The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions; Or, Joints In Our Social ArmourRunciman, James
Philosophy
The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions; Or, Joints In Our Social Armour
Runciman, James
Alcoholism -- Great Britain; Social problems; Temperance
foully since the days of 1812, but their worst sins cannot blot out the
memory of the national uprising. Years are but trivial; seventy-six of
them seem a long time; but those who study history broadly know that the
dawn of a better future for Russia showed its first gleam when the
aroused and indignant race rose and went forward to die before the
French cannon. When next Russia rises, it will be against a tyranny only
second to Napoleon's in virulence--it will be against the terror that
rules her now from within; and her success will be applauded by the
world.
The Italians, who first waited and plotted, and then fought desperately
under Garibaldi, had every reason to cry out for freedom. If they had
remained merely whimpering under the Bourbon and Austrian whips, they
would have deserved to be spurned by all who bear the hearts of men.
They were denied the meanest privileges of humanity; they lived in a
fashion which was rather like the violent, oppressed, hideous existence
which men imagine in evil dreams, and at length they struck, and
declared for liberty or annihilation. Perhaps they did not gain much in
the way of immediate material good, but that only makes their splendid
movement the more admirable. They fought for a magnificent idea, and
even now, though the populace have to bear a taxation three times as
great as any known before in their history, the ordinary Italian will
say, "Yes, signor--the taxes are very heavy; we toil very hard and pay
much money; but who counts money? We are a nation now--a real nation;
Italy is united and free." That is the gist of the matter. The people
were bitterly ground down, and they are content to suffer privation in
the present so long as they can ensure freedom from alien rule in the
future. Nothing that the most hardly-entreated Briton suffers in any
circumstances could equal the agonies of degradation borne by the people
of the Peninsula, and their emancipation was hailed as if it had been a
personal benefaction by all that was wisest and best in European
society. The millions who turned out to welcome Garibaldi as if he had
been an adored sovereign all had a true appreciation of real liberty;
the masses were right in their instinct, and it was left for hysterical
"thinkers" to shriek their deluded ideas in these later days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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