CHAPTER XIII. ALCOHOL AGAINST THE NATIVE RACES OF ASIA, AFRICA AND OCEANICA. The Trade with Africa, Asia and the Islands of the Sea-How it has Followed the March of Discovery-The Situation in the Valley of the Congo-The Vice of Intemperance almost Unknown where the Mohammedan Religion Prevails-Advent of the European Slave and Gin Trade-Testimony of the Missionaries-Government Influences at Work in Southern Africa-A Heathen Gough-How a Heathen Tribe Vigorously Suppressed the Habit and the Trade-Oceanica. HE alcoholic evil of the world is a unit, and no general T plan of action which does not contemplate its complete extirpation is worth consideration. As each individual's first duty is to rid himself of it, and his second to aid others, so each nation should destroy the evil first in its own special jurisdiction. But alcoholism is international in its extent, and our influence and responsibility are co-existent with our race relations, and the work should go on contemporaneously everywhere. Alcohol has a special affinity for the brain, and its ravages upon the mental and moral powers are in proportion to their development. Thus in the very nature of things alcohol is the great foe of civilized men. Europeans and Americans are its victims more than other people, because these advanced nations have more brain and nerve upon which the poison works. If savage and barbarous people possessed the power of self-control which belong to civilized men, they would reject the drink evil with comparative ease when they discovered its destructive influence. But the savage is weak to resist his appetite and passions; he yields to a temptation of far less actual power than is required to overcome the self-control resulting from that increase of moral and intellectual force which constitutes the very process of civilization. Whether the brain be the mind or only its organ-whether the material or spiritual theory of our highest nature be the correct one-all concede that the brain is the point in our organization where the connection is made between soul and body; and that, so far as our earthly existence is concerned, whatever seizes upon the brain and the nervous forces controls the human being. Hence the civilized man, if he be addicted to the use of liquor, and makes no effort to escape from its influence, is naturally the worst drunkard of the race. I do not know that the theory is correct. It is at all events the most consoling explanation which occurs to me of the apparent fact that civilized nations are the drunken nations, and that they universally spread the evil to others. When these stronger peoples set about their own reformation they have the inherent power to accomplish it. What they often do as individuals they can do if they please as nations; but the savage has no such innate reformatory forces, and so long as it is possible he gratifies his appetite until he dis appears. Thus of the three hundred thousand natives who inhabited the Sandwich Islands when they were discovered, civilization has destroyed all but forty thousand, a deteriorated remnant which even the redemptory influences of Christianity have hardly saved. British rum has not reduced, but has actually obliterated, the Hottentot, and there is nothing left of him but his picture in the primary geography, which people now elderly studied when at school. The relation of the more civilized races to weaker nations in the spread of the alcoholic evil is the most important aspect of the whole problem. There has never been a race of men which has not demonstrated its power to rise to a higher and happier level if it had the opportunity. The principles of the Christian religion never yet failed to convert an ordinary man into a better one when they have had a fair chance to produce their natural effect. In thousands and millions of instances the weak have been developed into giants of moral power; the most vicious and criminal into models of loveliness and holy life. This force which we call the Christian religion has unquestionably power to redeem and save to the uttermost-if it be given the opportunity. Its apostles and witnesses have ennobled human nature in every kindred and tongue under the whole heaven, and the blood of martyrs has INFLUENCE OF ALCOHOL ON HEATHEN NATIONS. 257 every where attested the sincerity of their professions, and their sublime devotion to the heavenly truth by which they were inspired. There is a force in the world which would save the world. But what is the process now in plain operation before our eyes? We find a population living upon our planet of fifteen hundred millions of human beings. Europe has three hundred millions, America one hundred millions, Asia eight hundred, and Africa two hundred millions, and one hundred millions more are inhabitants of the isles of the sea. Of this vast number of souls about four hundred millions may be classed as civilized people, among whom the Christian religion is nominally prevailing and controlling individuals and institutions, but really with only feeble application of its peculiarly unselfish principles in personal and national life. The remaining eleven hundred millions are many of them embraced in the provinces, colonies and dependencies of the Christian powers, and all are really subject to that supremacy which results from the spirit of political and commercial aggrandizement. Everywhere the heathen nations and barbarous tribes are giving way before the demands of the western powers, which, with gunpowder and opium and rum, proceed at once to "develop" their destruction. The costs of war are largely dispensed with because unnecessary; for commerce has discovered a way to convert the work of destruction into a profitable pecuniary speculation, in which the dealer makes his fortune and the government its revenue, and both blasphemously avail themselves of the self-sacrificing labors and the pious reputation of the ministers of our sacred religion to recommend the murderous commodity to the confidence of unsuspecting peoples, until the use has developed the appetite, after which there is no longer occasion for hypocrisy on the part of alleged Christianity turned Rumseller. The process by which "Christian" nations are to-day killing off the remainder of the human race is a demonstration that there are no Christian nations. Measured by what they do to others, Christian nations are the vilest criminals, the very murderers of mankind. Instead of civilizing and elevating the heathen we destroy them. It may be that this is the "order of Providence"; at all events they disappear. By a combined process of rum-selling and psalm-singing we "improve" these weaker brethren from the face of the earth--we promote their emigration out of it. And now we are well on our way in this great crime of assassinating the race by poison administered in the robes of Christianity at the victim's expense of body, soul and estate. This thing will be set right sometime as surely as there is a God. Take for example the people of India. There are two hundred and fifty millions of them. With more or less of success, missionaries of both Catholic and Protestant Christianity have long been teaching a holy religion and the advantages of a higher life to the people of India. During many years France and England contended for the political mastery, but for a century past Hindostan has been a British province and her accumulated wealth has been worked like one vast mine for gold. Many blessings have been conferred upon India by English statesmanship, and especially by the upright administration of private law. But in these latter days the traffic in alcohol and in vile combinations, of which it is a part, has increased, and is increasing to such extent as to threaten the extinction of one sixth of the population of the globe within a few generations, unless its ravages be arrested. Such an assertion seems to be madness-but what are the facts? Here are all these multitudes-perhaps eighty millions of them Mohammedans; the rest Buddhists, and all forbidden the use of intoxicating beverages by their religion. Whatever else may be said of their former condition or of their present inclination, until forced or tempted by their conquerors and the greed of a criminal commerce, they were a sober people. Whatever of evil there may have been inflicted upon them by their superstitions and by war, they were at least free, comparatively, from the worse horrors of general intoxication. Professor Parkes states: A great evil is growing up in India which now could be checked, but which we shall be powerless to meet in a few years. The Hindoos, formerly the most temperate of races, are rapidly becoming addicted to drink. This is said to be partly owing to the regulations of government permitting, and even encouraging, the sale of spirits, although alcoholic liquors form no part of the ordinary |