The effects of drunkenness, as exhibited by married and unmarried men, have been drawn from instances unhappily too well known to the author. Let us look now at the effects of this national sin, this degrading, despicable form of selfishness, regarded from a public point of view. What do the public prints tell us? What do we read of every day? Is there a crime that can be named that cannot be shown to have originated in drunkenness? Wife and child murder are actually common as one of these results. The vile husband comes home drunk, a quarrel ensues between him and his wife, and she--perhaps with her infant, or little boy or girl--is kicked to death by the infuriated savage. And what is too often the result? If the human brute expresses sorrow, and says he had taken a drop too much, he is allowed in some way or other to escape. Either the coroner and his jury bring in manslaughter, or the sapient judge and jury, by whom the ruffian is tried, find some legal reason to let him off, or the jury refuse to hang. They are too pitiful, but they have no pity for the unfortunate woman and her child or children. Drunkenness, as it is now regarded, is positively a protection to the murderer. Let us see how it acts in cases of less enormity than murder. Someone, man or woman, is beaten or kicked within an inch of his or her life, and the excuse invariably is that the beast had been drinking. Magistrates almost always ask this question. Policemen never fail to state that the man was, or was not, drunk. If the statement is that he was not drunk, it invariably acts as an aggravation of guilt; and, _vice versâ_, if the culprit is pronounced to have been drunk, it is at once received as a palliation. That which in common-sense is a positive crime, _per se_, is made by irrational custom to lessen and mitigate a greater crime.
The plea put forward to defend this practice is this: Would you punish severely the man who, from the influence of seductive company, or from any other cause, happens to get tipsy, even if he should commit manslaughter or other serious offence while under the effects of vicious stimulation? Certainly not. But this is mere sophistry. It is not an accident we have to consider; it is that of men who night after night deprive themselves of their senses by drink. In this case it appears clear that the fact of the man being drunk is a serious addition to his crime, as he has wilfully, and with his eyes open, deprived himself of his senses. This portion of the subject is too wide, too vast, for me to enter upon, as it necessarily touches the legal aspect of the question; and there are no doubt numberless legal gentlemen, gifted with fine and acute intellects, who are fully equal to the determination of the intricacies and difficulties of the question.