There exist, sad to relate, persons who, with the notion of promoting temperance, would rob us of our beer. Many of these individuals may act with good motives, but they are weak, misguided bodies who, if they but devoted their energies to promoting ale-drinking as opposed to spirit-drinking, would be doing useful service to the State, for malt liquors are the true temperance drinks of the working classes. The Bill (for the encouragement of private tippling) so long sought to be introduced by the teetotal party, was cleverly hit off in _Songs of the Session_, published in _The World_ some years back:—
If with truth they assure us that liquors allure us, I don’t think ’twill cure us the taverns to close; When in putting drink down, sirs, you’ve shut up the Crown, sirs, You’ll find Smith and Brown, sirs, drunk under the rose.
“Men are slaves to this custom,” you cry; “we can’t trust ’em!” Very good; then why thrust ’em from scenes where they’re known If the daylight can’t shame ’em, or neighbours reclaim ’em, Do you think you can tame ’em in haunts of their own? { 15}
And if in Stoke Pogis no publican lodges, It don’t follow Hodge is cut off from good cheer; In the very next parish the tap may be fairish, And the vestry less bearish and stern about beer.
Men in time will refrain when that goes with their grain; Till it does ’tis in vain that their wills you coerce; For the man whom by force you turn out of his course, Without fear or remorse will soon take to a worse.
Of course, in asserting malt liquors to be the temperance drink, or drink of the temperate, it must be understood that we refer to the ordinary ales and beers of to-day, in which the amount of alcohol is small, and which are very different from the potent liquor drank by the topers of the past, who were rightly designated malt worms.
It has been said that even pigs drank strong ale in those days, but the only evidence of the truth of that statement is the tradition that Herrick, a most charming but little read poet, succeeded in teaching a favourite pig to drink ale out of a jug. Old ale is now out of fashion, its chief strongholds being the venerable centres of education. We all know the tale of the don who, about once a week, reminded the butler of a certain understanding between them, in these words: “Mind, when I say ‘beer’—_the old ale_.” Ancient writers are full of allusions to the potent character of the strong ales of their day. Nor are more modern authors wanting in that respect. Peter Pindar, who wrote during the reign of George III., when ale was still of a “mightie” character, thus sings:—