(i) Wesley and the Liquor Traffic
CHAPTER XIII
THE REASSERTION OF THE CHRISTIAN ETHIC
Tuat Wesley's conversion changed his outlook from a dominantly priestly to an aggressively prophetic interpretation of Christianity, is a fact pregnant with the strongest ethical implications.
Throughout Britain, and far beyond, this transfigured man and the Revival of which he was the dynamic centre, caused purging Light to shine in deep darkness: and though for long the darkness comprehended not the Light, finally a new day broke.
And among the manifestations of the new dawning, which made Christ real and imminent to an apostate people, was a vehement reassertion of the wisdom and potency of the Christian ethic, and of its applicability to the practical concerns of every day life.
A new faith therefore was gradually creating a new conscience, and a new conscience was gradually creating a new awareness of moral evil and social sin, which long had been accepted, if not condoned or even extolled, as normal and necessary expressions of the " natural order "' of things.
(i) Wesley and the Liquor Traffic Something of the vitiating influence of the liquor traffic on the social conditions in England when Wesley began his crusade we have already seen.1
Lecky, a rationalist, in his classic History of the period, refers repeatedly, and in different volumes, to this traffic as "the master curse" of England's social life.
Dr. M. D. George, in her recent economic and social researches into the life and labour of the general populace in the eighteenth century, is driven to be no less emphatic concerning the centrality of this traffic as a source of corruption, stagnation and death.
Referring to the appalling social and moral decadence "between 1720 and 1750," she says it was " almost certainly due to an enormous consumption of very cheap, fiery and adulterated spirits."
But what Dr. George and most other social and economic historians, of purely secular outlook, have quite failed to recognise, is that not till the challenge of the 1 See chapter viii (section (ii).
London Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 20 ; also pp. 27-42, 56, 288-304
ENGLAND:
BEFORE AND AFTER WESLEY
Evangelical Revival had touched the hearts and directed the lives of great numbers of people in all parts of the country, did any semblance of redemption appear.
Liquor control legislation, challenging perforce deeply rooted personal appetites, before it could effect any real reform had to be backed and vitalised by strong moral and spiritual convictions: and of such convictions, prior to the great Revival, England was almost bankrupt.
From the very beginning, however, the Revival, in the face of much contumely and contempt, marshalled all its forces in direct attack upon the organised liquor traffic, as the unmistakable source of a vast volume of personal and social degradation.
And that John Wesley became ultimately the most effective temperance advocate the Englishspeaking world has yet reared, is a claim which will square with facts. é If to Wesley the traffic in human life was " the execrable sum of all the villainies," the traffic in intoxicating liquors fell easily into second place: and the vested interests behind the latter he lashed quite as unsparingly as those behind the former ; for to him wealth gained by the distilling and distribution of beverage intoxicants, was scarcely less "stained in blood " than wealth gained through slavery.
In his sermon on The Use of Money, for instance, after emphasising the Christian duty to practise industry, frugality and thrift, when defining the sphere of legitimate gain, he says:
'' Neither may we gain by hurting our neighbour in his body.
Therefore we may not sell anything which tends to impair health: such is evidently all that liquid fire, commonly called drams or spirituous liquors.""
Then he continues : "' Those who prepare and sell them only for medicine may keep their conscience clear.
But who are they who prepare and sell them only for this end?
Do you know ten such distillers in England?
Then excuse them.
But all who sell in the common way, to any who will buy, are pozsoners general.
They murder his majesty's subjects wholesale ; neither do they ever pity or spare.
They drive them to hell like sheep; and what is their gain ?—is it not the blood of these men?
Who then would envy their large estates and sumptuous palaces ?
A curse is in the midst of them.
The curse of God cleaves to the stones, the timber, the furniture of them.
The curse of God is in their gardens, their walks, their groves ; a fire that burns to the nethermost hell.
Blood, blood is there; the foundations, the floor, the walls, the roof are stained with blood!
And canst thou hope, O thou man of blood, though thou are clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and farest sumptuously every day ; canst thou hope to deliver down the fields of blood to the third generation?
Not so, for there is a God in heaven ;
REASSERTION
OF THE CHRISTIAN ETHIC
therefore thy name shall be rooted out.
Like those whom thou hast destroyed, body and soul, 'thy memorial shall perish with thee '."??
That this relentless opposition to the liquor traffic was nothing accidental or sporadic, but held a crucial place in Wesley's teaching needs no demonstration.
In season and out of season, he attacked the whole traffic as the foe of all progress and the antithesis of true liberty.
In his Thoughts on Present Scarcity of Provisions (1773), he asks:
'' Why is food so dear?" and proffers this answer : "' The grand cause is because such immense quantities of corn are continually consumed in distilling.
Nearly half of the wheat produced in the Kingdom every year is consumed, not in so harmless a way as throwing it into the sea, but by converting it into deadly poison, poison that naturally destroys not only the strength and life but also the morals of our countrymen."
Then, lashing the age-old argument that the traffic affords indispensable State revenue, he indulges a characteristic satirical thrust:
'' Oh, tell it not in Constantinople that the English raise the royal revenue by selling the flesh and blood of their countrymen."
The " trade's " stock arguments concerning " Personal Liberty,"
Wesley believed utterly hollow and insincere.
To him they were but smoke-screens behind which Avarice and Cupidity, while mouthing pretty phrases about " freedom "' and " patriotism," attacked the foundations of social welfare.
On humanitarian and social grounds, therefore, Wesley pleaded for the complete abolition of the manufacture and sale of all spirituous liquors for beverage purposes, as a duty of State.?
His letter to the Prime Minister, William Pitt, dated September 6th, 1784, is, in this connection, illuminating.
'' Suppose your influence,' he wrote, "' could prevent distilling by making it a felony, you would do more service to your country than any Prime Minister has done these 100 years.
Your name would be precious to all true Englishmen as long as England continued a nation.
And what is infinitely more, a greater Monarch than' King George would say to you:
' Well done, good and faithful servant.'''?
Remembering that Pitt himself was a struggling victim of the liquor traffic, this letter is doubly courageous.
Always Wesley recognised the importance of educating public opinion and of sensitising the public conscience.
But he was no sentimentalist.
He knew that Legislation including certain prohibitive enactments—was absolutely essential, in an imperfect world, to safeguard and consolidate
1 Use of Money is among Wesley's '"' Standard " Sermons.
2 See op. cit.
3 See Wesley's Letters (above date).