lands. The manure of animals so fed is worth very little -they often do more harm than good by poaching the ground--and as for getting fat, every atom of nutrition is consumed in replacing the enormous waste of caloric. Truly, in his treatment of sheep, the British agriculturist is a very Sangrado. Common sense tells us a few facts about the treatment of stock that are so self-evident it appears incredible that they should be generally ignored. 'An animal fattens on less food at two years old than three,' on less food at three than at four. No fattening animal should ever be allowed to go back.' From the hour of his birth to his last unpleasant quarter of an hour with the butcher, his life should be one continuous unbroken preparation for the knife. To feed stock well during the summer and to starve them during the winter is to treat them exactly as Penelope treated her web-to undo at night what she had done with great care and labour during the day. Stock requires better food and more food in winter than in summer.

The commonest of common sense tells us that if muck is to retain its fertilising properties it must be protected from sun and rain; and the commonest of common sense tells us that if we wish animals to get fat we must feed them with judgment and keep them warm; and as neither of these things, to say nothing of others equally important, can be done on the necessary scale in our aqueous climate without covered yards, common sense tells us that as a matter of course covered yards must come. May they come soon!

XLVII.

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

I GATHER from several articles that have lately appeared in the Times that the official statistics of the last four months warrant the hope that drunkenness is on the

decrease; but this, I fear, is not the practical experience of coroners, doctors, magistrates, clergymen, police, Poor Law guardians, and others who are daily brought face to face with this monster evil; on the contrary, in their opinion, we are only just now beginning to reap the noxious harvest of the great year of drinking we have just passed through. The consumption of the hour may have fallen with the fall in wages, but experience warns us not to be too sanguine as regards any reformation resulting from such a cause. It appears to me a mistake to cry "Peace, Peace," when there is no peace,' and to make use of a temporary lull to calm the public conscience; better far that it should be thoroughly roused and the note of warning kept ringing in its ears.

There is little sense, and less manhood, in attempting to conceal from ourselves what is notorious to all the rest of the world, that England—Christian, civilised England -has a greater percentage of her children sunk in the most degrading vice that ever afflicted mankind than any other nation under heaven-at least, any that I am acquainted with. Go where you will, the moment you descend below the surface you come upon a chaos of low bestial drunkenness. Every town in England has its districts whose inhabitants, men and women, wallow in moral filth and degradation, where day and night the ear is appalled by sounds such as made the poet weep on his first entry to the infernal regions :—

Various tongues,

Horrible language, outcries of woe,

Accents of danger, voices deep and hoarse.

Enter any of the abodes of foulness, of riot, of disease, that crowd these miserable regions, and there you find the habitual drunkard.

And in his hand did bear a bowzing cann,

In which he sup't so oft that on his seat

His drunken corse he scarce upholden can,

In shape and life more like a monster than a man.

Man, and woman too, in the most degraded condition human wickedness and animalism can attain to-the Prince of Foulness himself patting them on the back and grinning over their shoulders! But what is the use of adding another to the thousand-and-one sermons on the horrors of drink? The handwriting is on the wall—crime, lunacy, pauperism, ignorance, juvenile profligacy, neglected homes, warn us in language that cannot lie that if we do not shake off our national vice our kingdom will be taken from us. Those who run may read, and those who will not understand would not be convinced though one rose from the dead.

We are a commercial people; morality apart, do we realise the money loss annually caused by our habits of intemperance? We expend 13,000,000l. sterling annually in suppressing crime and supporting pauperism and lunacy (I fancy it is considerably more, but I have not the figures by me). Now, 90 per cent. of this crime, 90 per cent. of this pauperism, 90 per cent. of this lunacy is caused, directly or indirectly, by drink. Last year 146,000,0007. sterling were spent in the public houses throughout the country. This does not include other millions spent in wine and spirits procured from other sources. It is calculated that 97,000,000l. of this sum was spent by the wageearning class-by the operatives, the labourers, and the ' residuum.' Do we really realise what sums these are, and what their waste or useless expenditure means? It means that in ten years the wage-earning class have spent 800,000,000l., or near upon it, in drink. Half that amount would be a liberal-more than a liberal, a profuse-allowance. The other half is as much wasted as if it had been thrown into the sea.

What profits a nation to have wise laws, good institutions, if their public morals, their habits and tastes, are bad? Is it not beginning at the wrong end to amend

our land laws, our labour laws, our education laws, till this horrible waste, which must stultify all legislative efforts, is in some degree checked? How many peasant proprietors, how many workmen become employers, how many improved dwellings, how much education, how much respectability, what a general rise in the social ladder would this 400,000,000l., fairly expended, have placed to the credit side of the national account! What legislative scheme, even though devised exclusively for the advantage of the wage-earning class, can restore to them a fourth part of the means of improving their condition they annually cast from them? The Government, as guardians of the commonwealth, have a right to say-This waste is intolerable, it is scandalous, it is a national disgrace; it deprives your children of education, your homes of decency; it pauperises the community; it degrades the national character; it deteriorates the English breed; it is the bramble that chokes all the good seed that falls by the wayside; before we help you you must help yourselves; nine-tenths of the evils you complain of are of your own making; you have now actually the means of doing for yourselves all you ask the law to do for you, and you decline to take advantage of it. What laws can improve your position so long as you waste from 40,000,000l. to 50,000,000l. a year in drink?' No reasonable being who will consider these figures can doubt the ruinous extent of the national wastefulness. The questions that interest all are, What is the cause of it, and how can it be mitigated?

The chief causes of drunkenness are ignorance and the consequent inability to make a rational use of leisure, constant temptation arising from the daily increasing facilities for getting drink, and sheer vice. Thousands of the working classes drink because they know no other way of enjoying their play-hours; thousands drink because they have been brought up and lived all their lives in an atmosphere of drink, and are accustomed from their infancy to look

upon this vice as a natural condition of existence; thousands more succumb to incessant temptation—the multiplication of public houses, the daily-increased facilities for procuring drink, the ceaseless solicitations of the trade.

Now, of course, education will do much to arrest this evil, and if time were no element in the question we might trust to that, and that alone, to effect a cure; but, unfortunately, it is a slow process. While the grass grows the horse starves, and though the next generation may be saved by it, the present, I fear, will profit little. School learning can but very slightly diminish the present generation of drunkards, but an immensity of good may be done by giving every assistance and facilities for healthy recreation and instruction. I doubt, indeed, whether, after all, this is not the system of education that promises the best results. Our climate does not allow the same open-air amusements enjoyed by other nations, but we have a certain number of picture galleries, and museums, and public gardens, and it should be the chief aim of every Government to enlarge in every possible way the facilities for their enjoyment. How preposterous, how monstrous it must appear to a man who is working hard five and a half days a week to find the museums and picture galleries closed on the Saturday afternoon and the Sunday, the only days he has the power of visiting them! What meaning does the National' Gallery and the 'British Museum convey to his mind, who finds it is national only for those who are at play all the week, and British only for the loungers ?

I see Lord Shaftesbury lately presented a petition, signed by 100,000 persons, against the opening of museums and picture galleries on Sunday. I am sure if the question were considered on the basis of common sense it would be easy to get a million to petition the other way. The petition was based on two arguments— first, that the door-keepers and guardians of the galleries and museums would lose their Sunday holy day; and,