The Liquor Traffic
J. Wesley Bready, Josiah Charles Stamp · 2024
T URNING from the opium traffic, we face a social problem of equal significance. Shaftesbury was never known specifically as a temperance reformer. He was not a teetotaller; and, on one occasion at least, he declared that he would question the wisdom of any enactment prohibiting all consumption of alcoholic beverages: for he believed an occasional glass of wine had a peculiar power of stimulating good spirits and evoking social fellowship. 1 Yet, all this admitted, no survey of Shaftesbury’s endeavours dare omit some treatment of his attitude toward the social influence of the liquor traffic.