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Untitled Article
tion of drunkenness . The writer testifies to this change as within the compass of his own observation : * Formerly , and even within my own recollection , the education and manners of all sorts of workmen in London were so nearly alike , that they may be said to have differed in no material particular . The mmt
skilled and most ordinary workmen were equally ignorant and dissolutefew could write , none read books of any use to them , and very few ever looked at a book of any sort . Those among them who had even the meanest accomplishment were remarkable exceptions . The whole body was much more dissolute and profligate than they are now , and
drunkenness was their conspicuous and prevailing vice . Without information on any subject , and without any desire for information , their leisure could alone be occupied with the grossest enjoyments ; and the most skilled and best paid workmen were , as they had the most means of being so , much more dissolute than the less skilled and worse paid workmen , whose means were less .
• Now , the difference between skilled workmen and commonlabourer * is as strongly marked as was the difference between the workman and his employer ; and in many cases the difference is nearly as great and as well defined between the skilful and unskilful workman in the same
business . 1 Drunkenness is no longer the prevailing and conspicuous vice among workmen . The very meanest and least informed being much more sober as a class , much more orderly and decent , and much more cleanly in their persons , than were those who in former times were far above them in respect to the amount of wages they received ; whilst the most skilled and best paid are , as classes , more sober , more moral , and better informed , than were the generality of their employers at the time alluded to .
This is contrary to the common notion , and to the loud comp laints which we incessantly hear of the increase of intoxication . Vet , notwithstanding all the statements made before Mr . Buckingham ' * committee , we take it to be the truth . The ample opportunities possessed by the writer through along life , —opportunities created and extended in every direction by his interest in
the concerns of operatives of every class , —render his evidence , ifnot of itself conclusive , yet such as to require very distinct and complete disproof to shake our faith in it . The supposed increase of drunkenness is probably owin g to the real increase of religious zeaL The sensitiveness of the devout portion of the community
has increased , together with its numbers and influence . The vice ii more offensive than it was ; and the growth of the feeling is very naturally mistaken for the growth of the crime . That drunkenness has decreased in the upper classes no one oan doubt ; and though its cotemporaneous increase among the lower classe *
be not impossible , it would be somewhat anomalous ; the more so a « the latter have , meanwhile , been making far more rapid stride * in the acquisition of knowledge . The cost of drunkenness is a collateral argument that it * prevalence amongst tjie poor has been exaggerated , Our author says—
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B 26 Improvement ofth * Working People .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 626, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/22/
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