We drink the very strongest liquors that can be brewed or distilled; the classes among us who are not decent are in the habit of getting mad drunk, and of fighting, after the manner of wild beasts when they have a chance of using their fists, their feet, or their teeth on each other, or on the guardians of the law. Our places of licensed victualling are merely ugly dens, where the largest number of sots can get tipsy in the shortest space of time; and Sunday in London with all the public-houses, all the music halls thrown unrestrictedly open from morning till night would exhibit the most horrible terrestrial _inferno_ that eye ever beheld, that the ear ever heard, or the heart ever sickened at. We are so very strong and stalwart, and earnest, and English, in a word, that we need in our diversions a number of restrictive check and kicking-straps, which the feebler and less pugnacious people of the Continent do not require.[242] He felt that:-- Law does not put the least restraint Upon our freedom, but maintains it: Or, if it does, ‘tis for our good To give us freer latitude For wholesome laws preserve us free By stinting of our liberty. Or, as it has been admirably expressed:-- There are wheels within wheels, and there are liberties within liberties; and what we contend for in respect to liberty is this, that we are preaching against a liberty which is created, and for a liberty which is eternal. At any rate, as long as it can be proved that drunkenness prevails in any sense in the direct ratio of the facilities for obtaining drink, so long must the question of those facilities remain upon the legislative agenda. The problem is: can you separate the facilities for getting drink from those of getting drunken. For the man who can solve this problem, a niche in the temple of fame remains unfilled. There are plenty who are ready to exclaim that the causes of excess are easy to define. They would tell us that it arises from an unholy alliance between human nature and artificial stimulant. And they would glibly argue--take away the man from the drink, or the drink from the man, and excess is at an end. But one of these factors, human nature, declines the divorce. Still, however, there remains a sphere for legislative and philanthropic effort. There may be a loosing of the bands of this too often unholy alliance. You may get rid of many predisposing causes. One of these, and a powerful one, is _ignorance_, and that of many kinds. Mr. Buckle remarks:--