For the labouring man the ale-house is too often a place of unmingled evil; where, while he is single, he squanders the money which ought to be laid up as a provision for marriage or old age; and where, if he frequent it after he is married, he commits the far heavier sin of spending, for his own selfish gratification, the earnings upon which the woman and children whom he has rendered dependent upon him have the strongest of all claims. Of the drink itself he writes:-- But Thalaba took not the draught, For right he knew the Prophet had forbidden That beverage, the mother of sins; Nor did the urgent guests Proffer the second time the liquid fire, For in the youth’s strong eye they saw No movable resolve. William Playfair, the famous political economist, wrote in 1805 his _Enquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations_. He has some striking remarks upon the bearing of _revenue_ upon the drink traffic:-- When a nation becomes the slave of its revenue, and sacrifices everything to that object, _abuses that favour revenue are difficult to reform_; but surely it would be well to take some mode to prevent the _facility with which people get drunk_, and the temptation that is laid to do so. The immense number of public-houses, and the way in which they give credit, are undoubtedly, in part, causes of this evil. _It would be easy to lessen the number_, without hurting liberty, and it would be no injustice if publicans were prevented from legal recovery for beer or spirits consumed in their houses, in the same manner that payment cannot be enforced of any person under twenty-one years of age, unless for necessaries. There could be no hardship in this, and it would produce a great reform in the manners of the lower orders. There are only three modes of teaching youth the way to well-doing--by precept, by example, and by habit at an early age. Precept, without example and habit, has but little weight, yet how can a child have either of these, if the parents are encouraged and assisted in living a vicious life? Nations and individuals should guard against those vices to which they find they have a natural disposition; and drinking and gluttony are the vices to which the common people in this country are the most addicted.