men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of
the consumption of British spirits, under circumstances almost
precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:--

Duty. Gallons.
----- --------
1802.............. 3.10-1/2..... 1,158,558
1831.............. 3.4 ........ 5,700,689
1841.............. 3.8 ........ 5,989,905
1851.............. 3.8 ........ 6,830,710

In 1801 the population was 1,599,068, and since that time it has
increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has
grown almost six hundred per cent.!

The poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. The
hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from
children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and
prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more
deplorable. In the five years preceding 1840, every fifth person in
Glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted
to almost five thousand.

It is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the United
Kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly
being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the
latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and
becoming more and more slaves to the former. Centralization tends
here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and "absenteeism," says Dr.
Forbes of Glasgow [126] --