It is the fashion to lament the quantity of money still consumed in drink. But our drink-bill is nothing, in proportion, compared with that of fifty years ago. Thus, the number of visitors to fourteen great gin-shops in London was found to average 3,000 each per diem; in Edinburgh there was a gin-shop for every fifteen families; in one Irish town of 800 people there were eighty-eight gin-shops; in Sheffield, thirteen persons were killed in ten days by drunkenness; in London there was one public-house to every fifty-six houses; in Glasgow one to every ten. Yet it was noted at the time that a great improvement could be observed in the drinking habits of the people. In the year 1742, for instance, there were 19,000,000 gallons of spirits consumed by a population of 6,000,000--that is to say, more than three gallons a head every year; or, if we take only the adult men, something like twelve gallons for every man in the year, which may be calculated to mean one bottle in five days. But a hundred years later the population had increased to 16,000,000, and the consumption of spirits had fallen to 8,250,000 gallons, which represents a little more than half a gallon, or four pints, a head in the year. Or, taking the adult men only, their average was two gallons and one sixteenth a head, so that each man’s pint bottle would have lasted him for three weeks. In Scotland, however, the general average was twenty-seven pints a head, and, taking adults alone, thirteen gallons and a half a head; and in Ireland six and a half gallons a head. It was noted, also, in the year 1837, that the multiplication of coffee-houses, of which there were 1,600 in London alone, proved the growth of more healthy habits among the people.