be, that they have not the hundredth part of the mental temptation of etiquette and compliment soliciting them at every corner, with some minds, far more difficult to resist than physical craving. It is now time that our societies for promoting temperance should be founded on principles that will, in fact, meet the case of our native country; they ought to be British, not American; and this should be written as with a sunbeam. I had intended to state at length in this work, a case which has struck me forcibly, as exhibiting a near resemblance to the contrasted circumstances of the Americans and the British, as I have endeavoured to represent them. It is the very opposite condition in which the negroes of our West Indies are found, compared with that of the Hindoos in our Eastern dominions, in regard to their respective state of mental preparation for receiving the gospel; and the very dissimilar and opposite means that missions of various denominations, employed in promoting Christianity in the West Indies and Hindostan, have now found it necessary to adopt; based on the different intellectual circumstances of these two races of men; and on the contrast of their preconceived and existing opinions, manners, modes of thought, and usages. But it will be impossible, at present, to do anything more than to request the attention of intelligent readers to this point, and their investigation of a subject highly interesting in itself; and particularly so, to those who regard it as of importance to attend to the difference of national character, and its actual effects on life and conduct. Some account of this subject will be met with in the Rev. Mr. Waddell's speeches on West Indian Missions; and in the address of the Rev. Mr. Duff, to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; both reported in the Scottish Missionary Register for June, 1835. Men and women who are tainted with habits of inebriation, with the utmost difficulty only, can retrieve themselves amid this mesh of entangling and overwhelming drinking obligation and coercion. In some cases it might be prudent, that reforming inebriates should absolutely leave the country, and reside in some nation where such a prodigious barrier to regaining habits of sobriety is unknown. Although I am of opinion that it may now be safely stated, that the artificial conjunction of liquor with etiquette and courtesy, has been, in the general case, nearly abolished among the continental nations of Europe, yet remains of the old barbarous connexion are still to be found, especially in Sweden and Norway. Something like bestowing wine in particular transactions of sale, has been discovered in a remote corner of southern France, after rather a diligent search; as well as a sort of apprentice footing among the wine coopers in the Gironde; but I have never seen drinking of healths in France, Germany, or Italy. At the same time, my acquaintance with these countries is too slight to make my experience decisive of the point. About Le Sage's time (who was born 1668), health-drinking was customary in some quarters.-(See Gil Blas.) I have consulted several English mechanics who have wrought in France, who all declare nothing of the kind was witnessed by them, while abroad. Sir Stamford Raffles states, that in Batta, at a criminal trial, when evidence has been heard, sentence is pronounced, and the chiefs drink a dram each, which last ceremony is equivalent to signing and sealing. Dr. Meyer, of Berlin, mentions that in drinking wine, the Chinese observe somewhat the same rules, as to wishing health and happiness, as the English do. The Tour of a German Prince also admits a similar custom at a marriage at Eisenach. There are a few ancient German wine courtesies, recorded in Grimm's Teutonic Legal Antiquities; and among the Persian Jews of the present day, healths in arrack are drunk to the bride at a marriage. I incline to think, that the "drink-money" allowed to German postilions is such now in name only, speaking generally. On the whole, in Great Britain, we seem to be behind the more refined nations of modern Europe in our progress of getting quit of these barbarisms; and there appears no parallel elsewhere to the multiplicity and complication of our drinking usages. But, although all Europe were involved in a similar mesh of customs, still, if the principle of mere imitation ought to be discarded as the rule of manners, our argument, that drinking usage should be abolished here, would hold good on its own separate and irrefragable merits. We shall conclude our examples of this unhappy national propensity to interweave strong drink and courtesy together, with the case of five-sixths of that class of the population which is designated, in its different ranks and degrees, that of ladies and gentlemen; entreating the reader to notice, by way of preliminary, that the state of matters above detailed, among the operatives, is by no means a thing of mere chance; that it must have had its source somewhere; and that the practices of the upper ranks have ever been the spring from which the fashions and etiquettes of the lower are originally derived. We entreat the upper ranks to observe, that they are the source of etiquette and form of compliment among their inferiors; and wherever they make drink the instrument of mere courtesy, they continue and enforce a wide-spread evil. This must be confessed on the surface of things not to be an obvious truth; and most people, at first, will think it an inconsequent conclusion at which to arrive. In different ages of the world, small things have been erroneously thought great, and great things small. Nominalism and Realism have created national wars; sugar colonies have produced contention among empires; forms of church government have been thought of more consequence than the religion of the heart; the depression and abasement of neighbouring kingdoms, and the balance of power in Europe, have engrossed all minds; while the time has been, both in modern and ancient history, that the study of statistics has been considered a folly; political economy beneath the notice of a statesman; surgery, medicine, and agriculture itself, as vocations fit only for slaves. The drinking of healths, and the connexion of national courtesy with strong drink, has also hitherto been accounted a matter not worthy a moment's consideration. But, as Bacon remarks, "Custom is the chief magistrate of man's life; men should therefore endeavour, by all means, to obtain good customs." We have noticed some of the customs of the higher orders in bestowing drink on the inferior; and among various degrees of the upper classes themselves, it is still the inveterate practice, without the call of appetite or necessity, to use liquor in mere compliment. Gentlemen and ladies still very generally drink healths mutually during dinner. As all the ceremonials of courtesy are originally derived from the usages of the upper ranks, we continue to remark, that they have not a little to answer for, who, after understanding the subject of drinking usage, shall still persist in perpetuating the practice, however it may be modified, of making alcoholic liquor, in any shape, the avowed instrument of courtesy. We beseech the reader not to be offended at this conclusion, to which calm and disinterested investigation has brought us; and will, doubtless, in due time, bring him also. Health-drinking may be considered as a very trivial and venial circumstance, to be noticed seriously in an essay that professes to expatiate on no unimportant subject; but, upon proper examination, it will be found that there is much ground for supposing that the whole framework of British drinking usage was originally derived from this barbarous and truly unmeaning ceremony. Thus the abettors of the apprentice footing may excuse it, on the plea that it is merely for the purpose of welcoming their young friend to the trade, and drinking his health, and such excuse I have heard made. The journeyman's footing has the same foundation. The liquor used at bargains is to drink the health of the customers; the founding pint and rearing pot are intended for the purpose of drinking the health of the proprietor of the house; the launch bowl that of the owner of the ship, and success to the gallant vessel. At baptisms, the health of the child is the ground for drinking. At all remuneratory donations of liquor, the health of the donor is drunk; at treating of females on various occasions, the same rule obtains; at funerals, the health of the chief mourner is drunk in Scotland with much solemnity. In short, in a large variety of cases, the drinking of healths may be directly traced, as the proximate cause which appears to create a national necessity for the glass being seldom out of the hand. It will be found difficult to answer the pointed demand of a foreigner, with regard to the peculiar virtue which is conceived as attached to drinking a person's health; and whether precisely the same courteous sentiment might not be as well brought out by dancing, eating, or singing, for the same purpose. The German Prince Pückler remarks upon the English custom of drinking healths as follows: "It is not usual to take wine (during dinner in England,) without drinking to another person. When you raise your glass, you look fixedly at the one with whom you are drinking, bow your head, and then drink with great gravity. Certainly many of the customs of the South-Sea islanders, which strike us the most, are less ludicrous. It is esteemed a civility to challenge any body in this way to drink; and a messenger is often sent from one end of the table to the other, to announce to B. that A. wishes to take wine with him: whereupon each, sometimes with considerable trouble, catches the other's eye, and goes through the ceremony of the prescribed nod with great formality, looking at the moment very like a Chinese mandarin. Glass jugs filled with water, happily enable foreigners to temper the brandy which forms so large a component part of English wines.' Professor Raumer says of an English dinner, Though I passed all the strong wines, and drank but few of the healths or toasts, I yet drank too much. This was almost inevitable, from the want of any drink for quenching thirst." The Saxon exclamation, "Wesheil!" "Mayest thou be in health!" is said to be the origin of the wassail bowl of the north of England. Roxana administered the cup to Vortigern with "Waes heil hlaford Cyning!" "Health to thee, my lord king." The following English drinking words of the twelfth century, are given by Wace, when he describes the drinking bout in the English camp, during the night which preceded the battle of Hastings :— Tout nuit mangierent et burent E "laticome" e "drincheheil" "Drinc hindrewart" e "drintome" The custom of health-drinking is said to have originated in the practice of offering libations at feasts, to the gods or chiefs; or of pledging in ancient feudal times, when, at a mingled feast of friends and foes, one guaranteed his neighbour's throat while drinking. But the Romans used to drink to the health of one another: thus, "Bene mihi, bene vobis."—(Plaut. Pers. V. i. 20.) Sometimes in honour of a friend or mistress. -(Ibid. and Horat. Od. i. 27, 9.) The Greeks drank first in honour of the gods, and then of their friends: hence, Græco more bibere.-(Cic. Verr. i. 26.) The Romans ended their repasts by libation and prayer. They drank to the health of their host, and under the Cæsars, to that of the Emperor.(Ibid. et Petron. 60). Barbarous and heathen usages should cease with barbarous and heathenish ages. At a time when the commons of France seemed drawing to a taste for ardent spirits, Louis XIV. had the good sense to perceive the effect that the drinking of healths, and other complimentary modes among the higher circles, produced upon the nation at large; and he disused the custom in his own case, and abrogated the former wine courtesies at his court. The Church of Scotland, wisely remarking the dangerous tendency of "health-drinking," forbids the ceremony among its members: it is pity that this prudent and christian caution should everywhere be rebelled against in Scotland. A great authority in this church, Mr. Durham, observes, "that it is an uncouth and strange thing, and even unnatural, that neither a man's appetite, nor his health, nor the time of the day, nor his ordinary diet, shall * Act of General Assembly, 13th June, 1646, No. XI. |