The work whence I have gleaned the above details also informs the reader that “such as Doctor Samuel Johnson and John Howard set an example of abstinence from all inebriating drinks”; which, as far as Doctor Johnson is concerned, is somewhat startling news to myself. I had always imagined that the burly lexicographer—I was reproved by a critic for calling him this in _Cakes and Ale_—was a bit of a boon companion; and the records of Fleet Street taverns by no means tend to contradict this idea. Not only is the hard, oaken seat at one end of the dining-room of “Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese” marked with a brass plate, with a suitable inscription, but the many visitors to that snug hostelry, including hundreds of our American cousins, are always taken upstairs and shewn Doctor Johnson’s chair. Did “Sam,” and “Davy,” and “Noll” slake their thirst on cold water, beneath that tavern’s roof? I trow not. Cross out Doctor Johnson’s name as a total abstainer, please. In 1834, Mr. J. S. Buckingham, who was returned for Sheffield to the first Reform Parliament, succeeded in obtaining a select committee of the House of Commons, to enquire into the causes, extent, and remedies of drunkenness. In the meantime the limitation of the pledge to abstention from ardent spirits had proved a greater drawback than in other countries, because beer had been the popular beverage, and its use a cause of widespread drunkenness before ardent spirits were commonly sold. But the idea of {229} our legislators before 1834 had been that “good malt and hops could injure nobody.” From ’34 to ’45 there was great activity in the temperance ranks throughout the world; and in ’53 the United Kingdom Alliance for the Legislative Suppression of the Liquor Traffic was formed, its first president being Sir W. C. Trevelyan. In March ’64 a Permissive Prohibitory Bill was brought into the House of Commons, but although repeatedly re-introduced it never obtained a second reading. Nor is it likely that such a Bill will ever become law as long as the sons of Britannia are living outside a state of slavery. Repressive legislation serves only to stimulate that which it claims to check; and thus it is that these would-be reformers, whether Prohibitors of the Drink Traffic, Vigilance and Purity Societies, and Anti-gambling Societies have succeeded in making the state of London infinitely worse, as regards drunkenness, chastity, and betting, than it was forty years ago.