurisdiction declaring any licensed premises to be disqualified from receiving a license for any period has been made, the court shall cause such order to be served on the owner of such premises, where the owner is not the occupier, with the addition of a statement that the court will hold a petty sessions at a time and place therein specified, at which the owner may appear and appeal against such order on all or any of the following grounds, but on no other grounds :

(a) That notice, as required by this Act, has not been served on the owner of a prior offence which on repetition renders the premises liable to be disqualified from receiving a license at any period; or

(b) That the tenant by whom the offence was committed held under a contract made prior to the commencement of this Act, and that the owner could not legally have evicted the tenant in the interval between the commission of the offence, in respect of which the disqualifying order was made, and the receipt by him of the notice of the immediately preceding offence which on repetition renders the premises liable to be disqualified, from receiving a license at any period; or

(c) That the offence in respect of which the disqualifying order was made occurred so soon after the receipt of such last-mentioned notice that the owner, notwithstanding he had legal power to evict the tenant, could not with reasonable diligence have exercised that power in the interval which occurred between the said notice and the second offence. If the owner appear at the time and place specified, and at such sessions, or any adjournment thereof, satisfy the court that he is entitled to have the order cancelled on any of the grounds aforesaid, the court shall thereupon direct such order to be cancelled, and the same shall be void. In a county the justices in quarter sessions assembled, and in a borough the borough justices, shall make rules in pursuance of which any person other than the owner interested in any licensed premises as mortgagee or otherwise shall be entitled on payment of such sum as may be specified in such rules to receive from the clerk to the licensing justices a similar notice to that which an owner of such premises is entitled to receive under this Act.

As to conviction of licensed persons of more than one offence on same day.

57 Where a licensed person is convicted of more offences than one committed on the same day, the convictions for which are by this Act directed to he recorded on his license, the court by whom he is convicted may, in their discretion, order that one or some only of such convictions shall be so recorded.

Evidence of endorsements and register.

58 The registers of licenses kept in pursuance of this Act shall he receivable in evidence of the matters required by this Act to be entered therein. Every endorsement upon a license, and every copy of an entry made in the registers of licenses in pursuance of this Act, purporting to be signed by the clerk to the licensing justices and (in the case of a copy) to be certified to be a true copy, shall be evidence of the matters stated in such endorsement and entry, without proof of the signature or authority of the person signing the same.

Saving for indictments, &c. under other Acts.

59 Nothing in this Act shall prevent any person from being liable to be indicted or punished under any other Act, or otherwise, so that he be not punished twice for the same offence.

“Appeal of the Liquor Traffic Interest to the Working Men of England”
Political Cartoon from the March 16, 1872 issue of The Leisure Hour:
An Illustrated Magazine for Home Reading

Contemporary Media

“Drunkenness and Legislation”

Article by Charles Beard from the April, 1872 issue of The Theological Review: A Journal of Religious Thought and Life

A Remarkable change has passed over what may be familiarly called the ‘Teetotal’ controversy. It has emerged from a social and entered a political phase. The warfare against drunkenness and its attendant evils was formerly waged in detail, from heart to heart, from will to will: the nation now, by the strong help of legislative enactment, is to be made sober in the mass. Men who were once looked upon as harmless fanatics, at worst a hindrance to good fellowship, and the fair mark for convivial sarcasm, are a thorn in the side of candidates, who anxiously ask whether they shall throw in their lot with the total abstainers or the publicans, or meditate whether it may not be possible to conciliate one party without hopelessly alienating the other. For the natural result of the political action of the United Kingdom Alliance has been the organization, under pressure of fear and self-interest, of the brewers and the publicans, and the formation of a powerful party whose programme is all comprised in the single word ‘beer.’ And though a Licensing Bill was actually brought forward in the last, and is promised for the present Session of Parliament, we cannot help thinking that the question will remain open for some time to come. The opposition to any decisive interference with the liquor trade is only just waking up to a consciousness of its own strength. There seems to be a general persuasion among politicians that the question is not one with which any government will care to deal, with the near prospect of a possible appeal to the country. And the first result which follows the transference of a question from the arena of social agitation to that of serious political conflict, is a sharp scrutiny of all the principles involved in its proposed settlement; a scrutiny which, though it seems to delay, in reality first makes possible the final issue. What the so-called ‘Permissive Bill’ really meant was a matter of comparatively little consequence, so long as it could be counted among the crotchets which well-meaning enthusiasts are always seeking to embody in legislation. But it assumes quite another aspect when it becomes, however remotely, a political possibility.

But before we proceed to discuss the question in its present shape, we have a word to say of the old Teetotallers and their methods of action. They have borne the brunt of some just, and far more unjust obloquy. They were men of one idea. They were in some degree obnoxious to the charge of summing up all virtue in the one negative merit of not drinking. They were singularly incapable of seeing any other side of the controversy than their own, and reluctant to admit that a true zeal for human welfare might exist outside of their own ranks. They pushed their theory to extremes, which repelled men of finer taste and less one-sided philanthropy: they endeavoured to pledge the Bible to a theory which it contradicts. But all these were the errors of a genuine and noble enthusiasm, the excesses of an ardour in itself infinitely to be preferred to the cool indifference to a terrible form of human weakness and misery against which it dashed itself. We have a lively recollection of one or two pioneers of total abstinence thirty years ago; and we must confess that while time and deeper reflection have softened down much that then appeared to us unlovely and even laughable, they have brought out in sharper relief the essential strength and purity of character that lay beneath. At that time, men had not meddled much with physiological theories about alcohol. They had not found out that the wine at the marriage-feast of Cana was the unfermented juice of the grape. What they knew and felt, with an intensity all the more remarkable for the unconsciousness of the fact which surrounded them, was that drunkenness was sapping the springs of manliness, ruining the happiness of homes, bringing young men to dishonoured graves, making the lives of noble and self-denying women one long-drawn torment. And to the heat of their Christian love it was a light thing if by their own voluntary and rigid abstinence from even innocent indulgence, they could strengthen the bias of any irresolute will towards self-control, or by«the force of friendly example establish a wavering intention to good. Their argument—one not easy for the earnest Christian to withstand—was all shut up in Paul’s words, “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.” Their method—which was Christian at its very heart—was self-denial, not for its own sake, but for the common good, and especially for the good of the weakest. They had a hard battle to fight against social ridicule and contempt: men not wholly coarse misconceived and laughed . at them; and the usual result followed, that they drew back within themselves, pursuing their end with a more exclusive devotion, and going about their labour of sympathy in an ever narrowing spirit. But they were only a little before their age, and the revenges of time have soon manifested themselves on their side. They were the first to discern in its true light the evil which all their efforts have not availed to hinder from undermining the strength of the national character. And if the comparative fruitlessness of their efforts seems to shew that they had only in part divined the true plan of resistance, the force of public opinion which is now rising in stern resolution to abate the unbearable evil, is chiefly due to their perseverance in denouncing wrong, and their patience in enduring obloquy. To those who have bestowed any attention upon the subject, it will seem unnecessary that we should attempt to demonstrate the magnitude of the evil, or to estimate its social and economical results. Perhaps there is another class of readers who would meet any effort of this kind on our part with a half-concealed contempt of teetotal statistics, as either based upon fundamental exaggerations, or capable of being manipulated to bring out any result. The truth is, that no array of figures, however plausible, will convince those who, from happy circumstance, or lack of imagination, or the subtle pleadings of self-interest, fail to realize the facts that life will supply. Men, after all, think most of what meets their own eyes. A Peer, a Chairman of Quarter Sessions, a Cabinet Minister, who when on a journey lives in an hotel, or has a public-house or two on his estate, not too near his park gates, bids us beware of interfering with the habits of Englishmen, who are not a set of sour and morose fanatics, and thinks that if the liquor trade is to be legislated for at all, it ought to be in the direction of setting it free from all excise restrictions. But a City Missionary, who lives in the perpetual sight of drunken women and neglected children, and families settling down into depths of savagery; who finds all his efforts thwarted by this one vice, in the fruitless struggle with which he is spending his strength and giving his life for naught,—cannot look at the matter from such a philosophic eminence and in so calm a light: he will fight the foe with any weapon; and his temptation is to catch at any remedial scheme, no matter how wild and preposterous. This contrast, though actual, is extreme; but its principle is universally applicable. Men who live away from the great centres of population, or who are immersed in literature, or who have none but commercial interests, or who, it must be added, have theological passions too hot, or human sympathies too slow, for benevolence, estimate the evil lightly, and are little touched with the social shame and obligation. Even our great cities are no longer wholes, but collect round one centre incongruous populations: it is easy to live in a fashionable suburb of London or Liverpool, and know nothing of the mass of poverty and vice that seethes and festers eastward and northward. But to those who are compelled to come face to face with the facts, this matter of drunkenness is becoming more and more the great question of the day. It is possible to exaggerate its power of breeding crime, but not to state too largely its efficacy in producing poverty. It is easy to ascribe it to insufficient causes, or to seek to meet it by mistaken remedies, but difficult to over-estimate its success in fostering human wretchedness and degradation. There may be blacker sins, but none which stand so obstinately in the way of individual and social well-being. There may be deeper wrongs against the sanctities of domestic life, but none which bring alter them so large a result of shame and misery. Of the whole host of social evils, this must be first attacked, if we are to entertain any hope of final victory. For habitual drunkenness means an enfeebled will, a dulled conscience, affections not strong enough to fight against a poor physical craving: what chance has even the gospel with a weakened and embruted humanity?

It cannot be too clearly understood, that this question assumes a different aspect according to the chemical and physiological point of view from which we look at it. There are those who consider alcohol, in any quantity and under any disguise, as a poison, in the sense in which prussic acid is a poison, and therefore, like prussic acid, to be taken only in carefully regulated doses, under medical advice. Such persons, if they carried out their principle to its logical consequence (as some of them do), would desire to restrain the sale of this among other poisons ; to put a stop to both the wholesale and retail trade, except so far as they were necessary for medical purposes; to shut up not only the public-house, but the wine-merchant’s cellar. In a word, they want to abolish drinking as well as drunkenness. Those, on the other hand, who think that “wine which maketh glad the heart of man” is a good gift of God and a lawful means of refreshment and exhilaration, will not only confine their efforts to the discouragement of drunkenness, without attempting to stop drinking, but even, so far as they go with the sterner ascetics, will be influenced by other motives and choose different methods. And this remark has a practical bearing upon the present state of the question. Outside the various associations which in one form or another are based upon the principle of total abstinence and prohibition, have grown up others, which aim, not at destroying, but at regulating the trade. Many excellent men, who may perhaps have given their adhesion to no formal programme, are anxious, for moral and social reasons, to throw their personal influence into the scale of sobriety. Cannot all these hosts be formed into a united army, and manoeuvred towards a single end? We are constrained to answer, that so long as the fundamental difference of view, to which we have alluded, remains, this cannot be hoped for. The ultimate object is different, however eagerly all may strive towards the same near results. It is better andsafer not to hide real divergence behind a cloud of friendly words, but to be satisfied with as much general concurrence as actually exists. The real danger is, lest advocates of entire prohibition should come to treat those whom they consider as halfhearted friends with less consideration than they are wont to shew to open foes. The partizans of the United Kingdom Alliance can hardly be expected to agree to a compromise with licensing reformers, which necessarily involves the abandonment of their characteristic principle; but, on the other hand, they will be wise to accept as friendly, and to allow free expression and development to every form of protest against the trade as it is at present carried on.

So far as we are aware, no one except the brewers and the publicans is willing to leave matters in their present state. But when we come to ask what is to be done, the answer is threefold. Say some bold theorists, throw the trade entirely open, and treat it just as you would any other. On the contrary, reply the Permissive-Bill advocates, place the power of absolute prohibition in the hands of the majority of the ratepayers of a given district. And between these are a class of politicians, larger, perhaps, even though less eager, than either of the others, who believe that by modification of the licensing laws, and police supervision thoroughly carried out, the trade may be brought within legitimate limits, and the misery produced by drunkenness diminished to as great an extent as can be effected by legislation. And in what follows, we propose to give reasons which have satisfied our own mind that this middle course is the one which offers least practical difficulty, combined with the fairest prospect of good result.

Those, then, who wish to throw the trade entirely open, begin by denying the existence of a constant ratio between the number of places where drink is sold and the amount of drinking, and point to statistics which in their opinion support this view. Take, for instance, the following table, which compares the number of apprehensions for drunkenness in Liverpool during the last five years, with that of the public-houses and beer-houses actually doing business:

Thus, while the number of public-houses remains substantially the same, and the beer-houses have decreased one-half, the apprehensions for drunkenness are greater by 50 percent. But to make these figures convincing, something more is necessary than merely to state them. We must know, first, that the number of persons arrested for drunkenness in a particular town, may be accepted as a fair test of that town’s want of sobriety. Surely it is a very familiar remark in regard to statistics of this kind, that an important factor in their production is afforded by the instructions given to the police, and that a little increase or relaxation of severity at headquarters will send the figures in this column of criminal returns up and down in a very remarkable way. And then, secondly, we should know whether any other causes were at work to increase or diminish drunkenness during the period to which reference is made. No one supposes that the multiplication of drinking-places is the sole cause of drinking, or that drinking would cease were they all shut up; still less would any reasonable person expect that habits which had been fostered through many generations, and which, notwithstanding the closing of these houses, can find the means of gratification at any street corner, should suddenly be transformed. It will be time enough to appeal to statistics when the policy of restricting licences has had as long a trial as the present plan; when its results can be estimated on an average of years; when a new generation, grown up under its influence, has replaced the old. Till then, it is more to the purpose to inquire whether, after all, there be not something in the nature of the trade itself which takes it out of the ordinary operation of the law of supply and demand.

But why not treat this trade like any other? At present it is a monopoly, and fastens upon the public all the characteristic evils of monopolies: its profits are unnaturally high; entrance into it is sought by every access of jobbery and intrigue; and the true interest of the customer—unadulterated liquor at a fair price—is the last thing thought of. Throw open the trade, and this state of things would cease, if not at once, yet before long; a healthy competition would set in; good beer would be the rule, not, as now, the exception; incompetent and dishonest publicans would have no chance; and the result would be less drunkenness, if not fewer drinking-places. But is, after all, even the boldest theorist quite prepared to put this business upon the same footing as any other? Because we must have no compromise here; no abandonment of the broad, clear ground of principle; no re-introduction of the idea of restriction by a side-wind. If licences are still to exist, they must be mere devices to raise revenue, like licences to sell tea and tobacco; and their price must be determined only by the policy of the national exchequer. It will not do to say that any man who brings evidence of good character, and is in possession of suitable premises, shall be permitted to sell drink. Nobody inquires into the character of the village grocer, or inspects the front room of the cottage, when he puts a few jars into the window and fixes a deal counter by the door. We must face the possibility that it may turn out to be as profitable to sell a little home brewed beer in every third or fourth cottage, as it seems to be now to vend sweetmeats and small wares in the intervals of domestic occupation. But not to insist upon the fact that the advocates of this view rarely go as far as this (desiring, we believe, for the most part, to preserve the magistrates’ action, while laying down strict general rules for their guidance), they bring in the principle of restriction under another form in admitting the necessity of the severest supervision of the trade by the police. Is there, then, any great difference in principle between limiting a trade in its inception and surrounding it with regulations in its progress? We say nothing of the needless labour thus thrown upon the police; of their abstraction from other duties; of the danger of demoralization (with its consequent peril to the public) to which they will be needlessly exposed;—does not the very fact sufficiently prove that this trade cannot be treated like any other? It would be essential, to secure any supervision at all, to preserve to the police the power which they now have of unrestricted entrance to any house where drink is sold under licence; is anybody prepared, or does anybody think it necessary, to extend that power to the case of the grocer who, equally under licence, sells coffee and snuff? Of course, under this new system, we are to have limitation of hours of sale: shall we have a parallel legislative enactment for the baker and the bookseller? Why should Acts of Parliament be necessary in the one case, while the other is left to public opinion? Or has any other trade like this a direct tendency to produce breaches of the public peace of which the law must take cognizance? The truth is, that even the so-called free-trader cannot frame his theory of the liquor trade without calling in the aid of ‘regulation.’ And regulation is only restriction in another form and applied at a different stage.

What, then, precisely is it that differentiates this trade from every other which is engaged in supplying men’s common wants? We cannot accept, we do not at this moment pause to state why we reject, the distinction which the total abstainer would draw sharply and without hesitation, that the trade, namely, is in its nature wholly unlawful, as the selling of poison is unlawful. Our argument is conducted upon the hypothesis that this trade, like any other, has a use; and we are quite ready to admit that every other trade has, like this, an abuse. But as we do not propose to shut up Fortnum and Mason’s because reckless gourmands destroy their digestion, or Poole’s because foolish boys run into debt for countless pairs of trousers, why should we interfere with the publican who intercepts an unreasonable proportion of the working man’s wages? First, then, because this trade is one of which the abuse is very quickly and surely developed out of the use, and stands to it in quite a startling ratio; and, secondly, because it is a case in which legislation, imperial or municipal, may hope to interfere with some prospect of success. It is altogether beside the mark to make a practical comparison between any shop in which a legitimate trade is carried on—a tailor’s, for example—and the corner gin-palace. In connection with the former, isolated instances of extravagance and folly will manifest themselves in the midst of a large and continuous supply of lawful needs; while in the latter, the abuses are the staple of the trade and the main source of the profit. What would become of the publicans of any large town if they were all at once confined to the purveying of ‘the poor man’s beer’ for domestic consumption, and were cut off from feeding the growing passion for drink in children; from adding to the intoxication of men already bemused with beer; from selling the noggin of gin, which is in every conceivable case needless and shameful, to the self-indulgent wife; from serving out the fatal anodyne of forgetfulness to the prostitute? And these are precisely the things which regulation can touch. We have thoroughly learned in this century the utter futility of all sumptuary law: we cannot prevent men from giving and eating dinners which end in gout and gravel; or women from running up milliners’ bills which may half-ruin their husbands; or working men, for that matter, from buying and consuming drink to excess—at home. But the simple reconversion of public-houses into what they once were, houses of entertainment, where drink was sold only or chiefly as the accompaniment of a meal, and the restriction within the narrowest limits of counters at which it is retailed simply for purposes of excitement or intoxication, would, we are convinced, have a most important effect upon sobriety, and all that sobriety will bring with it.

At the opposite pole of theory stand the advocates of what is called the Permissive Bill, which has more than once been introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, but has never yet succeeded in getting so far as the second reading. Its principle we understand to be this: The country is to be divided into districts, of size yet indeterminate; and within each district the control of the liquor traffic is to be committed to the ratepayers, who, by a majority of two-thirds, may absolutely prohibit it. The details of the scheme are to be left for future consideration, so that these fundamental provisions be not touched. And its chief defences, as reiterated, almost usque, ad nauseam, in the speeches of its advocates, are twofold: first, that the majority of the inhabitants have a right to put away this traffic from the midst of them, if they will; and, secondly, that as many landowners have already exercised, with good social result, the autocratic power of this kind which the law gives them, it cannot be unreasonable or undesirable that the same power should be entrusted to communities.

We believe that the scheme only needs to be stated in a plain, straightforward way, to be rejected as inadmissible by all sober political thinkers. As a matter of fact, it very rarely is so stated; the form in which it is invariably put by its advocates being, Have not the people a right to put away this intolerable nuisance from among themselves? Ought they not to have the power of regulating their own life? But to what extent this is a mere declamatory and ad captandum statement of the case, appears the moment we discern clearly that this Bill proposes to give two-thirds of the population of a given district the right of regulating in an important matter the life of the remaining third. In one word, the political principle upon which this legislation proceeds must be taken to be, that the rights of the majority over the minority are practically unlimited. If this Bill become law, it is difficult to see at what point any further resistance can be successfully made to the tyrannous will of the greater number. Of course it will be pleaded on the other side, that the sickness is one which requires this drastic remedy; that for the removal of so great an evil, the partial surrender of liberty is not too large a price to pay. We do not yield to any advocate of this Bill in sorrow and indignation at the present drinking habits of the people, and the misery which they produce; but we cannot believe that the way to a better state of things is through a violation of the fundamental principles upon which civilized society is built up. To one who believes that all noble ethics are founded on the freedom of the will, it seems the strangest dream to restore morality by sinning against liberty.

But it is alleged that many landowners already exercise this prohibitory power with excellent results, and it is asked, Why should not a majority of any community be entrusted with the same power? Would it not be more logical to inquire whether this power is one which ought to reside in owners of great estates, before taking for granted that it is desirable, and proposing to extend it? Surely all political thinkers who have any faculty of disentangling their minds from the actual prejudices of society, and of gaining some imaginative glimpse of the future, are convinced that the rights of property, and especially of landed property, are in England stretched to the hurt of the general good, and that nothing is more certain than the gradual recognition of the principle, that all land, in a country where every foot of soil has an owner, must be held under restrictions imposed by the State with reference to the common interest. We know a Welsh county where one nobleman perpetually adds estate to estate, building everywhere great walls to shut out, as far as he can, even the sight of the everlasting hills from the passer-by; putting a gate, only to be opened by a sixpenny fee, at every waterfall; fencing off the very heather, which is almost as guiltless of grouse as it is of pineapples, from the traveller’s foot; and throughout the whole of his vast and increasing domain ruling like an absolute monarch in the matter of sites for churches and chapels and school-houses. We know a Nonconformist congregation in a midland county village, which dates back to the Revolution, and comprises in its members industrious, thoughtful, frugal, devout men which any community might be proud to count as citizens, which is being slowly, and without visible persecution, crushed out of life, because the neighbouring landowners have entered into a tacit combination to let no farms that fall vacant except to Churchmen. There is perhaps not a county, from Sutherlandshire to Cornwall, in which instances of this kind may not be found; instances of arbitrary and oppressive power exercised within the limits of the law, and from the circumstances of the case unrebuked, or ineffectually rebuked, by public opinion. And the question which we would ask those who so constantly adduce this analogy is: If this conduct is right, and ought to be imitated in regard to public-houses, can it be wrong in the case of Dissenting chapels? If the squire is to be praised for shutting up the Red Lion, can he be blamed for refusing a site for the Methodist meeting-house? The clergy of the province of Canterbury, whose evidence upon this subject is so often quoted, have probably an equal objection to both.

At what point is the power of the two-thirds over the life of the remaining third to be restrained? We think that, on the principles of the Permissive Bill, and in the spirit of the arguments by which it is defended, we could make out a good case for the suppression of Unitarian chapels; a case which, if it did not approve itself to the majority of the ratepayers of Birmingham or Manchester, might yet be convincing to two-thirds of those of an English, and much more a Scotch country-town, where the dead-level of Evangelicalism had been for the first time disturbed by some adventurous missionary who had lectured in the town-hall and was meditating a permanent settlement. For what can be of more importance than the eternal welfare of the townsmen and their children? Surely fatal heresy must be as much worse than drunkenness, as eternity is longer than time. And if, even in this extreme case, it is dangerous for the public authorities to meddle with opinions—look at the moral consequences which must result from the toleration of Unitarianism! Morality is founded upon dogma: to live well, men must believe truly; and Pope’s famous line must be read the other way, “He can’t be right whose faith is in the wrong.” There may indeed be produced, in connection with this heresy, a specious imitation of Christian morals; but it is only the electro-plate which simulates the silver, and is the more dangerous the more perfect the delusion. Lord Blank, who holds all the land hereabouts, will grant no site at all to any Non Conformist society: why should he have a right which is not possessed by an ancient and respectable municipality? It would be easy to find as many clergymen as have testified to the moral benefit of having no public-house in their villages, to bear witness to the equal advantage resulting from the absence of dissent; and this, it must be remembered, is no common dissent, but precisely the most noxious and intolerable form of all. On the whole, we are afraid that if a general Permissive Bill were passed, empowering two-thirds of any community to prohibit anything they disliked in the life of the other third, it would go hard with Unitarian chapels in some towns, and all kinds of Dissenters in many villages, and everywhere with the little knot of men who think for themselves and lead public opinion, and represent the common belief of the next generation but one. Who knows whether in the universal crusade against crotchets in which the British Philistine with such encouragement might engage, the great principle of the infallibility of two-thirds might not be used to put down teetotal meetings?

Some of the more obvious practical objections to this legislation have been so often urged, that we shall not enlarge upon them in these pages. There is the difficulty of what we may call geographical sobriety; neither public house, beer-shop or wine-merchant, on this side of an impalpable line; and on that, the whole system flourishing with double vigour. There is the certainty that the most drunken places would be precisely the last to adopt a voluntary remedy. There is the impossibility of coercing the recalcitrant minority of a great city: one-third of the population of Liverpool or Glasgow is 200,000 souls—a city in itself. There is the fact, that if in such a city the requisite majority could by any means be attained, the stoppage of all public sale of liquor would leave behind it an enormous mass of appetite for drink, demanding the gratification which an illicit trade would find it most gainful to supply, and which would add to drunkenness the new pleasure and the keener excitement of breaking the law. But a more general and even more cogent objection to legislation of this kind is, that it confounds the removal of temptation with the extirpation of vice. We do not dispute that the presence of temptation is one element, and often a very important element, in the committal of a sinful act; and that insofar as it can be lessened or taken away, the probability of the sin is diminished; though even here we might be inclined to maintain that the entire abolition of any lawful means of gratifying a natural desire, will put the passion very eagerly on the scent for unlawful ones. We admit that the liquor trade, as at present carried on, surrounds the average working man with a persistency and seductiveness of temptation which he finds it almost impossible to resist; and we allow that in some cases even an enforced sobriety, inasmuch as it may lay the foundation of habits of abstinence, is better than a freedom which is only liberty to fall. But what is the moralist to think of a virtue which is at the mercy of temptation? We have been told stories of the paradisiacal peace and virtue of certain villages which fell into swift demoralization as soon as a public-house was opened; but it did not seem to strike the tellers of them how little nerve and strength there must have been in the goodness that was so soon and so easily debauched. If to take away temptation can be said very indirectly to add to a man’s moral force, inasmuch as it may save him from the weakness which is part of the punishment of sin; on the other hand, it is only in conflict with temptation that any manly vigour can be won. An untried virtue is no virtue at all. It is an old story, that those who have been brought up out of sight and hearing of evil are the surest to go down in the first real conflict with it. Presently we may find that no voters are so open to intimidation as those who have most sheltered themselves behind the protection of the ballot-box; and that drunkenness may rage most fiercely among populations which have grown up in the enervating air of prohibition.

If, then, it is equally inexpedient to throw the liquor trade entirely open and to prohibit it, we are shut up to the policy of restriction or regulation. The rationale of this policy we take to be, that the trade has within certain limits a public use, and therefore a right to existence; but that, as it is very apt to overpass these limits, and in so doing to become a nuisance, every precaution must be taken to keep it within them. The objections to the present method of securing this end are many and weighty. The magistrates who grant the licences rarely act upon any fixed principle, and the assumed standard of the requirements of the population varies from district to district. The exercise of their authority is peculiarly liable to be suspected of yielding to influence and intrigue, and in some cases at least is actually determined by these ignoble forces. But the great evil—that which lies at the foundation of the present difficulty in dealing with the subject—is the practical perpetuity of the licence. It is of no use to point out that in form it is only granted for one year, and that it is given to the person and not to the house. A system of transfer has grown up, converting a licence into a valuable property which, under the transparent veil of ‘good-will,’ is openly bought and sold. This transfer is so much a matter of course—it is so perfectly understood that a licence will not be forfeited except under very exceptional circumstances of offence—that one man of straw is boldly put up to succeed another in the management of a productive but disreputable business; and the personal responsibility to the law, which it is the very object of the licence to secure, is systematically evaded. But, in truth, a very large part of the present legislation, in regard to the regulation of the drink traffic, is a mere dead letter. Whether, as it stands, it needs to be more rigidly administered, or requires amendment in the direction of severity, is a question which we leave to those who are better acquainted with the state of the law than ourselves. But, to take only one fact, out of many that might be adduced, it is a disgrace to our civilization that in all our large towns public houses which are the known haunts of thieves and prostitutes, and which are reported as such in municipal police statistics, should be permitted to exist, and to carry on their gainful and disgraceful traffic with almost complete impunity.

But, in truth, the system of licences is surrounded with immense practical difficulties. For its effect is to create a lucrative monopoly. It is well understood in London and Liverpool and Manchester, that no trade is so profitable as this. It requires little or no capital beyond what is requisite for the purchase of the good-will; the brewer and the wine-merchant are accustomed—taking, of course, their own precautions—to give ample credit. A publican needs no education, not even any manual skill; but only a somewhat callous conscience, a not very tender heart, and a power of abstaining from his own drink: with these qualifications, pecuniary success is rapid and certain. But this is not all, nor the worst. Behind the keeper of the beer-house or the gin-palace, who is often a mere agent, stands a capitalist who has discovered that this trade can be profitably worked on the large scale; who pulls indeed all the strings, but whom the law never sees and never touches; who has large investments in house property, in plant, in breweries, in importation of spirits, and contrives to make them all cooperate in the production of an enormous revenue. Does one of his managers—the landlord of the house, in the eye of the law and of the public—draw down upon himself the animadversion of the police? He is replaced by another, to whom the licence is transferred, and all goes on merrily as before. The real publican may sit on the bench of magistrates, to administer ‘40s and costs’ to the poor wretches on whose drunkenness he has grown rich; and when the licensing day comes round, retire gracefully in favour of friends and associates in whose hands his interests are safe. Beer is so potent a persuasive at municipal elections, that he finds the access to town councils, with its result of direct power and indirect influence, not difficult. There is a well-known brewing interest in the House of Commons itself, which commands votes and has the ear of Ministries; much more is there in every constituency a large phalanx of publicans, able to put strong pressure on the lowest stratum of voters, resolute in the defence of their own interests,and now led, more or less openly, by men of a larger knowledge of the world and a subtler policy than themselves. And the sum of the whole is, that here is an enormous vested interest in the immorality and degradation of the people, which withstands eager reformers and timid statesmen alike in their efforts to remove this great evil, and declares that not a step shall be taken in the direction of better things without an enormous compensation to itself.

This, then, is the great difficulty in the way of restriction, that by diminishing the number of licences you make each one of them more valuable, and concentrate, if you do not absolutely increase, the force of the vested interest which is arrayed against reform. And it lies with those who would take this step to propose some concurrent measure which shall prevent the monopoly (if monopoly there must be) from remaining in one hand, and shall divert a part of its profits to the public exchequer.

This is not the place to sketch the outline of a Licensing Bill, nor are we disposed to accept the responsibility of so doing. It will be sufficient if we have indicated some of the difficulties which attend upon any of ‘the short and easy methods’ of dealing with this problem. But at least we may state our opinion that a new licensing authority, commanding greater public confidence and proceeding upon more definite principles than the present, is urgently needed, and that the ratepayers are entitled to a voice either in its election or in the revision of its action; and in the next place, that all licences should be strictly personal, issued for only one year, and not capable of transfer. Whether it would be possible to lay such a tax upon this trade, as at once to make it less attractive to capital and a large contributory to the public revenue, we leave to abler politicians to decide; it is enough to notice here that at Gothenburg this has been accomplished. Shorter hours of business, and on Sundays an almost entire closing, with the prohibition of any drinking upon the premises, are matters upon which all reformers are agreed. And in order that legislation should not end in good intentions, a much more efficient inspection than any which now exists must be made of all licensed houses, and the law put in force with impartial strictness.

But will restriction in any shape diminish drunkenness? That it will to a certain extent, is admitted, we think, by that very large class of persons who are in favour of shorter hours. It cannot be necessary, they say, that public-houses should be open before a reasonable hour in the morning; and it is proved that a large percentage of drunkenness occurs in the last hour or two of trade at night. But what is the difference in principle between compelling the existing houses to trade for a shorter time and lessening their number? If one plan is efficient in diminishing drunkenness, why not the other? It is unreasonable to talk as if all drunkards belonged to the incorrigible class, as if no man ever got drunk who was not also a dipsomaniac. Many a poor fellow, very ready to fall and yet very willing to stand if he could, finds himself overpowered by the ubiquity of the temptation; he cannot get out of sight or hearing of it; occasion is always ready to inflame and gratify desire; no part of his daily path but offers this stumbling-block to his feet. This multiplication of more drinking-houses in our great cities is certainly the product of moral corruption, but not less certainly a perpetually corrupting agency: drinking habits make drinking-houses, and in return drinking-houses make drinking habits. No one can be more profoundly convinced than we are that legislation cannot do everything for the repression of this national vice ; but it is an extreme of opinion, in our view even more pernicious, to believe that it can do nothing.

At the same time we must confess that we have watched with regret so large a part of the zeal and strength of the old Temperance movement diverted from the work of reforming drunkards one by one, of spreading sobriety little by little, towards the production of a change in legislation which we believe to be unattainable, and which, if attained, would not produce the result desired. There are no royal or legislative roads to moral reform; nothing is so deceptive, because so full of apparent promise, as a ‘shortcut’ to great changes in the habits of a nation. All that the collective wisdom of a people, as expressed in law, can do in regard to vices which cannot be treated as crimes, is to take away any unnecessary and overpowering temptation to their commission; so to modify circumstance as to make it clear that the responsibility for them rests upon the individual conscience; to give a fair chance of virtue to a coming generation. But at the same time it must be remembered that any attempt to protect men from sin by surrounding them with a hedge of prohibitions,—to take private morals, as it were, into the keeping of the State,—necessarily recoils upon itself. It is no triumph of legislation to have converted vice into crime. External protection is not the same thing as inward strength, and very often does not even tend to produce it. And therefore when legislation has done all that it can, we shall still have to fall back, for the result which we desire, upon the operation of indirect causes which are slowly raising the level of popular life, and upon that gradual progress of good from heart to heart which is the sure, though slowly working, method of Christianity. The old Teetotallers were, after all, more upon the right track than their successors of the United Kingdom Alliance; and even if the latter were to succeed in the attainment of their end (which we do not believe), the characteristic work of the former will still have to be done.

In a very singular passage of those “Speeches on the Liquor Traffic,” the title of which we have placed at the head of this article—a passage which betrays a complete ignorance of the fundamental moral relations of this question,—Mr. Trevelyan tells his hearers that education will not remove the evil of drunkenness, that emigration will not remove it, that religion will not remove it; but that the victory which these and all other indirect agencies are powerless to win, will be gained by legislative prohibition. Could any one have uttered so strange a statement, unless, in the concentration of his attention upon the sale of drink, he had altogether missed the deeper and more practical question—why men drink? The physical propensity to drinking inherited through many generations; the drinking habits of the people, fastened upon working men both by the usages and the corruptions of their trade; the absence of any counteracting force in the public opinion of their class; the unhealthy conditions of their life; homes dull, squalid, comfortless; the restrictions put upon rational amusement by Sabbatarian prejudice; the incapability of higher recreation after monotonous toil, of empty minds and untrained intellectual powers ; all these forces, subtly combined in various proportions, drive men to the publichouse. If the public-houses were all shut up, the predisposing causes to drunkenness would hardly be lessened, and would certainly, in some way or other, continue to produce their effect. And therefore it is that we can only have recourse to those slowly-working remedial agencies which Mr. Trevelyan dismisses with such easy scorn—education and religion. It is perfectly true that a lull and active mind is not an absolute specific against this particular form of base self-indulgence, and that the annals of literature need not be very deeply searched to find drunken scholars and jovial poets. But no one can deny that in proportion, as the working classes have their minds widened from the inevitable narrowness of their daily work and their domestic lot, to a more just conception of the possibilities of life, they will cease to acquiesce contentedly in much that now weighs them down; and that with better dwellings, shorter hours of labour, larger knowledge, freer access to nature and to books, the gaudy splendour of the bar-parlour and the crude satisfaction of a physical craving, will no longer furnish their sole ideal of enjoyment. The only way of effectually weaning men from coarse pleasures is to implant in them the possibility of finer ones. No mind is so open to the access of brutal physical temptation as one that in its narrowness and emptiness is little raised above the brutes.

And when education has in part accomplished its work, there will be better hope for religion. But it will have to be a religion, not of outworn dogmas, but of living truths; making its direct appeal to mind and conscience; not at war with the intellectual tendencies of the age, but ready to shew how they and it converge towards the one final goal of the reality of things ; a religion which goes upon the supposition that self-control is strength, and goodness the secret of happiness, and manliness essentially natural to man, and salvation a matter of to-day, and the kingdom of God, the reign of love and justice, here, no less than hereafter. Such forces as these rarely win rapid and conspicuous victories, except in those seasons of moral and spiritual excitement which recur but once in a thousand years; they are but the leaven hidden in the meal; they move slowly from heart to heart—here making a rough life a little sweeter, and there winning a strong will to the side of purity. But we cannot change or hasten God’s methods; and only disappointment and shame can be the result of setting up for ourselves a new law of social progress. Even yet we are but slowly shaking off our barbarism: let us be content if, as the ages pass, the brute is gradually fading out of the man.

“Habitual Drunkenness: A Vice Crime, or Disease?”

Article by John Charles Bucknill from the February, 1877 issue
of The Contemporary Review

“Who shall be the Rectors of our daily Rioting? and what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and harboured?” are questions put by Milton in his “Areopagitica,” which have since so greatly swollen in magnitude that they can no longer be answered in his manner, nor the encouragement of sobriety be left as he would have it, “without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man.” The growth of this “national corruption” has been so great since his time that only despair of amendment could seat us on the stool of inaction with folded hands, acknowledging with him that “these things will be and must be;” or if this be so, we are compelled to feel that, how these things “shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a State.” It is strange that Milton should have drawn so much of his argument for the liberty of unlicensed printing from the supposed liberty of unlicensed drunkenness, seeing that the only law against drunkenness, pure and simple, which we still have, has been on the statute-book from the reign of James I. This statute, which imposes a fine of five shillings, neither more nor less, upon a drunken person, does certainly constitute the act of becoming drunk, however privately or quietly it may be done, into an offence against the law of the land. But notwithstanding the existence and the occasional application of this old statute, most modern writers on the philosophy of legislation have maintained that private drunkenness ought not to be the subject of legal repression. No one has written more forcibly on this point than Bentham himself, who in his “Principles of Morals and Legislation” declares that the primary mischief of drunkenness is “private and self-regarding,” and that its secondary mischief of example will not often amount to a danger worthy of notice.

“With what degree of success,” he asks, “would a legislator go about to extirpate drunkenness and fornication by dint of legal punishment? Not all the tortures which ingenuity could invent would compass it; and before he had made any progress worth regarding, such a mass of evil would be produced by the punishment as would exceed a thousandfold the utmost possible mischief of the offence. The great difficulty would be in the procuring evidence, an object which could not be attempted with any probability of success, without spreading dismay through every family, tearing the bonds of sympathy asunder, and rooting out the influence of all the social motives. All he can do, then, against offences of this nature with any prospect of advantage in the way of direct legislation, is to subject them, in cases of notoriety, to a slight censure, so as thereby to cover them with a slight shade of artificial disrepute.”

In his “Essay on Liberty,” John Stuart Mill argues this point still more keenly and thoroughly, upon the principle that “no person ought to be punished simply for being drunk;” and he very clearly indicates the conditions and complications which might render punishment for drunkenness justifiable, such as the neglect of public duty, the inability to pay debts or to support and educate a family, and the act of “ making himself drunk in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others.”

Milton, Bentham, and Mill, then, agree in this, that simple drunkenness ought to be subjected not to the political but to the social sanction, and that “all the legislator can hope to do is to increase the efficacy of private ethics.” This to a great extent has been done among the cultured classes by the growth of the sentiment that intemperance is dishonouring and shameful, and among the masses it is being done by the steady increase and influence in this country of temperance societies, which already number three millions of members, affording a large, practical and promising answer to Mill’s demand for a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law, if not in the form of a “powerful police,” against this vice, at least in that of a watchful, pervading, and persuasive opinion.

If “no person ought to be punished simply for being drunk,” the persistent demand which we hear for a new law under which men may be subjected to long periods of imprisonment because they are in the habit of doing that which ought not to be made an offence is only intelligible on the supposition that the repetition of the vice constitutes a disease. This indeed is the real justification for the proposed enactment which the Parliamentary Committee on Habitual Drunkards of 1872 put forward in their Report. They say: “Occasional drunkenness may, and very frequently does, become confirmed and habitual, and soon passes into the condition of a disease uncontrollable by the individual, unless indeed some extraneous influence, either punitive or curative, is brought into play.”

This proposition, however, that confirmed and habitual drunkenness passes into the condition of a disease, is a much more limited and cautious one than that which is propounded by the professional advocates of what are called by the euphonious name of Inebriate Asylums. With them habitual drunkenness is itself a disease, caused in some curious physico-metaphysical manner, by what they call paralysis of the will, and manifested by supposed want of control over the conduct. This opinion was frankly expressed in the paper read by Dr. Bodington before the last annual meeting of the British Medical Association, and it is to be found pretty generally announced in the abundant medical literature on the subject. Dr. Bodington says: “The confusion between drunkenness as a disease and drunkenness as a vice must be cleared up. For my part I look upon all habitual drunkenness as a disease, and I would boldly call it all dipsomania. It is in its character as a disease that we as physicians are entitled to deal with it I would sink the notion of its being a mere vicious propensity. When fully developed there are not two kinds of habitual drunkenness. The cases are one and all cases of dipsomania, of irresistible, uncontrollable, morbid impulse to drink stimulants.”

A still more remarkable instance of the extreme position which has been taken on this question has been afforded in the proceedings of the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates. At the first meeting of this Association a declaration was issued in which the dogma was solemnly propounded that “intemperance is a disease,” and various papers were subsequently read by Dr. Parrish the president, and others, to explain and maintain this prime article of faith. At the fifth meeting of the Association, Dr. R. P. Harris, the physician to the Franklin Reformatory for Inebriates at Philadelphia, was bold or incautious enough to present a report, in which were certain expressions more in conformity with the name of his Institution than with the Creed of his associates. “He regarded drunkenness as a habit, sin, or crime, and did not speak of cases being cured, as in a hospital, but reformed” The Association denounced this heresy on the ground that the truth of intemperance being a disease was the base of their organization, failing which their very name would be “a fraud upon the community;” and their Publication Committee was instructed “to return the report to its author, with a request that it be modified so as to conform with the Declaration of the Association, with power to publish such parts of it as they may deem proper.” The Committee published the revised report entire. America is not quite “The land where, girt by friends or foes, a man may speak the thing he will.”

The majority there has a power of excommunication much more active than any which pope or priest ever possessed, and he who questions the dogma of disease among doctors must be liable to the penalty. A dogma put at the head of a declaration too! Why one might almost as well question that great dogma with which the constitution itself commences, “Forasmuch as all men are equal!” It is unfortunately a fact that if you write an assertion of this kind in very large letters, it is often accepted by the world without doubt or question, until belief in it becomes habitual and uncontrollable, and according to those marks a kind of disease; so that belief in the morbid nature of intemperance may itself become morbid, if its passionate, inveterate, and uncontrollable nature is equally admitted as the true characteristic of this condition.

Before making any attempt to examine the real nature of habitual intemperance in drink, it will be fair and right to mention, for the purpose of exception, those instances in which drink has produced common bodily disease, and those in which disease has been the occasion of the drunkenness. Cases of the first kind, in which the mental faculties are not involved, are perhaps the heaviest portion of the curse which strong drink lays upon us; but they do not and cannot enter into this argument.

But that strong drink does often cause disease of the nervous system, with disturbance of its mental functions, and also that such diseases of the mind, arising from other causes, do also give rise to the passion for drink, are facts which can admit of no doubt. Every medical man is more or less conversant with them, and medical men who have made mental diseases a special study are well able to recognise them. The history of such cases, their heredity, periodicity, the intermixture of their mental symptoms with other nervous disorders and defects, the peculiarities of the mental symptoms themselves in certain forms of emotional disturbance and of intellectual aberration and decay, are very well known to physicians who have made madness their study. The number of such cases, enormously exaggerated as they often are, is yet large enough in lunatic asylums and in private practice to afford abundance of experience as to the marks of all those conditions which can truly be called insane drunkenness, or drunken insanity; and they may well be left to the observation and treatment of the specialist physicians who understand them.

There is, however, another class of cases, fortunately a very small one, but of extreme- difficulty to understand. Perhaps also it is fortunate that ignorance of their nature does not seem much to matter, since the physicians who have met with them pronounce them to be absolutely incurable. I refer to those cases for which the learned terms oinomania and dipsomania were originally invented before the latter term was filched from science to designate vulgar drunkenness. In a somewhat large experience, I have myself never yet met with an undoubted instance of pure dipsomania; and I observe that very few examples are on record in medical literature, and that these are copied by one author from another in a manner which sufficiently testifies their rarity. The evidence, however, of credible observers is perhaps sufficient to establish the fact of their occasional occurrence. Dipsomania is described as a form of moral insanity manifesting itself in a passion for strong drink, not for its own sake, or for the sensations which it produces, but for the gratification of a morbid impulse. As the kleptomaniac steals not for the sake of possessing the thing he steals, and the homicidal maniac destroys life not for the purpose of making any person cease to live, so the dipsomaniac drinks, not because he likes drink, or likes to get drunk, but because he has an uncontrollable and morbid impulse to swallow intoxicating liquor. To constitute a pure case of dipsomania all other manifestations of unsoundness of mind ought to be eliminated, for if they exist the case is simply one of insanity with one prominent symptom. All other marks of a vicious disposition ought also to be absent, for if they exist, the dipsomaniac is simply a drunkard able to make superfine excuses. To be up to the pattern, he ought to be thoroughly sane and eminently virtuous. For my own part, I suspect that he deviates from the pattern sometimes in the warp and sometimes in the woof, and sometimes in both. However, I am ready to discuss him whenever he appears again, like the great bustard in Norfolk, and I only mention him here in order that he may not suffer the indignity of being mixed up in an argument about vulgar drunkards who are as common among us as sparrows in the hedgerows.

We come then, by process of exclusion, to simple habitual drunkenness, apart from any other symptom of mental disease than the passionate and irrational indulgence of a noxious habit. Is this a disease or a vice, and ought we to direct our efforts to its cure or to its reform? To many people the answer will be very simple, seeing that they will consider disease as a condition of the material, and vice as an affection of the immaterial element of our nature; but such is not my view, and I shall endeavour to consider both terms of the question by the same physiological method. And here it is needful to premise that as there is no such thing as a disease in itself, so there is no such thing as a vice in itself. Doctors have fallen into the habit of realizing and classifying diseases as if they were all composed of various materies morbi and were actual things ; nay, sometimes, they almost personify them as in the old trope of “the pestilence which walketh in darkness,” and moralists have done quite as much for vice. But the idea of a disease, be it ever so specific, can only be a mental creation generalizing diseased bodies, and of a vice the same, generalizing vicious beings. Reality ever attaches to the individual; and here let it attach, say to John Jones, and the question be whether said John Jones, being often drunk, is diseased or vicious?

I think it must be admitted that when said John Jones is actually drunk his organism is in a state of disease, pro tanto, as the same must be admitted of him when he has eaten more than he can easily digest, or when he is exhausted by debauchery, or actually suffering disturbance of healthy function from any other sensual excess; for any condition of the organism by which its healthy functions are disturbed, and which, if indefinitely prolonged and increased, would tend to their suspension and even to death, must be called a diseased condition.

The contracted question then comes to be whether John Jones is diseased or vicious while he is still sober, and when he is about to drink the “brewed enchantment,” knowing all the effects which it will have upon him?

Now, there are several causes and qualities of this condition which are common to the notion of disease and to that of vice:

a. The tendency to disease is sometimes hereditary and so is that to vice.

b. The causes of acquired disease are sometimes small, gradual, and accumulative, and so are those of vice.

c. By continuance and repetition diseased conditions become inveterate, and so do vicious ones, indeed by far the more so; and it would be a happy thing for mankind if the clergy could reform men with the same success which doctors attain in curing them.

d. Disease is cured by removing the cause, sublatâ cansâ tollitur effectus, and vice is abrogated by the same means; and in both, when the cause returns, the effect is reproduced.

These seem to be the common qualities of the two conditions.

Some of the qualities by which they are differentiated would seem to be:

a. Disease consists solely and entirely in some change in the organization, which is often known to, and is always thinkable by, the physician. This is a matter of certainty. But it is not known that vice consists in, or is even accompanied by, any such change. Certain vices may produce such a change, as an effect, but such changes are not known to exist as constituent conditions of vice; and if they do exist, they are too obscure for our present means of observation, or even for our power of thinking of them by analogy or imagination.

If it be admitted that both vice and disease are dependent upon states of the organism, a consideration of one fact will suffice to prove that these states are very different: In the early stages of disease, and especially of nervous and mental disease, there may be no changes after death appreciable by our senses or means of examination; but in later periods of such disease such changes are mostly to be found. But in uncomplicated vice, whatever its duration and whenever death may occur, no such causal changes can be observed.

If there be really no difference between vice and disease, all punishment, nay, even any reprobation, is unjust. Physicians should replace the magistrate and the priest, and courts, prisons, and churches be converted into hospitals.

b. The causes of disease are physical, and the last link in the chain of causation—that is to say, the causal condition—is invariably so. Emotion may be the exciting cause, but there is always a physical link intervening, generally in the form of disordered innervation. The cause of vice, on the other hand, is always moral, even where the conditions of the vice are grossly material and sensual.

c. The remedies for disease are mostly physical, and are invariably of a physiological nature. Even “medicine for the mind diseased,” in what is called the moral treatment of insanity, is really directed to the material condition of the organ. The remedies for vice are of a different nature, and are mainly directed to elicit opposing desire, to make indulgence more immediately painful, and to influence the judgment.

d. The successful result of remedies, which in one case we call cure and in the other reform, is very different. The cure of disease establishes a healthy condition of the body; the reform of vice establishes a virtuous condition of mind, and, even should the latter be looked upon as a condition of the emotional functions of the brain, the notion of it is different from that of merely physical health.

e. With some exceptions, persons suffering from mental disease are not conscious of their misfortune. “Le premier degre” dans l’homme apres la raison,” says La Bruyere, “ce serait de sentir qu’il l’a perdue; la folie meme est incompatible avec cette connaissance.” The vicious man is generally conscious of his vice, which, unless thoroughly brutalized, he regards with shame and remorse. Disease may occasion regret, but not remorse.

f. Few men are diseased, but all are vicious. The one state is an accident to man’s nature, the other is an element of it. And, with regard to the vice of drunkenness, there never yet was found a tribe of savages so unsophisticated that they needed more than the opportunity and the first lesson to plunge headlong into the abyss. The first debauch may be the fault of ignorance, as perhaps that of Noah was when “he drank of the wine and was drunken;” but the savages of all climes are habitual drunkards in posse. And the wild theory that habitual drunkenness is a disease supposes that the existence of a keg of fire-water will convert a camp of Indians into madmen while even they have not yet tasted it, for while they are sober they will barter their possessions, their liberty, almost life itself, for its enjoyment.

If we examine the condition of a man who has what is called an irresistible and uncontrollable desire to imbibe strong drink by these tests, we cannot fail to see that it is not that of disease, but that of vice.

The passion for drink, however habitual and forcible it may be, is not associated with any physical change in the organism. The indulgence of it produces changes which generally lead the drinker through a life of misery to an early grave, but even this effect is not constant, and before it has taken place the organism of the drunkard may be, and sometimes is, a thoroughly healthy one. If alcohol be a poison, it is not a very rapid one; and the statement which Dr. Forbes Winslow made before the Parliamentary Committee, that “very often with chronic drunkards, on examination after death, if you apply a light to the fluid in the ventricles of the brain it ignites into a flame,” seems to need verification. If found to be correct, it points to one use to which a drunkard might be applied: he might be distilled.

But a drunkard is such before he is drunken and in his sober intervals, and we are considering the condition of his brain when it is not “saturated with alcohol;” and this, I say, may be perfectly healthy. Excessive indulgence in other sensual vices—lust, for instance—will sometimes cause organic changes, such as softening of the spinal cord, but while the vice is only part of the character there are no such changes; they are the physical results of physical indulgence. The same is even true of the more purely mental vices, as anger, the physical results of which sometimes lead to morbid changes of the heart.

Then the cause of the desire to drink, the motive influence, is not physical, but moral. A man drinks because he likes it; he likes the taste of the liquor, and still more the exhilaration which follows, and even the narcosis which succeeds. There can be no doubt that drinking, and even drunkenness, is pleasureable to the vast majority of mankind; and if drinking brandy were as harmless as eating ripe fruit, it would be difficult to make it a vice. But the effects on mind and body are such that the present pleasure is grievously outweighed by the subsequent pain. The pain of exhaustion is the first which comes, and drives the man back to the stimulant, weaving the web of habit. The drunkard, like all other vicious men, prefers the present pleasure to the absence of pain in the future, that is, to future pleasure. He is a bad moral calculator, ever running counter to the wise maxim of Seneca, “Sic praesentibus utaris voluptatibus, ut futuris non noceas.”

The remedies for drink craving, as it has been called, are all moral. Even the inebriate asylum is a moral remedy directed to change the character, not to cure the disease; for if cure only were aimed at, the drunkard would be dismissed in a few days, as soon as he could digest his food and sleep o’ nights like sober folk; but the cry is that he must be detained for not less than two years, in order that his character may be changed by absence of temptation. This surely is directed to the moral side of his nature.

All punishment of course is moral; whether it is of that sure and constant form which the drunkard draws upon himself — “Oh, sir, to wilful men, The injuries which they themselves procure, Must be their schoolmasters”—or the precarious punishment inflicted by the State or by society, its influence is purely moral. But whether by removal of temptation, or by self-inflicted suffering, or by punishment, the result aimed at is always a change in the drunkard’s character, not in his health; and this change we call a reform not a cure. That this change is really so rare is an indication of its nature, the eradication of an inveterate habit of mind. The American physicians who gave evidence before Mr. Dalrymple’s Committee asserted that they cured 34 percent of the drunkards who were admitted into their asylums, and it might be so far true, that this proportion of their patients were sober and healthy when they left their asylums. But the Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland, who possess large opportunities for observation, have come to a very different conclusion as to the frequency of the real reform of a drunkard. These public men of large views and wide experience, who have watched the considerable number of habitual drunkards who place themselves voluntarily in the Scotch asylums, and who also officially visit the Scotch inebriate asylums to see that no really insane persons are detained therein, in their Reports for 1872, 1873, and 1874, stated their opinion that “It is possible that prolonged compulsory abstinence from alcoholic liquors may restore to habitual drunkards the power of self-control, and enable them to resist the craving to which when at liberty they succumb. Our experience, however, does not give us much reason to expect this result.”

And to this passage in the first of these reports, the following very remarkable addition is made: “Indeed it would not be easy to point out one single case of permanent and satisfactory reform.”

The same opinion was expressed to the Parliamentary Committee by Dr. Mitchell, one of these Commissioners, whose wise and cautious evidence ought to have had greater weight with his hearers than their Report indicates. This Committee appears to have examined witnesses with the main purpose of getting evidence in favour of a foregone conclusion, namely, the need of enacting a law for the commitment and incarceration of habitual drunkards in special institutions called inebriate asylums, and indeed the Chairman himself asked one of the witnesses (Q. 462) whether he had “considered the proposition which was lying at the back of this Committee,” namely, such an enactment.

Dr. Mitchell, however, plainly told the Committee that “ this proposed legislation does not deal with the causes of drunkenness; it deals with the other end of the evil;” and when asked (Q. 1211) by the Chairman whether he thought “that legislation of this kind would tend to diminish drunkenness throughout the country,” Dr. Mitchell replied: “I do not think it would; such legislation as is here contemplated would not tend to diminish drunkenness, except perhaps by its indirect effect in making the young feel that it was disgraceful ever to be drunk, and a dangerous thing to be often drunk, as that might lead to compulsory work and loss of liberty. In such legislation as is contemplated at present, we are simply mitigating a mischief, the growth of which we have made no well-directed effort to check. I should like to see it a compulsory part of all education for which the State pays, that the young should be taught that it is their duty to understand the laws by which God governs the world, and to pay a reverential respect to them.”

This is true wisdom, and would be right statescraft were it acted upon. Create a new sentiment among the people with regard to this most mischievous and degrading vice, and such a change of conduct will take place in the substratum of society as within a few years we have seen in its surface layer. If from public funds we were to create inebriate asylums for the drunken masses, “we should ruin the sober and well-doing, the class is so large.” We should, moreover, teach the pernicious doctrine that drunkenness is an uncontrollable morbid impulse, to be cured by treatment in a kind of hospital, and therefore that it is not a degrading vice to be resisted in its first beginnings, or to be overcome by resolute effort in its progress.

With regard to upper-class drunkards, for whose benefit public time and money was mainly spent by the Parliamentary Committee, it needs some patience to consider calmly all the maudlin sentiment which is written about them. Of late years the upper class of English has become sober, and its growing opinion stamps drunkenness more and more as a disgrace; and that some small proportion of its members are left behind in the shameful indulgence of the old vice is certainly not a matter of national concern. But they will ruin themselves! No doubt, and why should they not? Their possessions will be better placed in sober hands, and their undeserved social position will be yielded to the advance of more worthy candidates. But they will kill themselves! And this also is more likely than lamentable, especially if they leave no offspring to inherit the curse of their qualities. It would be a national, nay a world-wide blessing if alcohol were really the active poison which it is so often represented to be, that men who indulge in it might die off quickly. The French have somewhat improved upon pure spirit in this direction by the invention of absinthe, which causes epilepsy, and the Americans, with their vile compounds of raw whisky taken into empty stomachs, are far ahead of ourselves. An American drunkard who sticks to his work has a much better prospect of finishing it within a reasonably short time than the Englishman, whose usual habit it is to drink less poisonous liquor with or after food.

And if habitual drunkenness is so inveterate a vice that the Scotch Commissioners, in all their vast experience, have never met with a satisfactory instance of reform, is it not better, on all hands, that it should run a short than a long course? The thorough-going drunkard soon puts an end to his worthless existence, and there the evil stops; but he who prolongs the agony remains for an indefinite number of years a disgrace to his people and a danger to society, and, worse than all, sows the foul seed of hereditary mischief. Happily, drunkenness is a direct cause of sterility, to the extent of two-thirds of the children who would otherwise be born to sober parents, according to Lippich. But when drunkards do commit the crime, as Mill calls it, “ of bestowing a life “ which certainly has not “the ordinary chances of a desirable existence,” the beneficent law of nature steps in to prevent the permanent degradation of the race. Morel of Rouen has shown, in his remarkable work on “ Les Degenerescences Humaines,” how surely the race of the drunkard dies out in two or three generations after passing through the phases of nervous decay which we recognise as hereditary insanity and sterile idiocy. It is a new and awful example of the great conservative law of the Survival of the Fittest.

But the desire is uncontrollable, and therefore the indulgence is innocent. This may be said of all desire which culminates in conduct; and in a certain sense, all desire is uncontrollable which is not controlled. Hence the sin is really in the mind, not in the action. But is the desire for drink uncontrollable? Wonderful stories have descended to us from Marc, Macnish, and other old authors as to drunkards preferring a plunge into Tartarus to abstention from one draught of brandy; and perhaps they are truly recorded. But to a drunkard Tartarus seems a long way off, and perhaps he thinks it will not be very hot there after all. Moreover it does not cost him much to say what he would dare to do. Has anyone tried in vain upon a drunkard the certain infliction of an immediate pain, or the refusal of a pleasure greater than his drink? I can give a case in which the pleasure was not apparently very great. Many old Rugbeians will remember, as I do, J. S.,the clever, amusing drunkard, who used to entertain their boyhood with music and legerdemain in the dining halls. After a heavy debauch he made a bet of one guinea with Mr. Sam Bucknill, the old school doctor, that he would not get drunk again for a twelvemonth, and he won it. He waited until midnight of the last day of his sobriety, and then steadily recommenced the process of drinking himself into his grave. He was never sober again.

There is, however, one practical, business-like point of view from which the agitation for a law of compulsory detention in inebriate asylums has arisen. We learn from Dr. Peddie’s paper read before the last meeting of the British Medical Association that these institutions under the present law are not remunerative, because the inmates will not remain in them a sufficient length of time to make them so. This fact, that they do not pay, has prevented such a liberal expenditure as would make them attractive; for Dr. Peddie thinks that the bodily comforts and the amusements of the incarcerated drunkards ought to be very carefully provided for, “pleasing the palate with good culinary arrangements,” “inducements for sport in the way of fishing and shooting,” and the prison bars generally gilded as much as possible. If Parliament will only be so good as to pass a law which will sanction “compulsory commitments” and “prolonged detentions,” then these enterprises would come to resemble the “many existing and thriving lunatic retreats.”

This is outspoken at least, but whether Parliament will come to the rescue “of inebriate institutions which have struggled under cramping difficulties “ by adopting a new principle of criminal legislation seems more than doubtful. The knot seems scarcely worthy of such unravelment. It was unfortunate that Dr. Dalrymple, earnest and honest as he was, should have visited the United States to study the operation of the inebriate laws at the time he did. And still more so that his Committee should have been so much led by the evidence of his American witnesses. Even that cautious and enlightened statesman, Dr. Playfair, has admitted that his opinion, originally hostile to the proposed law, was changed by the evidence he heard, although I think at the present time he holds his judgment in suspense. When Mr. Dalrymple visited the States, the inebriate asylums there possessed to some extent the confidence of the public. And the Empire State and the Keystone State, and also the city of New York even, possessed such institutions of their own at Binghampton and Media and Ward’s Island, supported partly out of public funds. Moreover, State laws had been enacted and were in operation, authorizing the commitment and compulsory detention of habitual drunkards in these asylums. Moreover, the Government of Upper Canada had built, or were building, an inebriate asylum at Hamilton, and had passed an Act similar to the New York Act to authorize commitment and detention therein. The inebriate asylum movement was in the early swing of apparent success, and the statements of results were readily accepted from the enthusiastic but interested men of whose worth and work they were a measure. I have carefully read the evidence which Mr. Dalrymple gave before his own Committee, and I am bound to say that under the circumstances in which he saw the inebriate institutions of America, it seems to me eminently fair and impartial. It could not fail to have an immense effect upon the minds of the other members of his Committee. But, in addition, the Committee examined at great length Dr. Parrish, the superintendent of the Pennsylvania State Asylum at Media, and Dr. Dodge, the superintendent of the New York State Asylum at Binghampton, who supplemented Mr. Dalrymple’s evidence with statements of facts of which they professed to be cognizant, and especially with the very weighty fact that they absolutely cured about 34 percent of their drunkard patients, though, indeed, in one place Dr. Parrish says, “There is no such thing as apermanent cure of anything.”

Last year I visited the United States, and found that the condition and position of inebriate asylums there had undergone a great change since Mr. Dalrymple’s visit in 1871. First I will mention changes of public notoriety. The State Inebriate Asylum at Media had been suppressed because it was said to be a failure. The New York Inebriate Asylum in Ward’s Island had been ordered to be suppressed for the same reason. At Binghampton Dr. Dodge had left, and Dr. Congdon was carrying on his work with no better success. The Government at Albany had consented to give the institution a trial for one more year, after which time, unless it redeemed its character, the building was to be devoted to other purposes. In consequence of the failure in the States, the Government of Upper Canada had converted the building they had erected for an inebriate asylum into a lunatic asylum, and they had repealed the statute for the control of inebriates.

The New York statute has not been repealed, but it has been decided in the Supreme Court that it is unconstitutional, and it is therefore now never acted upon. The ground of this decision was that an intemperate American is a citizen not only of his own State, but of the United States, and that the State has no right to deprive a citizen of the United States of his liberty for conduct which is not criminal. In America the law is strained to permit drunkards who are not insane to be sent to asylums. In Maryland they are classified in a ward apart, and Dr. Conrad, the superintendent of the State Hospital there, said in a public discussion at which I was present —

“We have one hall [ward] devoted to inebriates or dipsomaniacs. The experience which I have had in the hospital has been confined to a class known as dipsomaniacs. Many have been coming to the hospital for several years, scarcely making an endeavour to withhold from drinking three days. / do not know of a single case where a cure has been affected by confinement.”

My own impressions of the inebriate asylums of America—and I visited six of them—are most unfavourable. I believe the treatment of habitual drunkards for the cure of their supposed disease to be unsound from top to bottom and everywhere. I make no exception; for the only institution in which I did find good, honest, earnest work being done was the inebriate Reformatory at Philadelphia, in the management of which the idea of curing a disease is steadfastly put on one side. All honour is due to the devoted men and women who labour in this place at the regeneration of their fallen fellow-citizens. But elsewhere I saw and heard nothing to show that any earnest effort was being made to change the habits of the inmates, or that the so-called institutions were anything more or better than boarding-houses within the walls of which the open consumption of strong drink was discountenanced; “capital places to pick up in after adebauch,” as more than one inmate told me; “but good for nothing else.” All the inmates whom I questioned admitted that without the slightest difficulty they could obtain what drink they liked during their daily walks, and with still greater freedom some of them ridiculed the supposed restraints of other institutions through which they had previously passed. It was not one of the labours of Hercules even to have a private store of drink within the asylum. The physician to a neighbouring hospital told me that on the occasion of some private theatricals at the inebriate asylum for the city of New York, he visited four of the inmates in their own rooms, and each one of them was able to offer him the choice of spirits out of his own cupboard. In fact, these American inebriate asylums seemed in some way to be part of the great whisky fraud.

At Binghampton especially, which I visited in company with Dr. John Gray of Utica, and Dr. Burr, one of the governors, the utter hollowness,or rather the total absence of any attempt at discipline and treatment was most obvious. One young man I did find shut up in a small room in the basement, and I was told that he had been there for ten days for repeated acts of drunkenness and for abusing the doctor. His friends refused to remove him, and the doctor hesitated to turn him out of doors penniless. But the other inmates, whom I found an educated, intelligent set of men, spoke very freely of the absence of all restraint. I was also told that the conversation and behaviour of the inmates, most of whom had led dissolute lives, was far more amusing than edifying. On the whole I came to the conclusion, that if Binghampton does cure 34 per cent. of habitual drunkards, the air of the place must be remarkably salubrious.

I heard also some account of those domestic mischiefs which Bentham anticipated in the passage I have quoted; of intemperate husbands who had been robbed of liberty that their wives might enjoy licence, and of other abuses which the evil passions of men and women are sure to suggest, with such a facile instrument as lettres de cachet for an imputed vice, for they referred to the time when committals were in force. On going through these institutions my mind was strongly moved with the inward question—How am I to know that these people are habitual drunkards or drunkards at all? In a lunatic asylum I can pick out any sane man who is wrongfully detained, but these men differ in nothing from myself except that they are said to be more prone to yield to a certain temptation. If compulsory detention be permitted, will it not often be used most wrongfully? for no one can distinguish the right from the wrong persons to whom it may be applied. But even if these places had been as successful as they have been the opposite, what sufficient precedent could they afford for a grave change in our law? They are occupied by a small number of inmates drawn from the well-to-do classes of society, of whom Mr. Dalrymple says, “The thing which struck me very forcibly was the exceeding luxury of the better class of patients but then they pay £10 week.”

Probably all the inebriate asylums of the United States do not contain 250 inmates, a very small datum to draw heavy conclusions from. We have larger material than that in the inebriate asylums of our own country, from which we might, if we took the trouble, obtain trustworthy statistics. I do not know what the statistics of permanent reform in them may be, although, judging from the freely expressed opinions of medical men, they are by no means encouraging. The superintendent of one of the best of them, however, let me a little behind the scene as to what became of his old patients. He told me that the number of patients who passed through his house during the year was considerable, that not a week passed without patients going out and new ones coming in, and that of those whose history he had been able to follow, a very large proportion died within two years; and this is exactly what a physician would expect.

Finally, I think we have no data which would justify us in appealing to the legislature for a new law, which would curtail in a most anomalous manner the liberty of the subject, on the plea of promoting the cure of habitual drunkenness. I do not think this fear of interference with the liberty of the subject “balderdash,” as it was called at the British Medical Association meeting. Habitual drunkenness which can be distinguished as a form of mental disease can be dealt with under the lunacy laws. A London physician told the Parliamentary Committee that he had a great many such patients in his private asylum. “Perhaps there had been a little undue straining of the law to receive them,” but there had been “faint scintillations of aberration,” &c, which justified the medical man in certifying the insanity.

There need, however, be no straining of the lunacy laws when any real symptoms of insanity coexist with habitual drunkenness; though as a matter of convenience, regarding the detail of treatment, such cases might perhaps be classified apart, either in separate wards or in a separate asylum.

It is no part of the duty of the State to deal by penal enactments with intentions and dispositions, and therefore, in dealing with drunkenness, it can only regard the overt act. Mr. Hill, the late recorder of Birmingham, once proposed that it should be made legal for the police to secure and detain all the wellknown habitual criminals of that town, forming an extremely small fractional part of its inhabitants, by which preventive measure he showed that crime with all its consequences could be almost abolished; but the mischief and danger of punishing a man for what he might do in the future was at once recognized.

The overt acts of the drunkard ought to be punished in such a way as to make them a real warning, and especially the act of public drunkenness,which is a kind of indecent exposure; also failure through drunkenness to maintain children, and indeed all drunken conduct which invades the rights of others; and there can be no just reason why the punishment for such acts should not be accumulative. It is unreasonable that magistrates should have to commit the same person from fifty to a hundred times for a constantly-repeated offence, and the remedy would appear to be a penitentiary for habitual drunkard offenders, in which they should be compelled to earn their maintenance, and from which they should be released on trial, and live for a time under the surveillance of the police.

Until some evidence has been procured that adult drunkards are capable of being reformed, all public money expended on reformatories ought to be devoted to the reformation of the young whose vices and crimes are to so great an extent the effect of parental intemperance.

Although the duty of the State does not extend to the punishment of private and self-regarding vice, it is bound to prevent public temptation to vice. It cannot prevent incontinence, but it suppresses brothels; it cannot stop gambling, but it closes betting-houses. So, therefore, it seems to be the bounden duty of the State to place the sale of strong drink under stringent regulation; to the effect that the trader in drink may not be the pander of drunkenness.

Moreover, the ruling powers of the State ought to enforce the equable administration of the law, so that it shall not be overstrained in Birmingham nor relaxed in Glasgow, and drunkenness made the special curse of a locality.

But, above all, the opinion and the influence of each right-thinking and right-feeling individual member of the aggregate which forms the State ought to be and must be brought to bear against this grievous evil. And when we consider the immense change in public opinion in this respect since the days of our youth; when we see the clergy of all creeds, from the Catholic cardinal to the common ranter, for the first time in our history earnestly denouncing the drunkard as a miserable sinner; when we see gentlemen regarding the vice which was fashionable with their fathers as the extreme mark of vulgarity; when the legislature has already stamped drunkenness with the fitting sign of disgrace, by placing the policeman’s hand upon the shoulder of any sot reeling along the highway; when the professed enemies of drink are enrolled in an army of three millions; and the foundations of a national education have at last been laid, we may feel assured of the steady increase of that national opinion, the only soil in which a national temperance can take firm root.

It is not drunkenness we wish to punish, but temperance we wish to promote; and to conclude, as I began, with Milton’s words, “Were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing.”

“The Liquor Question”

Article from the March 15, 1879 issue of The Saturday Review

The debate and division on Sir Wilfred Lawson’s Resolution were not significant of any change of opinion in the House or in the nation on the liquor question. Parties, as parties, have no conviction any way which they use their strength to enforce, and no party leader has any serious proposal to make. A larger number supported the Resolution than would have supported Sir Wilfred Lawson’s usual Permissive Bill, because the Resolution was so vague that no one was afraid that in voting for it he could be held to have voted for anything in particular. There was no gain to any one in such a Resolution being proposed and discussed, except to record the opinion that drunkenness is a great evil, and to make it plainer than ever how immense are the difficulties ‘of suppressing it by legislation. The general effect of the Resolution was that new legislation should be devised, having what is termed local option as its basis. So far as this means anything, it means that the residents in localities to be somehow determined are in some unknown way to be able to do something indefinite towards controlling the sale of liquor. This so charmed Mr. Forster. and Mr. Bright that they voted for the Resolution. Lord Hartington, on the other hand, having a sense of statesmanship, denounced the vanity of such a Resolution. Parliament, if it is to use the time it loves to waste, must debate about something, and there was nothing in the Resolution to debate about. A Resolution is a very useful mode of proceeding when it affirms what ought to be done, and leaves it open to the Government to say how it ought to be done. If the Resolution had been to the effect that all public-houses should be closed from a certain day, but that proper compensation should be given to existing publicans, the objection to it would have been one of substance only, and not of form. Buta Resolution that there should be “local option” of some kind and in some way had no meaning. It might mean fifty things, as to none of which those who tried to believe that they could seem to believe in local option would agree. Local option may mean that the ratepayers or the inhabitants generally of each parish should vote whether there should be no public-houses in it or twice as many as now. Or it might mean that things should go on as at present, but that the persons to grant licences should be elected; or it might mean that the magistrates should grant licences, but that they should act in conjunction with assessors chosen by a popular vote. Numberless other suggestions might be made as to its possible meaning, and each possible meaning would in turn be open to innumerable objections. Possibly there might be discovered some form of local option which would be an improvement on the present system; but no one can say that this is so until a definite proposal which happens to hit the mark is made. To the only proposals for a local option which have been hitherto made there are objections of the gravest character. Direct voting on the question of beer or no beer would carry bitterness and turmoil into every parish; and local elections held for other purposes would be spoilt and corrupted if the decision as to the quantity of beer to be sold in a parish was remitted to such humble officials as the Guardians of the poor.

One member alone was found to support the extreme opinion that the present system is perfect, and that Parliament should never again meddle with so beautiful and admirable an arrangement. Both Lord Hartington and the chief Ministerial speakers agreed that it was possible and desirable to make new efforts to combat the standing cause of crime and the curse of the British nation. If anything new is to be done, it must be in the direction of the prohibition or regulation of the liquor trade, or in that of relieving it from existing restrictions. That the liquor trade should be prohibited is entirely impossible. It would be monstrous to prevent all alcohol being sold because some persons take too much, and the nation would never stand it for a day. No statesman would dream of looking in that direction for the legislation he desires; and Mr. Forster, in his new-born zeal for local option, took care to lay down that there must, in his opinion, be always a Parliamentary minimum of public-houses. The counter proposition that there should be free-trade, as it is called, in liquor has for years had the warm support of a number of sensible and influential persons at Liverpool, but has never made any way either in Parliament or the country. The substance of the proposal is that everyone should be allowed to sell liquor provided he is of good character, or practically that nothing very bad is known against him, and that his premises are fit for the purpose. But this is only a device for getting rid of the difficulty of deciding who are to have licences, and how many public-houses there are to be. It is not meant to be an encouragement to drinking. On the contrary, a very heavy duty is to be put on every licence. This would, it is supposed, deter adventurers from starting public-houses except where they were so much wanted that success would compensate for the payment of the duty; while the venue from the successful houses would go to the ratepayers and enable them to provide, without cost to themselves, the police who watch over drunkards and the prisons to which drunkards are sent. It is difficult to see how this can be called free trade. It seems rather a scheme for throwing the whole trade into the hands of capitalists. It therefore becomes a means of regulating the trade, not of enlarging its sphere, and is only one mode of effecting an object which may be attained in other ways.

Regulation, it must be observed, proceeds in two different directions, with two distinct objects. In the first place, it endeavours to prevent drinking from becoming a public nuisance. To this head belong all the provisions for police superintendence, the attempt to get the trade into respectable hands, and the imposition of penalties in case of disorder being permitted by the publican. In the next place, it aims at lessening the amount of liquor consumed. Provisions that public-houses shall be closed at certain hours or on certain days, as on Sundays in Scotland and Ireland, and that the number of public-houses shall be limited, fall under this head. The real question is whether Parliament can go further in this direction than -at present or not. There is little, if anything, more to be done in the way of limiting the hours during which public-houses are to be allowed to remain open. The really important and practical point is whether drinking could be diminished I by lessening the number of public-houses, while, at the same time, proper provision was made for the wants of the population. At present it is supposed that there is such a thing ascertainable as the proportion between any given population and the number of public-houses it requires, and that the secret of calculating this lies in the breast of the magistrates. The real contention of those who hope to combat drunkenness by limiting the number of public-houses is that the magistrates do not know the secret they profess to know, and that a much less number would suffice. The houses that were spared would have an ill-deserved monopoly, and those that were sacrificed would furnish grounds for heavy claims for compensation. But it may be assumed perhaps that Parliament could surmount these difficulties, or would pronounce that, in view of a great good to be obtained, certain evils must be endured. Some slight burden, too, might be cheerfully accepted by the respectable, if they could feel that they were really helping the poor and ignorant; and a man who takes his liquor in moderation would for such a purpose be content to walk further than he has been accustomed and than is quite agreeable to him. What is really doubtful is whether diminishing the number of public-houses would make any perceptible difference in the amount of liquor consumed. Many excellent people who long to reform the nation guess that the difference would be not only perceptible, but very great. But it is very difficult to prove they are right, and it is on this head that the evidence taken by the Lords’ Committee may be specially valuable. If it could once be established that there was a proper proportion between the population and the number of public houses, and that this was a quite different proportion from that now accepted by the magistrates, Parliament could lay down general principles as to the number of houses and the mode of reducing the present number, and the less that was left to local option of any kind the better.

“How to Prevent Drunkenness—A Problem”

Reading III

“On the Abolition of Malt Liquor in Public Offices”

For a good deep draught of the bright pale ale

I would give coppers three;

But yearn as I may ‘tis of no avail,

Cos of ale there is none for me.

How well I remember the good times of old,

And the laughs, and the jokes, and good cheer;

But alas! now in Gath do not let it be told

They forbid us o drink any beer.

Of wine, I opine, we may all take a dose,

But wine is uncommonly dear,

So water’s the beverage now, I suppose,

As they won’t let us drink any beer.

I now in the service have been a long time,

Like foliage in Autumn, am sear,

And ne’er thought that I was committing a crime

When imbibing a drop of good beer.

Now, up, brave officials, assert your own right,

Be plucky, and throw aside fear;

Impertinence now has attained its full height —

Is man to be robbed of his beer?

Reading IV

Hungry Johnny

Not many winters ago there lived in a large city a little boy, whom we shall call Johnny. His father was dead, and his mother, a very wicked woman, occupied a cellar in one of the lanes or alleys of the city. As she was frequently intoxicated, what little she could earn when sober was spent for liquor, instead o fbuying food and clothes for her little boy. So poor Johnny often went to bed cold and hungry. Very often, too, he might be seen going across the street to a public-house, with a dirty tin cup and a penny, which he had begged to buy rum for his mother.

About the time our story begins, Johnny’s mother had found some work to do, for which she had been paid partly in money and partly in bread. But the money was spent as before, and the crust that remained had made Johnny meals for two days.

Late on Sunday afternoon Johnny’s mother awoke from her drunken stupor, and knew that her liquor was all gone: so calling her little boy, she said—

“Johnny, you must go and beg a penny to buy some whisky with.”

“But,” said Johnny, “I cannot go—it is very cold; and what shall I tell them I want the penny for when they ask me?”

“Tell them you want to buy bread,” said his mother.

Johnny began to cry. “Mother,” said he, “I have no coat, no stockings, and my shoes are all worn out: I shall freeze to death.”

This fanned the last spark of a mother’s love in the drunken woman’s heart, and she said —

“Well, Johnny, go, and get Charley to go with you.”

Charley was a boy four or five years older, and lived a little further up the alley.

So off the poor little fellow started in the cold, and, finding Charley at home, he said —

“Charley, my mother wants me to go and beg a penny to buy liquor with. Will you go with me?”

“Why, no, Johnny,” exclaimed Charley; “you will freeze to death—it is so cold!”

“But I must go,” said Johnny; “and if you will not go with me, I must go alone,” and he began to cry again as though his heart would break.

“Well, I will go with you, Johnny,” said Charley, at last.

Then they went up a street to a large church where they had been before. They went in and sat down near the wall. Here they quietly waited for the service to close, when they should have an opportunity to beg. Very soon Johnny heard the preacher say, “God loves the truthful!” and he began to think, “I am not truthful; I have told a great many lies; I am very wicked.”

Again the minister said, “God loves the truthful, but hates all lying!” Turning around, Johnny said, “Charley, I am very wicked. I’ve lied a great deal, and God does not love me. Nobody loves me, not even my mother!”

But Charley replied, “Yes, Johnny, somebody loves you; I love you!”

“Charley, I’ll try never to tell another lie as long as I live,” said Johnny.

Presently the sermon was ended, and the people began to pass out, when little Johnny stepped up to a gentleman and said —

“Please give me a penny, sir?”

“What do you want a with a penny?” he asked.

“I will not tell a lie!” said Johnny to himself, and then answered, “My mother wants itto buy whiskey with.”

The gentleman passed on with a stare of surprise, and did not give the money.

Another came up, and Johnny held out his hand and asked.

“Will you give me a penny, sir?”

“And why a penny?” inquired the gentleman.

“God loves the truthful,” thought Johnny, “and I will not be a liar! My mother wants it to buy whiskey with,” he replied.

The gentleman stopped and looked Johnny full in the face.

“What’s your name, my boy, and where to you live?” he asked. So Johnny told him, and he wrote the name of the street in his pocket-book.

“Now what made you tell me that your mother wanted to buy whisky?”

“Because she does want it, and I heard the minister say, in the church there, that God loves the truthful, so I thought I would not tell any more lies.”

The gentleman smiled pleasantly, for he was the preacher in the church, only Johnny did not know him again, because it was so dark. He put a shilling into Johnny’s hand and said—

“Give it to your mother, and ask her if she will please buy you some supper with it; and before you go to sleep, kneel down and pray God to teach you how to love him, for Jesus Christ’s sake.” And so he passed on.

For a moment Johnny’s sad heart almost danced for joy as he exclaimed—

“What a nice supper I’ll have, for I’ve had nothing to eat today.”

When Johnny got home he found his mother had fallen asleep, so he crept away to his filthy straw, for this was all the bed he had. The next morning he awoke with a burning fever and was very ill. During the day he sent for Charley, to whom he repeated the words the clergyman had said the evening before, and told him how badly he felt because he had been so wicked, and had told so many falsehoods. The third day he had grown much worse, and sent for Charley again. When he arrived, Johnny said —

“I am very sick. I think I am going to die, and God does not love me! Nobody loves me but you, Charley. I wish I knew where to find the man that said, ‘God loves the truthful!’ Maybe he would tell me how to love God, and whether he will love me.”

While he was speaking they heard a tap at the door, and when Charley opened it, he was surprised to see the preacher himself come in. When Johnny saw his face and heard his voice, he knew that the gentleman he saw in the church was the same that met him outside and gave him the shilling.

“Oh, sire, I am so glad you have come!” he exclaimed. “You said God loved the truthful, but I have been very wicked, I have told a great many lies. And now I am going to die, and God does not love me! No one loves me but Charley. Can’t you tell me how to love God, and whether he will love me or not?”

Then the good man told him of the Saviour’s love, and prayed beside him; and while he prayed, little Johnny prayed too, and his face beamed with joy, and he cried out—

“Now I know that God loves me! Jesus loves me!” It seemed, sir, when you were praying, as though the Saviour came down and lifted a great load from my heart! I am going to live with Jesus! I shall not be wicked any more. I shall never feel hungry again. I shall never be cold!”

His mother, who was sober now, presently came in, and wept bitter tears over him, and he put his hand on her head and whispered to pray God to make her love him.

The minister then went away, saying that he would call again the next day. He did so, but found Johnny lying cold and white as a marble on his bed of straw. He had died early that morning, and his spirit had gone to live with the God of truth for ever.

In the church where Johnny went that Sunday, there are a great many free seats; and one of those seats, near the wall, you may see regularly, at the morning and evening service, a poor woman, decently dressed, but very pale, and weak, and careworn. She joins devoutly in the worship, and her aspect is that of a humble penitent, who receives with meekness the Word of Life. That is Johnny’s mother.

Smugglers Smuggling

Cask for Smuggling Cider
Typical methods of checking the contents of a cask were useless with casks like this. A bent rod was necessary to check for tobacco concealed in the ends.

How the Deal Boatmen used to Smuggle Tea Ashore illustrating how boatmen from Deal concealed tea from Customs officers. Up to 30 lbs. of tea could be secreted under a man’s hat, coat, and trousers.

Reading V

An excerpt from Memoirs of a Smuggler, compiled from the journal of John Rattenbury

Before I set out on my last voyage, I had fixed my affections on a young woman in the neighbourhood, and it was agreed that our union should take place immediately on my return. I now claimed the fulfilment of this promise, and we were married on the 17th of April, 1801. We then went to reside at Lyme, and finding that I could not obtain any regular employment at home, I again determined to try my fortune in privateering, and accordingly engaged myself with Captain Diamond, to go with him on board the Alert, a lugger belonging to Weymouth, which was then fitting out at Bridport for that purpose. Having completed our stores, in the month of May we set sail for Alderney, and there took in our stock of wine and spirits. We then steered to the Western islands, on a cruise, in expectation of falling in with Spanish vessels, and after being at sea for three months, put in at St. Michael’s, where we found in the roads a large ship from Rio-de-la-Plata, laden with hides and tallow; but to our great disappointment, after trying various manœuvres to allure her out, that being a neutral port, we were obliged to put to sea again, leaving her behind.

The same day, we fell in with the Concord frigate, and our captain going on board, after having mentioned the circumstance, was informed that there was another ship from the river La Plata, that came out at the same time, at Fayal. The captain then went in to measure the distance, but found that we were within the limits.

We kept in company with the frigate for some days, and were parted during the night. After cruising for some time, we went into Fayal, to look after the Spanish ship, of which the captain of the Concord gave us information, and found her there; but, after having had recourse to every scheme in our power to decoy her out, and finding that all our stratagems were without effect, we relinquished the pursuit for a time, and put into Port-a-Pin close by. There we went on shore and drank with the Spaniards, and got the boatswain and four others to enter on board our vessel, which they had agreed to do; but, when they got on shore, they were found out, and taken prisoners. A few days afterwards, we went in again, and our captain spoke to the consul, who advised us to make off as quick as possible, as he was apprehensive that the Spaniards intended to fire on us. We accordingly took this advice, and went on another cruise; and on returning from it, put into St. Ubes in Portugal, to replenish our stock of provisions. The captain then asked us if we were inclined to go to sea for one month longer, and we agreed to do so, upon his promising to give us a month’s wages in advance. After performing quarantine at St. Ubes, we took in our stock of provisions; and, leaving that port, continued cruising without any success till Christmas day. The captain then mustered all hands, and asked whether we were inclined to abandon the undertaking, and return to England: to this we readily gave our consent; and, putting the helm hard-a-weather immediately, steered for home.

In the course of our voyage, we fell in with the Alert, king’s cutter; and our captain, going on board, received a threat from the principal officer that he would impress all his men; to which he replied, that he commanded such a set of resolute and desperate fellows, that, if he attempted any such thing, they would blow him and his vessel out of the water. When our captain returned, having heard what had taken place, we immediately put him below, and took charge of the vessel ourselves; we then hoisted all the sail we could, and got safe into Weymouth, on Sunday the 28th of December, 1801. Immediately on my return, I went to see my wife at Lyme, and remained at home about four years, being principally engaged in piloting and victualling ships. During this time, an American brig came into the bay, and I went off to her with three other men; but as soon as we were on the deck, the prize-master ordered the people to bring up his pistols, and detained me on board to pilot the brig into Weymouth, as there was not sufficient water to bring her into Lyme. I performed this office very much to his satisfaction, and at parting he gave me twenty guineas, in consideration of the services I had rendered him.

On another occasion, I was sent for to Bridport, to take charge of a vessel; and, the same night, a lieutenant belonging to the Diamond frigate, in the Greyhound cutter, came on board to impress men who took me and put me in confinement, and a man over the scuttle to keep me down, while he overhauled other vessels that were lying there. When he was gone, I said to the man who was put to guard me, “I will give you a guinea if you will let me come up,” which offer he accepted. As soon as I came upon deck, I jumped overboard, but the man giving an alarm, the gang surrounded and re-captured me, after which they carried me in triumph to the boat. I now employed my wits in endeavouring to find out some way of escape; and, when daylight came, I said to the lieutenant, “If you will go on shore, I will show you where there are some fine young fellows:” to this he readily agreed. We then went on shore, and I pointed out a public-house to him; but, not finding any there, he began to suspect that my design was to get free, and ordered me down into the boat with the rest of his men. As we were going there I saw my wife coming towards me, and entreated him to let me stop a moment to speak to her; this he gruffly refused, and in an angry tone, again ordered me forward to the boat. As soon as I got on board, I made a start through the water, and up the town; he followed me with nine of his men, upon which my wife collared him, and he threw her down; a scuffle then ensued, in which the townspeople took part, while I made my escape, and got clear off.

After this adventure, I went to reside at Beer, and made a great many trips in smuggling, several of them attended with the most complete success; but, at other times, I had the mortification to see my property captured, through the vigilance of those officers who, like harpies, were continually hovering round the shore, and looking out for prey. Among the foremost of these was the lieutenant of the Greyhound, from whose clutches I had so recently escaped. One instance in which I very narrowly eluded his pursuit was attended with such extraordinary, and at the same time ludicrous circumstances, that I will insert it here, as I think it will amuse the reader. Being at Weymouth, and finding that he was endeavouring to pounce upon me, I took refuge in a public-house, with the landlord of which I was well acquainted. But having obtained intelligence of my lurking-place, about two o’clock in the morning he paid us a visit, and roused us from the arms of sleep, swearing that if the landlord did not come down and open the door, he would fire at him through the window, and force an entrance. Immediately on his giving the alarm, I climbed up the chimney, and remained there about an hour, while he was narrowly inspecting the premises. On his departure, when all was quiet, I came down, covered with soot all over, making a most dismal appearance; and I likewise found I had bruised myself considerably, through the narrowness of the aperture in which I had been confined, and the difficulty of breathing in it; but I now triumphed over the sense of pain itself, in the exultation which I experienced at having once more escaped out of the clutches of this keen-eyed lieutenant and indefatigable pickaroon.

Recipe—Rhubarb Wine

When the green stalks or stems of the rhubarb plant are arrived at their full size, which will generally be about the middle of the month of May, pluck from the plant the stems or stalks; then cut off the leaves, and throw them away. Bruise the stalks or stems in a large mortar, or other convenient means, so as to reduce them to a pulp; put the pulp into an open vat or tub, and to every five pounds’ weight of the stalk or stem add one gallon of cold spring water. Let it infuse for three days, stirring it three or four times a day: on the fourth day, press the pulp in the usual manner, and strain off the liquor, which place in an open vat or tub, and to every gallon of the liquor add three pounds of white loaf-sugar, stirring it until the sugar is quite dissolved. Then let it rest, and in four, five, or six days, the fermentation will begin to subside, and a crust, or head, will be formed, which is to be skimmed off, or the liquor drawn from it, just when the crust or head begins to crack or separate. Then put the wine into the cask, but do not then stop it down. If it should begin to ferment in the cask, rack it into another cask. In about a fortnight stop down the cask, and let it remain till the beginning of the month of March in the next year, when you must rack it, and again stop down the cask; but if, from continued slight fermentation in any cask, the wine then should have lost any of its original sweetness, you must put into the racked wine a sufficient quantity of loaf-sugar to sweeten it, and stop down the cask, taking care in all cases that the cask should be full. In a month or six weeks it will be fit to bottle, and in the summer to drink; but the wine will be improved by remaining a year or more in the cask after it has been racked. It should be remarked that the plant in the autumn (about the latter end of August) will produce a second crop, when you can make another quantity or wine, by pursuing a like process.

Table of Contents

- The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy

- Title page
- Copyright
- Contents
- I. How His Cold Was Cured
- II. How He Saw Two Other Men
- III. The Mysterious Great-Coat
- IV. At the Time of the New Moon
- V. How They Went to Lullstead Cove and Back
- VI. The Great Search at Nether-Moynton

- VII. The Walk to Warm'ell Cross; and Afterwards

- Illuminations for The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy

- Table of Contents

- Hardy’s Fictional Universe

- Illustration
- Introductory
- Illustration
- Budmouth to Lulstead

- Reading I

- “A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four” by Thomas Hardy

- Reading II

- “The Thieves Who Couldn’t Stop Sneezing” by Thomas Hardy

- British Liquor Laws

- Metropolitan Police Act of 1839

- Licensing Act of 1872

- Illustration

- Contemporary Media

- “Drunkenness and Legislation”

- “Habitual Drunkenness: A Vice Crime, or Disease?”

- “The Liquor Question”

- Illustration

- Reading III

- “On the Abolition of Malt Liquor in Public Offices”

- Reading IV

- Hungry Johnny

- Smugglers Smuggling

- Illustration

- Illustration

- Reading V

- An excerpt from Memoirs of a Smuggler, compiled from the journal of John Rattenbury

- RecipeRhubarb Wine