Show Taxation for Temperance I It is now said that there will not be any increase at least for the present in the internal revenue tax on whisky This will seriously disappoint if it is a prophetic pro-phetic statement a ring of speculators who have been cornering all the spirits of that denomination that they could get hold of But it will disappoint another class also to wit those who believe that drunkenness can be largely taxed out of existence There is a third class too I who leaving out all sumptuary questions ques-tions believe that whisky and tobacco not being necessaries of life should sustain sus-tain a greater share of the nations burden bur-den than they do at present The temperancs people are very much given to the assertion that tho drink habit is growing and that it prevails to an enormously creator extent that it did when the country was in its infancy and before it had gained its freedom from Great Britain On this subject a recent issue of the San Francisco Call refers to a little book lately published by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS who rather knocks the modern temperance view into a cocket hat as it were From this we learn that the New Englanders excluding water had three drinksbeer cider and rum The law divided beer into three classes No1 being sixbushels of barley malt to a hogshead IJo 2 four bushels and No 3 two busnels to the hogshead It is i said to have been feasible to get drunk on I a pennys worth or a pint of No2 Cidar a year old would lay a man out as fiat as whisky as it carried 16 to 23 percent i per-cent of alcohol Early in the eIghteenth century according I ac-cording to this veracious chronicle West I India rum got into the market about the time New Bedford and Boston were the great shipping ports Everybody in New England drank rUIn which was I worth three shillings a gallon and carried car-ried about 50 per cent alcohol enabling a gentleman to get reasonably slewed for about eight cents of our money And they got drunk as lords without disgracing disgrac-ing themselves for the first families indulged in-dulged freely and there were none without with-out sin to heave the first brick Our San Francisco neighbor reviewing Mr ADAMS book remarks Exact comparisons cannot be made for want of statistics of past times But there is reason to believe that intoxication was more common among the early colonists I who put an ungodly truant from church I in the pillory than it s now though I the cities arc full of loose multitudes of idle strangers Doubtless the cheapness of the liquor had no little to do with the condition of inebrity recorded of the people for with I Bedford rum at sixty cents a gallon a high old time was brought within the reach of the humblest homes I |