CHAPTER VII.

EPILOGUE ON PROHIBITION.

I have deliberately left out of the imaginary discussion with

which the last chapter closes, any reference to Prohibition. Had

the scholastic pressed this point, as an instance of religious

persecution by law, the American must have been forced to treat the

Prohibition movement as an exception, a parasitic growth which has

fastened itself upon the Constitution. He would then have had trouble

in sustaining the argument. In the world of shades, or in any other

place where there is time to pare down matters to their essentials,

the determining factor of religious persecution in the Prohibition

movement must be admitted.

As has been stated in the preface, it was the shock of recognizing

this fact (through contact with Prohibition agitators during a term

of service in the New York State Assembly) which led the present

writer to study the establishment of the Inquisition as the one

comparable instance of so drastic an interference of religion with

politics. In all the long story of Christendom there is no third

instance of religious persecution so systematic or on such a scale.

The foregoing study was at first undertaken in the belief of the

writer that the mere account of the political and military struggle

leading up to the establishment of the Inquisition would, by itself,

be enough to enable the reader to see for himself the true nature

of “Prohibition.” However, during the unavoidable delays of the

last few years, this original belief has now been abandoned. As a

result of many conversations on the subject, the writer now believes

that the real forces responsible for Prohibition are sufficiently

misunderstood, especially among Protestants, as to make it desirable

to show in an epilogue the essential connection between sectarian

Protestantism and Prohibition, the true nature of Prohibition

as sectarian-Protestant, religious persecution, and finally, the

resemblance and divergencies between Prohibition and the thirteenth

century Inquisition.

When written history begins, all civilized and semi-civilized

people, and many savages besides, are found drinking some sort of

fermented liquor, wine, cider, or one of the many kinds of beer.

Back of written history, tradition has it that the practice was

from immemorial time. No people had handed down a story of an early

past when such liquor was not an integral and familiar part of each

day’s diet, usually with meals. It is true that the Greeks said that

Bacchus-Dionysus came from Asia, bringing the Vine, the youngest of

the Gods, and that some scholars have held that this indicated the

memory of a time when the primitive Greeks were wineless wretches.

The argument, however, will not hold water. For, in the first place,

even if we imagine an early time before the Greeks drank wine,

there is nothing to prove that they did not know some other sort of

fermented stuff, as the Gauls did before Rome conquered them. And,

furthermore, people in the Iliad and Odyssey drink wine but seem to

know nothing of its God; it was familiar but it was not yet holy.

Besides being everywhere, fermented liquor was everywhere used in

much the same way. It was an article of daily diet, so much so

that no meal was complete without it. At feasts and festivals it

was drunk more freely. Drunkenness was extremely rare. The Old

Testament assumes that people had to “rise up early in the morning”

and “continue until night” before wine would “inflame them,”[37] and

denounces those persistent enough to do so. It was the Greek custom

to mix their wine with water, several parts of water to one of wine.

Schliemann speaks of an inscription recording a law of one of the

Ionian cities which prescribes penalties for drinking neat wine. One

of the early Babylonian codes of law prescribes severe penalties

against the keeper of any wine shop (an Englishman would call him a

“publican,” an American a “saloon keeper”) in which a disturbance

occurs. The reader should be warned, however, that the danger of

disturbance was no doubt quite as much due at that early time to the

presence of numbers of men not known to one another, as it was to the

drinking that went on there. At all events, the Hebrew and the Greek

examples are enough to prove the attitude of the earliest historical

time toward the instances of drunkenness (apparently rare) which they

saw. No sooner had the keen Greek mind developed itself and begun

to analyse than it laid down the general principle of temperance as

one of the chief virtues. In the particular case of fermented drinks

which we are now considering, Belloc has neatly remarked that “It has

been noticed (also from immemorial time) that if a man drank too much

of any of these things he got drunk, and that if he got drunk often

his health and capacity declined.”[38] So much for the historical

background.

Given the ancient use everywhere of fermented drinks, given also

the recognition of the rare evil of habitual drunkenness, it is

instructive to note that before the sixteenth century there is (with

one exception) no record of the habitual use of distilled liquors in

Europe and the Near East, and (again with one exception) no record of

the idea of the sinfulness of drink.

First as to distilled liquors. Distillation of beverages was known

in ancient China. The earliest European navigators to visit Tahiti

found it practised by the savages there, which would indicate the

probability of its great antiquity in that stagnant, primitive

society. The word alcohol itself is of Arabic origin, like many

similar words, such as _al_embic, _al_gebra, &c. The sweet, aromatic,

liqueurs made by mediæval monks (Benedictine by the Benedictines,

Chartreuse by the Carthusians, &c.), are hardly exceptions to the

rule inasmuch as they are essentially cordials rather than beverages.

Brandy (burnt-wine, brant wine, brandevin, brandy wine) was known

in France from the fourteenth century but seems to have been drunk

chiefly as a cordial, as it still is in that country to-day. At all

events, the scanty references to it indicate that it was little used.

The one considerable exception is the use of whisky (usquebaugh,

pronounced whiskybaw) among the highland Scotch and the Irish.

With these people whisky was traditional. The ancient Irish epics

of Cuchulain and Finn are full of references to it, as the Homeric

poems of references to wine. While the debate over the date of the

Irish epics may cheerfully be left to specialists, it is certainly

clear that they long antedate the sixteenth century. Like wine, beer,

and cider among the other nations of Europe, whisky among the Irish

certainly dates from before the commencement of written history. But,

in Europe, before the sixteenth century, to Ireland and the Scotch

highlands its use was confined.

That the use of fermented liquors was sinful was an unknown idea,

quite as unknown as we have seen the use of distilled liquors to have

been. Previous to the sixteenth century, we find ascetic individuals

or select orders renouncing wine, but always, like true ascetics,

either with the idea of making their abstention a distinguishing

mark, or with that of renouncing pleasures lawful or even necessary

to the community at large for the sake of special practice in

self-control. Thus among the ancient Hebrews certain men would

dedicate themselves to be “Nazarites to the Lord,” and as such would

vow never to drink wine or to cut the hair or beard. The wine cup

was no more evil than the scissors, abstention from both was merely

the distinctive sign of a peculiar dedication. Just so, ascetic

Christians would renounce wine except in the sacrament; St. Dominic

is an instance. He was teetotal for years, although he finally gave

up the practice. Here the idea was that of complete devotion to

the service of God. Even entirely lawful and proper pleasures were

to be freely laid aside by an individual in order that all fleshy

desires, as such, might be “mortified,” and that the soul should not

risk being swerved even by a hair’s breadth (through an instant’s

delight in “creatures”) from complete and utter devotion to the

Creator. Ascetic Christians were even more apt to give up eating meat

than drinking wine. And, of course, none but the most frantically

heretical Christians ever maintained that there was anything sinful

about eating meat as such. Such renunciations were merely two among

many forms of self-imposed “discipline.” In the same spirit a devout

layman, like St. Louis, might abstain from marital intercourse

during Lent. Apart from the practice of a general asceticism, the

ancient and the mediæval worlds knew of but one great example of fear

and hatred for wine. That appalling exception was the doctrine of

Mohammed.

Within Christendom itself, however, the theological and moral

influence of Islam was slight. The only one of the various Mohammedan

innovations in morals which had even a brief and partial echo

among Christian men was the Prophet’s prohibition of images. With

regard to the point under discussion, the use of wine, Mohammed’s

teaching failed to commend itself to our ancestors. Instructed in

Christian tradition, with the marriage in Cana and with the sacrament

continually before them, the teetotaller fanaticism took no hold

upon them. The chroniclers speak of it merely as an oddity, like the

Jewish taboo against pork—which the Mohammedans also copied.

So matters stood until the great sixteenth century break with

tradition. When the convulsions of the religious wars had ceased,

Scandinavia, the Northern Germanies including Holland, and especially

England, were seen in definite opposition to what was left of the

moral unity of Europe. The break was different in degree, for

England preserved the essential catholicity of her national Church,

although well-nigh smothered under a mass of Protestant innovations,

whereas the Northern Germanies lapsed altogether. Nevertheless at

the time the break seemed final in England as well. There had been

no such sharp change of direction, no such conscious rejection of

the immediate past, since Constantine accepted the Faith. It might

even be said that the sixteenth century break was the greater of the

two, for the sixteenth century innovators despised their ancestors

as the early Christians had never despised the pagans. With the

theological debates which determined this capital change we are not

here concerned for their own sake, but only for the effect which the

acceptance of the Protestant dogmas produced upon the morals and

therefore, in the end, upon the social structure of Christendom.

The Catholic possessed and, of course, still possesses an inclusive,

reasoned, scheme of ethical teaching. This ethical scheme had been

taken over by the Church from the ancient Greeks, and especially

from Aristotle. To the Aristotelian ethic had been added (like a

superstructure which enlarges rather than disturbs the original

design of a building) the Christian theological virtues and their

attendant vices. Under this broad scheme, serious moral offences were

classified under one or another of the “seven deadly sins” of pride,

envy, anger, avarice, gluttony, sloth and lust.

This ethical structure, composed jointly by the Greek genius and the

Christian revelation, Protestantism has so destroyed that the average

Protestant of to-day, even when educated, cannot so much as tell what

the seven deadly sins may be. Few Protestants, if forced to think

by Socratic questions, will fail to agree as to the reality of all

seven. Nevertheless, in practice, Protestants have ceased to consider

most of them as sins at all. Let the reader who may be inclined to

doubt so sweeping a pronouncement merely take the trouble to question

a few of his friends. If he prefers to approach the matter through

general rather than particular instances, let him consider for a

moment the industrial society of to-day, together with the universal

and bitter quarrel between “capital” and “labor” which has arisen in

that society. Then let him remember that modern industrialism had its

birth in England—a country Protestant in manners and morals where the

essentially Catholic character of the national Church itself has been

so much ignored and misunderstood. Let him further remember that,

outside of England, the industrial system has taken deepest root

in the Protestant Northern Germanies and in the Protestant United

States. In spite of its material success, it has been but partially

imitated in Catholic countries from these Protestant models. After

reviewing these obvious and indisputable facts, let him recall that

for centuries not one out of a hundred Protestants, even among the

educated, has ever been clearly told that such things as avarice,

sloth, and envy are sins. Then let him deny, if he can, the ruin that

Protestantism has made in what was once the symmetric structure of

Christian morals.

In place of inclusive, reasoned, ethical principles, the Protestant

set up fragmentary taboos. On account of his rejection of Christian

tradition, he was driven to build upon the Scriptures alone. In none

of the canonical books could he find the ethical principles of the

New Testament, with their implications, built up into a coordinated

manual of ethics. Moreover, the early, formative Protestants vastly

preferred the Old Testament which showed the ancient Jews in the

taboo stage of morals, to the specifically Christian traditions of

the historic Church. Taboo is the stage in which morals are not

a matter of reasoned general principles of conduct, but consist

merely of disconnected prohibitions of specific acts. Of course,

Catholicism has its taboos, such as abstinence from meat on Fridays,

but these are marks of distinctive religious observance rather

than general rules of conduct. In his Bible, which he had stripped

naked of tradition, the Protestant found the ancient Jewish taboos

impressively codified, by contrast with the Christian principles

scattered through the New Testament. With his profession of

Christianity, his rejection of Christian tradition, and his intimate

admiration for the ancient Jews, his ethical course was clear. That

part of Catholic morals which was not capable of expression in hard

and fast taboos he would not actually disown but would gradually

allow to be forgotten. So it has been with reference to avarice and

envy, for example. Accordingly we see the great prizes of power and

social distinction awarded as the result of successful avarice in

the pursuit of wealth; envy rampant, and sloth unashamed both in the

“ca-canny” labourer who restricts his output, and in the rich who are

no longer held by custom to perform any service or duty in return for

the economic power lodged in them. On the other hand Protestantism

concentrates its moral fervour upon the element in traditional

Christian morals which can be even approximated through taboos. Hence

illicit sexual intercourse and excess in eating and drinking are

particularly condemned. As time went on, since the ill effects of

over-eating were less immediately obvious than those of drunkenness,

this last has come to stand alone with adultery and fornication as

the targets for Protestant moral attack. To-day educated Protestants

will sometimes tell you that a Christian life consists chiefly in

refraining from women other than one’s wife and from drink!

Of course this attitude is a reversal of the sound European

tradition which thought of the sins springing from an excess of

natural sensual desire as far less repellent than the mean and

despicable sins, culminating in treachery, which derive from a

perversion of man’s spiritual nature.

But Protestantism went even further than this. At its very beginning,

Luther, in his “Address to the German Nobility” (A.D. 1520), had

proposed the non-observance of “... All saints’ days, _with their

carousing_, except Sundays.” And no sooner had Protestantism reached

its most highly developed form, under Calvin, than it began an

organized warfare against popular festivals and all the decorative

side of life. The zealots who were its spear-point conceived the

idea that God could be worshipped only with the mind. To quote

Chesterton on Puritanism (the English form of Calvinism): “It is

better to worship in a barn than in a cathedral, for the specific

reason that the cathedral was beautiful. Physical beauty was a false

and sensual symbol coming in between the intellect and the object of

its intellectual worship.... Therefore it is wicked to worship by

... dancing, or drinking sacramental wines, or building beautiful

churches or saying prayers when you are half asleep.”[39]

Naturally, in the absolute divorce of beauty and holiness, it was to

be expected that beauty must be thought essentially evil. Moreover,

with such a system, it was necessary for the Puritans not only to

get rid of beauty but also to do away with amusement so that (out of

working hours) the people might have nothing to do but contemplate

their theology and seek confirmation of it in their Bibles.

Of course, so bald and repulsive a fanaticism seeking to impose its

tyranny upon Christian men could not, by itself, have made its way.

Even the anger then running throughout Europe at the scandal given

by ecclesiastical authority would have been insufficient as a cloak

for such enormities. But behind the zealots were the mercantile

class, into whose lap the adventurers were already beginning to pour

the gold of the Indies. These “economic men” saw their chance. The

masses, with their festivals and their pleasures taken from them,

would not only have more time to listen to sermons, they would also

have more time to work. For it was beginning to be the unspoken creed

of these men that the poor man, who must gain his bread in the sweat

of his brow, existed mainly that they might “get rich quick.” With

their influence, the merchants furnished the driving force behind

the fanatics. In England Protestantism was not long in developing

into Puritanism under the powerful influence of Calvin whose God, as

Wesley said, had the exact functions and attributes of the Devil.

Inspired by such a divinity, the Puritans began operations. The

theatre, dancing, card playing, &c., were abhorrent to them.

Moreover, and here is the essence of the whole matter, they

accounted it righteousness to do their best to compel other men,

indifferent or hostile to their extraordinary beliefs, to live after

their sombre fashion. To the black shame of Puritanism, with its

glorification of private judgment, it has never been content when in

power with telling its votaries to practise its own peculiar kind of

righteousness and leave others to their own consciences. In this, as

in many things, the Puritan is closer in spirit to the Mohammedan

than he is to the historic Church. Indeed the correspondencies

between Puritanism and Mohammedans, with respect to images,

ceremonies, divorce, drink, &c., deserve more study than they have

received. At its utmost, the Church has claimed jurisdiction only

over those of the household of faith. Puritanism seeks to impose its

taboos even upon the stranger within its gates.

Puritanism contains, furthermore, an essential element of hypocrisy.

To a certain extent this is due to its founder Calvin himself. For

auricular confession under secrecy, or for the general confession,

he could only substitute the activities of “... good men ... to be

chosen from the different quarters of the city whose duty was to

report evil doers to the ministers, for admonishment or exclusion

from the Supper” ...[40] meaning the sacrament. Comment on such a

smelling committee is needless.

Besides, the typical Puritan hypocrisy is derived from the prominence

of the mercantile element present in Puritanism from the first. A

wealthy man advocating Puritan taboos in order to promote asceticism

among his workmen may or may not profess Puritanism, but he very

seldom feels called upon to live up to it himself. Of course, with

the command of privacy which wealth gives, it is easy for him to

avoid open scandal.

In addition to the inveterate Puritan habit of setting members of

a congregation to spy upon one another, and second, the prominence

which Puritanism gives to economic motives as seen by the merchant

or trader, there is also a third cause making for hypocrisy among

the Puritans. That is the influence of reason (in alliance with the

dimly-felt inheritance of centuries of Catholicism) demonstrating the

insignificance of the transgressions which it is Puritanism’s great

effort to reprove, in comparison with the baser sins. Therefore,

we find many Puritans who are essentially decent people and useful

members of society, all the time slyly violating the taboos, such

as the drink taboo, to which they subscribe in words. Certainly all

societies and religions have their hypocrites, but as certainly the

hypocrisy of Puritanism excels them all.

It may be objected that it is far-fetched to assign sixteenth century

Protestantism (with its English development of Puritanism) as the

cause of twentieth century industrial strife. Why then did not the

industrial strife develop sooner, more particularly why did it not

develop in the times when the Protestant philosophy (or, if the

reader prefer, the Protestant “dogma”) was far more lucidly and more

intensely held? In any case, how can a system set up largely by

merchants and traders be held to have caused the envy and sloth which

cause and accompany our industrial strife?

The answer is that Protestantism happened to appear just at the

beginning of the modern increased command over nature which for three

hundred years has gone on opening up new lands for colonization

and at the same time has improved the technique of agriculture and

increased the quantity of the products of industry. All this has

resulted in three centuries of increasing expansion unparalleled in

history. At the beginning of this period the Protestant dogma had

been established, to the effect that a man’s private judgment in

matters of religion was superior to corporate religious authority.

Inevitably, such teaching bred loneliness in the soul. But, for the

most part, men still felt themselves to be members one of another,

because the continuous expansion had lightened the pressure of

competition between classes and individuals. Any man in the more

thickly settled regions who might be dissatisfied with his lot saw

the frontier beckoning. Expansion, as in the twelfth century, made

for a buoyant temper in the mind, but, unlike that of the twelfth

century, this temper was too contemptuous of the past (because of the

sixteenth century break with tradition and also because the expansion

was without precedent); whereas the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

felt that they were only partly reconquering the Roman order. Hence

the naive faith in “progress” as such, which culminated in the late

nineteenth century, and the equally naive illusion that physical

science of itself would somehow make for happiness.

Although the full effect of the evil has been postponed to our own

day, nevertheless the indictment against modern industrialism is

not new. Scarcely had the so-called “industrial revolution” ushered

in the superlative degree of the evil spreading outward from the

Protestant societies dominant in our world before the seamy side

of the business was shown up. In nineteenth century England (the

parent and, until yesterday, the centre of the system) industrialism

was ably attacked by such men as Dickens, Ruskin, and William

Morris. Still the protests were not effective in that, despite

them, complacency remained the typical mood of the Victorian Age.

The resulting destructive political movements and the strikes were

already drearily familiar before 1900. Protestantism, in breaking

down the corporate religious ties which made men members one of

another, had released destructive forces in human nature which

were beyond control. Incidentally, the action of these forces was

precisely contrary to the “economic” intentions present in the

mind of so many early Protestants! Before 1914 it was apparent

that matters were becoming serious, and now the strain of the

Great War has so increased the industrial friction inherent in our

society that such friction has become the chief problem confronting

civilization.

Although the pressing nature of the problem of our chronic industrial

civil war is now abundantly recognized, the nature of the problem

itself is still incorrectly diagnosed. The “industrial revolution” is

generally given as the root of the trouble, whereas the industrial

revolution merely watered the evil seed sown broadcast by the

sixteenth century moral change in Europe. So, also, the Prohibition

movement is not seen in its true bearings as a result of the

continuing activity of precisely the same spirit which brought about

the sixteenth century moral change—that is, the alliance between a

narrow religious fanaticism on the one hand and the avarice of the

merchant and “captain of industry” on the other. The adoption of the

American Prohibition amendment coincided closely in time with the

close of the Great War which has brought industrial strife to a head.

To those sufficiently instructed to know Prohibition and industrial

strife as alike children of the Protestant spirit, the coincidence is

a symbol and a warning.

To recapitulate: the sixteenth century Protestants proclaimed the

supremacy of private judgment over corporate religious authority.

Slowly but inevitably such doctrine, making religion not a corporate

but a personal thing, has weakened the ties between man and man.

Notice now, how from the resulting hedge between individuals and

classes springs the evil forest of our discontents which darkens

the Christian world to-day. In the countries where the great

landlords and the mercantile classes, working under cover of the

narrow enthusiasm of the fanatics, won their great sixteenth century

triumph (that is in England, Holland and the Northern Germanies)

that triumph resulted in the confiscation of Church property by the

State and its prompt absorption, not by the mass of the people as in

France after the Revolution, but by the aforesaid great landholders

and merchants themselves. With the increased influence due to this

addition to their wealth, they were able gradually to dispossess the

yeoman farmers and, in trade and industry, to substitute unrestricted

competition in place of the guild system; but the strain which would

otherwise have been promptly felt in the Protestant societies was

relieved, as we have seen, by the great age of expansion. When the

new discoveries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

brought about in England the industrial revolution, that revolution

took place in a society in which the mass of the people had _already_

forgotten their old economic freedom. _Already_ they were accustomed

to see their economic life dominated by merchants and landlords (over

whom they had no check) acknowledging no definite moral authority

whatsoever. In the two hundred years since the process had begun,

it had come to seem natural that a few should control the means of

production, and that these few, the rich, should look upon poor men

mainly as instruments for their own further private enrichment. It

was because of the destructive sixteenth century moral change and

in no way because of any quality inherent in the new machines that

the discovery of these last has made so enormously for unhappiness

and strife. It is true that the machines have enormously accelerated

the long process which has already reduced the wage-earner from

the Christian liberty his ancestors enjoyed to something very like

serfdom. But the essential point to be grasped is that the machines

have _only_ accelerated the process, they did not bring it about and

they have not changed its nature.

In all this, the Prohibition movement has been an integral part.

Prohibition has its roots in the great sixteenth century victories of

fanaticism plus greed. It appeared above ground because of conditions

brought about by discoveries in physical science acting upon a

society coloured by the Protestant victories, although in themselves

these discoveries have no inherent connection with morals. It has won

a great victory in America and is attempting to invade England at the

present day, when the strain of chronic industrial war has become

acute and world-wide.

The historical connection between Protestantism and Prohibition has

been but little studied. Nevertheless its outlines are abundantly

clear. Prohibition was not among the original Protestant taboos. Even

the Puritans and, as far as is known, the Anabaptists (who together

made up the “extreme left” among the sixteenth century sects) were

not prepared to abandon Christian tradition so completely as to hold

fermented drinks to be sinful. But Protestantism par excellence,

that is Puritanism (from its original belief that worship was only

possible through the mind and never through the senses), began by

divorcing religion from beauty, and went on to a hatred of the

decorative side of life and especially of the simple pleasures of the

populace.

The Protestant societies created modern industrialism with its

masses of degraded proletarians. As discoveries in physical science

intensified the evils of industrialism in general (although they

did not create those evils), so in the particular case of drink the

commercial distillation of “hard” liquor still further magnified the

evil of intemperance. The sequence is clear in both the general and

the particular case. Even in the sixteenth century, Protestantism had

already produced proletarians and public drunkenness on so large a

scale that the first laws against drunkenness are found under Edward

VI, and under Elizabeth the first Poor Law establishing workhouses.

Until Edward and Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had abolished the

monasteries, which supplemented the guilds in what we should call

“social work,” it had not been found necessary to build workhouses

for the poor nor to jail poor men who got drunk. Certainly it is

clear that want, and drunkenness as the habitual result of want,

were on the increase. And yet hard liquor was not plentiful in

England until the very end of the seventeenth century. A few whisky

distilleries had been set up in England in Henry VIII’s time but beer

had continued to be the daily drink of Englishmen, and wine that of

English gentlemen.

It was not until 1689, when the Government abolished all restrictions

upon gin-distilling, that hard liquor became plentiful in England,

and then it became plentiful with a vengeance; the proletarianizing

process had been going on for over a hundred years. To complete the

sequence of Protestantism, proletarianism and hard liquor, came the

doctrine of the inherent sinfulness of drink. This seems to have

been first preached by the eighteenth century Methodists, who appear

as a distinct schism from the Church of England in 1740. Thirty

years later their teaching was familiar enough to be noticed in the

theatre. In a drinking song in the first act of Goldsmith’s “She

Stoops to Conquer,” first played in 1773, we find the following

lines:—

“When methodist preachers come down,

A-preaching that drinking is sinful,

I’ll wager the rascals a crown

They always preach best with a skinful....”

By the middle of the nineteenth century the other sectarian bodies,

the Presbyterians, the Independents or Congregationalists, and the

Baptists, had followed the Methodists in adopting the Mohammedan

fanaticism of total abstinence.

The final step of all, that of attempting to compel everyone to be

teetotal by means of Prohibition laws, was taken not in England

where total abstinence was first preached in the name of religion,

but in America. In England the sectarian “Nonconformist” has always

been in the minority and after the brief seventeenth century Puritan

supremacy the nation turned fiercely against them. In America, on

the other hand, they were in a majority from the first. Virginia

was settled by Anglicans and Maryland by Roman Catholics, but the

other English colonies were Puritan almost to a man. The colony of

Massachusetts Bay was an absolute Congregationalist theocracy from

its foundation in 1629 for over half a century.

In England, during the short Puritan ascendancy there (1649-60), the

sectaries had used the full power of the State to suppress popular

festivals and the decorative side of life. It was forbidden to keep

Christmas or Easter. At the other end of the scale, it was forbidden

to bait bears, “not because the sport gave pain to the bear but

because it gave pleasure to the spectators,” as Macaulay has it in a

famous phrase. In one of their culminating atrocities, the closing of

the theatres, the Puritans displayed their characteristic hypocrisy.

Instead of frankly avowing that theatrical performances offended

their peculiar religion they gave as reasons for closing them the

_plague and the Civil War_. But when plague and the Civil War had

ceased, did they permit the theatres to reopen? By no means. Dancing

and card playing they held to be cardinal sins. Their garments must

be sad-coloured, although in this respect but little worse than men’s

clothes to-day. Their “meeting houses,” which they substituted for

churches, were purposely made as bare as barns.

But there was one outrage which they did not attempt. They made no

attempt to forbid the fermented drinks which immemorial tradition

and the example of Our Lord himself permitted to Christian men. It

is true that they refused to drink healths, for the practice added

ceremony to feasting and they held it to be a cause of intemperance.

Beyond this they did not go. Incidentally it should be noted that

when the Puritans ruled England none but fermented drinks were

known. Tea, coffee, and chocolate were curiosities until after the

Restoration. At all events, fermented drinks were the one form of

social pleasure permitted to Englishmen under Puritan rule.

In New England, Calvinism ran riot. In Europe it had been the creed

of a minority living in the midst of nations firm in the traditions

of Christendom. Therefore, while it had been bad enough in Europe, it

had never felt itself omnipotent. In New England, on the contrary,

Calvinism had isolated communities founded especially for its

glorification, and the result was horrible. “Its records read like

those of a madhouse where religious maniacs have broken loose and

locked up their keepers. We hear of men stoned to death for kissing

their wives on the Sabbath, of lovers pilloried or flogged at the

cart’s tail for kissing each other at all without licence from the

deacons, the whole culminating in a mad panic of wholesale demonism

and witch-burning....”[41] The picture could be supplemented ad

infinitum by a study of the town records of the New England Puritans.

For the elaboration of it, one of their own descendants, Brooks

Adams, has written a book, the “Emancipation of Massachusetts,” in

which they hanged, gibbeted and damned for ever, and to that book

I refer my readers who may be curious in the matter. They were

appalling people.

For the purposes of this study, the essential thing to remember

is that the eighteenth century slackening of Puritan fervour in

America was not death but sleep. Or, to use another metaphor, when

its stream appeared to be drying up, it was still running strongly

underground. Such a man as John Brown, with his savage and almost

crazy fanaticism, would have been perfectly at home in Cromwell’s

army, or with Praise-God-Barebones and his ilk.

After the Civil War, American industrialism began to expand

enormously. The “captain of industry,” the second partner to the

sixteenth century alliance against tradition, was growing into a

giant. Insufficient support in this quarter seems to have been a

contributing cause of the failure of the first American Prohibition

movement. This flourished for a time about the middle of the

nineteenth century. It was the work of pure fanaticism, and for a

time it had great success. All the New England States, plus New York,

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and South Dakota, passed

State prohibition laws. But in a few years these laws began to be

repealed. Finally, the Maine Law alone remained on the statute books

... and continued to be so often violated in practice as to be a

laughing-stock to the whole country.

Naturally, the fanatics could not have won even their temporary

successes without the aid of other sorts of men. From the first

America had been a “hard liquor” country. Whisky and rum had been

the national drinks, and drunkenness had been common. The saloon

keeper, like most traffickers in Protestant countries, was but

little restrained by public opinion. “Business was business.” Wine

was a luxury for the rich, unknown to the populace, and beer seems

to have been almost unknown. The frontier, with its tendency toward

crudity of thought and its utter lack of social restraint, has deeply

influenced the American mind, predisposing it toward rough-hewn

solutions of any troublesome problem, thus reinforcing the dominant

Protestantism of the country, with its reliance upon taboo. As yet

the influence of Catholicism with its rounded, universal ethic was

slight. But notwithstanding all these contributing forces, a short

experience of Prohibition was quite enough for the unhappy States

which tried it.

Not until after the early years of the twentieth century did the

agitation again gather strength. In the interim, new forces had

appeared, some favourable, some opposed to the destruction of

Christian liberty. On the surface, it appeared to many that liberty

had been strengthened. Catholicism was growing, chiefly through

immigration from Ireland, Italy and the Slavic countries. Immigrants

from Germany began to brew beer, so that even the populace began

to see there was a possible rival to hard liquor. California began

to make wine. With the disappearance of the frontier, men believed

that the crudity of mind bred by frontier conditions would soon

be resolved into an appreciation of the necessary complexities

of settled civilization. So far, this idea has since been proved

mistaken, but, in itself, it was not ridiculous. Far sillier was

another contemporary notion, namely, that the increasing ease and

frequency of communication would bring about catholicity of mind and

a decline of particularism and provincialism in general.

However, these gains for the cause of Christian liberty were by no

means decisive. Although the influence of Catholicism had increased,

it was by no means dominant. To this day, no Roman Catholic could

be nominated for President by either of the two major parties. The

Roman Catholic, the most numerous of the three Catholic communions,

had not even the power which its members might otherwise have given

it, because its Italian and Slavic members counted for little in the

politics of the country as a whole. The Latins had an especially

small foothold in public life. Beer and wine were still mainly

thought of in connection with “foreign elements” in the population.

The native-born drank whisky, and used the word “rum” as a generic

term to designate both distilled and fermented liquors! Between them,

the Protestant sects accounted for an overwhelming majority of the

population, and their innate Puritanism in morals was unchanged.

Their theologies were less insisted upon; most educated Protestants

were abandoning the arduous labour of definition, and the fervour

which had formerly gone into Protestant theological discussion was

now beginning to be dissipated in vague humanitarianism. In part this

Protestant energy (formerly employed upon the theology now fading

from the human mind) was ready to be used for the enforcement of

taboo.

Chesterton’s analysis of corresponding conditions in the British

Isles is pertinent here. He remarks that “... it is a singular

fact that although extreme Protestantism is dying in elaborate and

over-refined civilization, yet it is the barbaric patches of it that

live longest and die last. Of the creed of John Knox the modern

Protestant has abandoned the civilized part and retained only the

savage part. He has given up that great and systematic philosophy of

Calvinism which had much in common with modern science and strongly

resembles ordinary and recurrent determinism. But he has retained

the accidental veto upon cards or comic plays.... All the awful

but sublime affirmations of Puritan theology are gone. Only savage

negations remain; such as that by which in Scotland on every seventh

day the creed of fear lays his finger on all hearts and makes an evil

silence in the streets.”

“By the middle of the nineteenth century—this dim and barbaric

element in Puritanism, being all that remained of it, had added

another taboo to its philosophy of taboos; there had grown up a

mystical horror of those fermented drinks which are part of the food

of civilized mankind. Doubtless many persons take an extreme line on

this matter solely because of some calculation of social harm; many,

but not all and not even most. Many people think that paper money

is a mistake and does much harm. But they do not shudder or snigger

when they see a cheque book. They do not whisper with unsavoury

slyness that such and such a man was ‘seen’ going into a bank....

The sentiment is certainly very largely a mystical one ... it is

defended with sociological reasons; but those reasons can be simply

and sharply tested ... if a Puritan tells you that he does not object

to beer but to the tragedies of excess in beer, simply propose to him

that in prisons and workhouses (where the amount can be absolutely

regulated) the inmates should have three glasses of beer a day. The

Puritan cannot call that excess; but he will find something to call

it. For it is not the excess he objects to, but the beer. It is a

transcendental taboo....”[42]

By the close of the century a new and increasingly powerful ally,

industrialism, was coming to the help of American Puritanism in its

opposition to traditional Christian liberty. After 1865 America began

to concentrate her energies on building factories and railroads.

For three hundred years there had been no universal religious

organization binding all men together in a common morality. In such

a society, the appearance of machine industry aggravated the evils

of unlimited competition between individuals and classes. These

evils, it should be repeated, were the direct result of the sixteenth

century moral change, that is the breakdown of universal religious

authority and the consequent weakening of moral solidarity between

men. Machine industry neither created the evils of unrestricted

competition nor essentially changed their character. But it did

aggravate them enormously because it increased the size of the

industrial unit and thereby reduced to a vanishing point the personal

contact between owners and wage earners. Owner and industrial wage

earner tended to look upon one another less and less as fellow

beings, engaged for mutual benefit in common tasks, more and more as

abstract commodities—if not as definitely hostile forces, “capital”

and “labour.” Wage earners organized themselves into unions which

were ultimately to develop great powers of economic obstruction,

but, so far, no faculty for constructive reform of industry. Owners

meanwhile cast about how they might make of “labour” a more effective

instrument for their own enrichment.

It is but fair to say that the “captains of industry” were not

altogether cold-blooded in the matter. They had conceived a horrible

affection for the new and vast forces under their control, and in

this they were imitated by their numerous admirers among people whom

a European would call middle class. Such people not only permitted

the mechanizing of life, they actively encouraged it. Consequently,

as Henry Adams put it: “The typical American man had his hand on a

lever and his eye on a curve in his road; his living depended on

keeping up an average speed of forty miles an hour, tending always to

become sixty, eighty, or a hundred, and he could not admit emotions,

or anxieties or subconscious distractions, more than he could admit

whisky or drugs, without breaking his neck.”[43] That the worship

of the new mechanical energies was ruining the nerves of wealthy and

middle-class Americans and imperilling society as a whole was an idea

only just beginning to dawn. Almost all educated people consented

to the inhuman process and called it fine names like “progress” and

“efficiency.”

Meanwhile, despite Henry Adams and his “typical American man,” the

wage earner who constituted the great majority of the industrial

communities did not take kindly to the perpetual speeding-up process.

From time to time he took refuge from his monotonous machine tending

in heavy drinking of hard liquor after a fashion unknown to the

Catholic peasant societies of Europe, and this habit of his annoyed

the captains of industry and infuriated the Puritans.

The solution adopted would have amazed our ancestors. We can

only hope that, if record is preserved, it will scandalize our

descendants. Instead of striving to restore a state of things in

which normal men might be left in peace to get their living and enjoy

the social pleasures natural to man, it seemed simpler and more

desirable to the leaders of our time to attempt to destroy the social

pleasure. As in the sixteenth century, the “business community,” to

whom the chief end of man was to make money, joined hands with the

fanatic to whom amusement was sinful.

Two other lesser factors came in, as if accidentally, and helped the

Prohibition cause.

The first of these accidents was a shift of political power in

the South. Until about 1890 the “quality,” i.e., people who had

a tradition of wealth and social ascendancy, dominated Southern

politics. “Politics” were “qualities,” so the saying went. Then

came a change; the small farmers, artisans, and shopkeepers gained

control. The quality in the South are usually “Episcopalian,”

and anything but Puritanical. The “plain people” are nearly all

“hardshell” Baptists or “shoutin’” Methodists. Neither of these sects

are Calvinists like the original Puritans, but both are aggressively

Puritan in their discipline. The Baptists are the indirect

successors of the Anabaptists, the “extreme left” in the sixteenth

century religious struggle. The Methodists began as a schism from the

Church of England and, as we have seen, were the first Christians

to preach total abstinence instead of temperance in drink. As a

substitute for drink, and for the other forms of social pleasure

condemned by their discipline, they find an outlet in their orgiastic

worship. Hence the epithet “shoutin’.” Of all Christian sects,

these two are among those furthest from tradition. The proportion

of college-bred or otherwise cultivated men and women in either

denomination is small. Even their ministers are usually uneducated.

On the other hand, these preachers are industrious, zealous, and

devoted, so that they wield great influence. Naturally, with such

ministers, the mental effort required for ethical definition is not

to be found and taboo luxuriates. “Drink” to these people means

whisky in rowdy dives. In the first decade of the twentieth century

the Southern States under their new masters began to go Prohibition.

Southerners, anxious to avoid the reproach of intolerance, will

sometimes say that the desire to keep liquor from the negroes was

the chief motive for Prohibition. Liquor, they will say, inflamed

the negro’s passions and predisposed him to attempt rape upon white

women. On the other hand, the presence of negroes had nothing to

do with the situation described in the last paragraph, and such

an authority as William Garrott Brown, himself a Southerner, has

recorded his opinion that the race question had little to do with

Southern Prohibition.

The same author tells us that the pseudo-scientific propaganda

against drink was scarcely heard of during the Southern Prohibition

campaigns. According to him they were conducted, and won, “... mainly

by the devices of a methodist revival ...; by terrifying and rather

coarse emotional oratory from pulpit and platform, interspersed

with singing and praying; by parades of women and children, drilled

for the purpose; by a sort of persecution, not stopping short of

an actual boycott, of prominent citizens inclined to vote wet; ...

and finally, by fairly mobbing the polls with women and children,

singing, praying and doing everything conceivable to embarrass and

frighten every voter who appeared without a white ribbon in his

lapel.”

“It is these methods, gradually perfected in campaign after campaign,

that have won for Prohibition so many victories....”[44]

The present writer has been told by eye-witnesses of the use of

similar methods in imposing Prohibition upon the North-Western States.

The second accident which played into the hands of the

Prohibitionists was a new piece of political mechanism, the direct

primary.

The traditional American method of nominating candidates for office

was the “convention.” Conventions might be self-appointed, called

together by the force of some wave of enthusiasm. Normally they

were routine assemblies representative of the established parties

in the various political subdivisions of the country, states,

counties, cities, &c. Such an assembly would be elected by the party

voters, would formulate a “platform,” that is a declaration of party

principles and purposes, and would also nominate candidates to stand

for election on the platform. If a platform were adopted to which

any delegate could not bring himself to support, it was his moral

duty to “walk out” of the convention and separate from the party.

Consequently it was the aim of the platform makers to set forth such

principles as would retain in the party as many as possible of those

who usually voted its ticket, and at the same time attract as many

votes as possible from “independents” and voters enrolled in other

parties. In such a system minorities of “cranks” were at a discount.

The convention system was changed as one of the results of the change

in the typical American mood away from boundless self-confidence

to exaggerated self-criticism. Part of the new self-criticism was

directed against the leadership of the various political parties.

With the touching American faith in legal mechanism as a corrective

of conditions unrelated either to legal theory or practice, it was

proposed to make nominations dependent upon preliminary elections or

“direct primaries” in which the enrolled voters of the given party

might express themselves independently of the party “bosses” (at

least so it was naively hoped by those who fostered the scheme).

The failure of the direct primary to improve political conditions in

general does not concern this study. But among its various effects,

few of which its advocates had foreseen, it undoubtedly furthered

the Prohibition movement by increasing the political importance of

any organized group of “cranks,” i.e., people interested in one

particular question of public policy to the exclusion of other

matters. The Prohibitionists were an admirable example of such a

group, but other active minorities, such as the suffragettes, have

benefited enormously by the direct primary. In the first place, it

proved well nigh impossible to get the average citizen to cast his

vote in a direct primary, because in cases of contested nominations

for minor offices the aforesaid average citizen knew little and

cared less as to the whole matter. The cranks he regarded with an

amused and contemptuous tolerance. He could not believe that the new

nominating device could give power to such people. Hence the cranks

of all sorts gained influence out of proportion to their numbers, and

promptly brought that influence to bear upon candidates for office,

and especially candidates for the minor offices, such as members of

State legislatures. Under the convention system it was very hard to

put Prohibition into a party platform, for such a course would have

been immediately followed by secession on the part of many who were

accustomed to vote the party ticket. But under the direct primary,

a candidate for nomination knew that those who were cranks upon a

certain matter would support or oppose him according to his attitude

upon their pet subject without regard to his general fitness for

office as compared with his opponents. Besides its immediate effect,

the direct primary had an ultimate effect even more important in

favour of Prohibition, inasmuch as it weakened the party as an organ

of political thought. The convention had served as a forum for

deliberation and protest. Deprived of this forum, the party names

tended to become mere labels and the allegiance of the average voter

to his party tended to become weaker as the party came to mean less

and less. Accordingly, the voter became more inclined to throw over

his party from time to time, and again the cranks gained in relative

importance. Even had the direct primary accomplished the dethronement

of the “boss” (which it has not), the result would have been dearly

bought by reason of the enthronement of the crank.

Yet one more characteristic of the American contributed to the

curtailment of liberty. We have already mentioned his naive

reliance upon the imaginary power of legal enactment to overthrow

long-established custom. This fallacious belief arose somewhat as

follows:—

Patriotism (which is almost the religion of us moderns) is born of

two parents, first, attachment to people and places dear to us from

long association; second, attachment to a certain spirit which is the

sum of the thought and action of the nation as a whole.

In America, the comparative shortness of our national history and the

nomadic life of so many of our people have combined to give local

attachments a slighter hold than in Europe. On the other hand, the

national spirit is correspondingly strong. From the beginning, every

effort has been made to define, and thereby to intensify it. The

nation consciously dates itself from the Declaration of Independence

and, after that, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution. So

powerful have these formulas been that in America, more than in any

other country, it is possible to use almost interchangeably the words

“national spirit” and “national doctrine.”

It is true that the chief points of this national doctrine are that

men have certain inherent, natural rights ... predominantly the right

to “liberty,” that they are equal in those rights, and in all other

matters touching the law. Obviously this implies for instance that

no citizen or group of citizens should be empowered to compel their

fellows either to consume or to refrain from any given sort of food

or drink.

On the other hand, the reverence paid to the written law, founded

upon the Declaration and the Constitution, has resulted in

widespread error as to the nature of law itself. The majestic

formulas of the Declaration, and the governmental framework set

forth in the Constitution, changed in no way the manners and customs

of Americans. Their power was derived from the response which

they roused in the rooted instinct of men of European stock. The

underlying spirit of Christendom breathed life into them. Unhappily

the mass of Americans, cut off as they were from tradition—first

by their Protestantism and secondly by the Atlantic—instead of

recognizing the traditional source from which the strength of their

national formula was derived, mistakenly believed that strength

to be derived from the fact that these formulas had been made the

basis of American statute law. Instead of recognizing in statute

law merely the ratification of established custom resulting from

the sum of human activities, they erroneously came to believe that

human activities could be compelled to conform to statutes merely

because these statutes were proclaimed to have the force of law, and

irrespective of the fundamental laws of human nature and inexorable

human limitations which underlay those activities. “Men do not make

the laws. They do but discover them,”[45] says Vice-President Calvin

Coolidge of Massachusetts. And in so saying he indicts one of the

great failures of American thought.

Having thus considered the real forces making for Prohibition, it

remains for us merely to mention some of the more prevalent bits of

claptrap which formed the stock-in-trade of Prohibition advocates.

There were such statements as that the “wine” at the marriage in Cana

of Galilee was unfermented! When the present writer was serving a

term in the New York State Legislature, this was solemnly urged upon

him by a Prohibition lobbyist. The imaginary picture of the ancient

Jews, and of our Blessed Lord, fiddling about with benzoate of soda

or some such stuff needs no comment. There was pseudo-scientific

gibberish on the subject of “alcohol”; it was sought to show that

it was a poison. The comforting thought was at once suggested that

it must be a very slow poison, inasmuch as all our ancestors for

countless generations had daily consumed fermented liquors containing

appreciable amounts of it. The argument was on all fours with the

vegetarian claims as to meat being poison. It was also sought to

show that “alcohol” was incompatible with work; the same might have

been said of sleep. There was a crop of wild statements having to do

with the “working man,” considering him not as a fellow creature of

like passions with ourselves but as a strange monster transmogrified

by the middle-class imagination. It was alleged that “drink” caused

the creature to beat his wife even upon occasions when she deserved

nothing of the sort. It was claimed that when the “working man” was

deprived of his chief recreation (which was admitted to be “drink”)

the result would be increased prosperity and good temper in his

family circle. The slightest acquaintance with Mohammedan countries

would have been sufficient to disprove such stuff. These “working

man” fantasies are eloquent testimony to the barrier built up between

the classes of the community by centuries of Protestantism. Together

with the rest of the Prohibition claptrap, they deserve to be

recorded in triple brass in order to be the laughter, or the pity, of

generations to come.

Our generation has made a fine art of anonymity and the use of

“dummies” in finance. Therefore it is impossible at this time, and

will probably remain impossible, to expose the true sources from

which the twentieth century puritans got their propaganda fund. It is

common knowledge that many, if not most, of the large employers of

“labour” sympathized with the Puritan cause ... as in the sixteenth

century. It is believed that the Rockefellers gave enormously, and

the fact that they are the most prominent Baptist laymen in the

country, if not in the world, makes the belief seem probable.

The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has not ended the Prohibition

movement in America. So far, the task of enforcement has proved

impossible. Probably there has been some appreciable reduction in the

amount of fermented and distilled liquors consumed. Certainly the

price of liquor has increased and its quality has deteriorated. No

man can foretell the future: prophets are the jesters of posterity.

Given the extreme difficulty of repealing a constitutional amendment

(repeal would require a majority of two-thirds in the United States

Senate, and again in the Federal House of Representatives, and

after that a favourable vote in both branches of the legislature

in three-fourths of the States) it seems probable that the

Eighteenth Amendment will remain upon the statute books at least

for a considerable time. However, there is already one amendment,

the fifteenth, intended to secure the franchise to the negroes of

the South, which slumbers on the statute books. At present, the

Prohibition Amendment is a farce throughout many populous States,

and the burdened taxpayer is loaded with the salaries of enforcement

officials. The position of these enforcement officials somewhat

resembles that of the Viking pirates of the ninth century. They

have an enormous territory which they can raid almost at will, and

throughout which they can annoy the inhabitants. But they are so few

that, even with the enormous powers of movement and communication at

the disposal of a modern Government, they are unable to constrain

the activities of the millions among whom they operate. Like the

old pirates again, these officials can frequently be bribed into

harmlessness. Meanwhile, it is still possible to believe, if anyone

desires to do so, that the immemorial traditions of Christendom will

yield to a written law backed up by a handful of officials.

The spectacle is of absorbing interest to the student of history, who

personifies the memory of the race. In his more sanguine moods he

sees the gently sloping vineyards by Loire, he hears Rabelais roaring

with laughter from his deep lungs, and he looks forward to a happy

confounding of fools. Again he feels an antique paganism settle down

upon him like a grey mist, and he remembers the vengeance of the Gods

as Euripides has told it in the “Hippolytus” and, above all, in the

“Bacchæ.” For the student of history knows that the forces of our

human nature, which the ancients personified as Gods, are immortal.

Man may persecute but cannot kill them, and under his persecution

they become demons who turn and rend him, as Savonarola and the old

English Puritans found. Even St. Francis’ death-bed was darkened a

little by his memory of his own austerities. “I have sinned,” he

said, “against my brother the ass.” And what were the voluntary

sufferings of a monk or of all monks put together, as sins against

“the Gods” of life, compared with the deliberate, forcible, attempt

to teetotalize a whole nation?

As an assault upon human liberty, what was even the Inquisition

compared to the American Anti-saloon League?

In closing, let us recapitulate the points of resemblance and of

divergence between the Inquisition and the Prohibition movement. Both

were religious in their essence; the Protestant denomination made the

second, just as certainly as the thirteenth century Catholic Church

made the first. Both movements, being religious, were based upon

beliefs transcending the human reason. In the case of the Inquisition

the belief in question was the Catholic Faith; in the case of

Prohibition it is belief in the innate sinfulness of distilled and

fermented drinks. Both movements had a secular as well as their

dominant religious side. A thirteenth century man careless of The

Faith, even an infidel in personal belief, might have cordially

approved of severities against heretics, because of the social

dispeace which the presence of avowed heretics tended to cause.

The infidel emperor Frederic II, with his drastic Inquisitorial

legislation, is a case in point. Just so, it is possible for a man

to be a sincere Prohibitionist, on account of some idea of the

harmfulness of “drink” to the generality of mankind, especially

to the “workingman,” although he regards its use by himself as

beneficent. Indeed the tiny minority of Prohibitionists who believe

themselves to be well educated are usually of this sort. Finally, as

the Inquisition appears to be contrary to the spirit of Our Lord’s

teaching, so the Prohibition movement is certainly contrary to His

practice, at the marriage of Cana, at the Last Supper, and generally

throughout his life.

On the other hand, in spite of so much resemblance, there are

important differences between the Inquisitor and the Prohibitionist.

In the first place, there is a profound difference as to intellectual

integrity and candor. Catholic faith and morals were, and are,

definite. From the time when the Church emerges into the full light

of abundant historical record, in the first years of the third

century, she has regarded their definition as one of her chief

functions. Her corporate tradition declares that such was the case

from her beginning, and the documents which survive from the first

two centuries cannot, to say the very least, be made to contradict

this conclusion. Protestantism, on the other hand, was from the

first a revolt against authoritative corporate definition. From the

sixteenth century to the present time its theological and ethical

vagueness has increased until a climax, it would seem, has been

reached in the matter of Prohibition.

No clear statement of the Prohibitionist credo has ever been made

and endorsed by even a majority of those engaged in the movement. An

attempt has been made to say that “temperance” involves moderation in

the use of that which is good and total abstinence from that which

is harmful. But this attempt fails in two respects, inasmuch as it

confuses temperance with the purely secular virtue of prudence which

is nothing to a man’s salvation and therefore no possible part of the

moral teaching of any Christian body, and inasmuch as it obviously

conflicts with the corporate experience of mankind in calling the

moderate use of fermented drinks “harmful.”

The contrast here is as great as that between civilization and

barbarism itself. Certainly definition, like any other activity, can

be carried to excess, as Pope Leo XIII recognized in his Encyclical

on Scholasticism, wherein he mentions the “too great subtlety”

of certain of the mediæval doctors. But, as certainly, it is the

essential intellectual difference between civilized and barbarous man

that the barbarian willingly accepts vagueness of mind, whereas the

civilized man is continually striving to seize and formulate the laws

which govern the universe about him in so far as his reason is in any

way capable of comprehending them.

Secondly, there is another vast difference in the urgency of the

social and political considerations making for the two movements.

As we saw in the first chapter, mediæval man had built up a society

in which all men had definite functions, and in which destructive

competition between classes and individuals was reduced to a minimum.

Despite insufficient checks upon cruelty and brutality, and despite

the scantiness of its knowledge of history and of natural science,

the time had produced a general level of craftsmanship as unknown

since the sixteenth century as it was unequalled before the twelfth

(the short best period of Greece only excepted). In promoting the

happiness of mankind as a whole, mediæval society seems never to

have been equalled. Certainly the cheerfulness of the memorials

which the thirteenth century has left us is unique. And in this

society the Church was central and indispensable. To the educated

mediæval man (who, while inferior to his modern colleagues in

range of information, at the same time surpassed us in clarity and

rationality)—to the educated mediæval man, I say, it was evident

that to shatter the Church by attacking her Faith and Morals would

be to shatter his balanced society altogether, and set men preying

wolfishly upon one another. The common man, by a sort of instinct,

was equally determined upon the point. And what is more, their fear

was justified, as the last three centuries have abundantly proved,

although the age of expansion has postponed to our own day the

fulness of the evil of strife between man and man. Therefore the

men of the Middle Ages were correct in resisting attacks upon the

Church as attacks upon all they valued in civil society as well as in

religion.

The secular case for Prohibition is not nearly so strong as

the secular case for the Inquisition. It might be argued that

industrialism is central and fundamental in our society, and that

Prohibition, which is said to aim at “greater industrial efficiency,”

therefore resembles the Inquisition in being the servant of the

fundamental thing in the life of the community in which it has

arisen. But even if the truth of this idea, so far as it goes, be

conceded, still obstinate facts remain. Industrialism flourished

before Prohibition. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether

the attempt to abolish one of the chief pleasures of mankind will

result to the advantage even of the industrial system. It is at

least equally probable if the industrial labourer were to be really

deprived of his liquor that his energy would decline because of

a slackening in the zest for life characteristic of Christendom.

Certainly the history and present condition of the Prohibitionist

Mohammedans indicate energy far inferior to that of Christian

men, merry with their beer, their cider and their wine. Even if

an increasing energy on the part of the industrial labourer under

Prohibition be assumed, still there is no assurance that he will

concentrate that energy on his work. In such a case, it is at least

equally probable that he will find the dulness and monotony of

his life, already devastatingly dull and monotonous, so increased

under Prohibition that he will decide to expend a large part of his

vigour in industrial strife or in revolutionary movements. For the

ordinary modern man does not love industrialism as mediæval man

loved the world which he had made. The thirteenth century guildsman

would cheerfully fight for his guild and his customs, the modern

man sacrifices himself to the life of the factory as heavily as the

heathen Semites sacrificed men to Moloch. The Inquisition was a

measure of defence. Its fires burnt in behalf of things which the

mass of mankind saw and felt to be good. The Prohibition movement is

an act of aggression, of questionable value even for its own ugly

purpose. The one Prohibition counterpart of the twelfth century

spontaneous popular lynchings of heretics was the bar-smashing

activities of the virago Carrie Nation.

Last of all, there is, at the very least, a difference in the

degree of contradiction to the teaching and example of Our Lord (as

recorded in the Canonical Gospels), between the Inquisition and the

Prohibition movement. So as to meet possible opposition half way, let

us abandon the conclusions of the Rev. A. Vermeersch, S.J., who seems

to hold that there was no contradiction between the Inquisition on

the one hand and the doctrine and example of Our Lord on the other.

The present writer must confess that the learned Jesuit’s forceful

work is somewhat weakened by traces of a curious obliquity of mind,

as when he defines “religious liberty” as “the liberty of the true

religion!” For the sake of the arguments against the Prohibitionists,

let us rest our case upon the conclusions of Vacandard, whose book

is entrenched behind an array of “Nihil Obstat” and “Imprimatur”

from Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority equal in impressiveness

to that displayed by Vermeersch. Vacandard calls the Inquisitorial

forms of procedure “despotic and barbarous,” and flatly says that

“severe penalties, like the stake and confiscation ... were alien to

the spirit of the Gospel.” Nevertheless, the contradiction between

Inquisitorial severity and the “spirit of the Gospel” must to some

extent be qualified. The logical conclusion is irresistible that

if (as all Christians must) we assume Our Lord’s doctrine and

example to be of inestimable value to mankind, we must admit that

any attempt to pervert that doctrine and example so as to make Our

Blessed Lord say and do as he did not is a more serious matter than

any crime recognized by law. Furthermore, this argument from reason

is, in a measure, supported by authority in the person of Our Lord

himself because of the extreme bitterness with which he denounced the

Pharisees for perverting religion.

On the other hand, the contradiction between Prohibition and the

Gospels is complete and absolute. According to the Gospels, Our Lord

spent most of his time in the society of men and women. Especially

he hallowed, by his continual use of it, the adornment of social

life by wine, so much so that his enemies called him “a gluttonous

man and a wine-bibber.”[46] We find him working a miracle so that a

wedding party, including himself, might be abundantly supplied with

wine ... as if any wedding party since the creation would have cared

whether or not they were indefinitely supplied with grape-juice. He

did even more—he made wine a part of the Sacrament—the one ceremonial

act which he prescribed. Bacchus-Dionysus also, so the pagan Greeks

taught, had made wine a sacrament of fellowship, human and divine. In

contrast with the dull and repulsive fanaticism taught in so-called

Christian Protestant churches in the United States to-day, the

traditional Christian, like the heathen worshipper of Bacchus, seeks

and has ever sought communion with his God in the drinking of wine.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Isaiah, chap. v, verse 2.

[38] “This and That and the Other,” Hilaire Belloc, pp. 18, 19.

[39] Chesterton on Shaw, p. 43.

[40] “Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century,” by Henry

Osborn Taylor, published by Macmillan Co., New York. 1920. Chapter on

Calvin.

[41] From Chapter I of the “History of the United States,” by Cecil

Chesterton, p. 31.

[42] Chesterton on Shaw, pp. 48, 49, 50.

[43] “The Education of Henry Adams, an Autobiography.” “Vis Inertiæ,”

p. 445. Houghton, Mifflin Co., New York, 1918. Chapter XXX.

[44] “The New Politics, and Other Essays,” by William Garrott Brown,

publ. Houghton, Mifflin, New York. 1913. Pp. 157-158.

[45] “Have Faith in Massachusetts,” Calvin Coolidge, p. 4.

[46] St. Matthew’s Gospel, ch. xi, v. 19.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The subject of the Inquisition has been worked over so often that it

is doubtful whether renewed searching of the original authorities

would yield great profit. The law of diminishing returns comes in.

The sources quoted in this bibliography are unequal in value. As

interpreter of the Mediæval spirit Henry Adams comes first and after

him Taylor. For Albigensianism and St. Dominic, Guiraud is best; and

Vacandard for the mechanism and spirit of the thirteenth century

Inquisition. On mediæval warfare in general there is almost nothing

of value. Delpech is the best, supplemented by Dieulafoy as to Muret.

The one author who has gone over the whole subject, including the

entire course of the Albigensian War, is Lea, whose vast learning and

exactitude in matters of fact would have made him a great historian

had he possessed a grain of imagination or the least spark of

sympathy with the Middle Ages. In this respect Luchaire gains through

citizenship in a Catholic country, but his book ends with Innocent’s

death.

I have included a number of books used to illustrate particular

points, and also a handful of old-fashioned Protestant historians

whom the reader will value more for what their works will tell them

about themselves than about their subject. Limborch is not so bad;

his learning has evidently fought (and lost) a real battle against

his partisanship.

“Life of St. Dominic and a Sketch of the Dominican Order.”

Introduction by Most Rev. J. S. Alemany. P. O’Shea: New York.

“The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography.” Houghton, Mifflin

and Co.: New York and Boston. Riverside Press: Cambridge.

“Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres,” Introduction by Ralph Adams,

Cram Henry Adams. Houghton, Mifflin and Co.: New York and Boston.

Riverside Press: Cambridge, 1913.

“The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma,” Henry Adams. Houghton,

Mifflin and Co.: New York and Boston. Riverside Press: Cambridge,

1913.

“In St. Dominic’s Country” (Preface by Rev. T. M. Schwetner, O.P.,

S.T.L.), C. M. Antony. Longmans, Green and Co.: London and New York.

“The Emancipation of Massachusetts,” Brooks Adams. Houghton,

Mifflin and Co.: New York and Boston, 1919.

“La Bataille de Muret” (Pamphlet), Joseph Anglade. Edouard

Champion: Paris, 1913. Edouard Privat: Toulouse, 1913.

“La Conquête de la Vicomté de Carcassonne” (Pamphlet), J. Astruc.

Published August, 1912.

“Relation de l’Inquisition de Goa,” Dellon Aver. Etienne Roger:

Amsterdam, 1919.

“The New Politics and other Papers,” William Garrott Brown.

Houghton, Mifflin and Co.: New York and Boston.

“The Dominican Order and Convocation,” Ernest Barker, M.A.

Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1913.

“Les Dominicains dans l’Université de Paris,” Abbé Eugène Bernard.

E. de Soye et Fils: Paris, 1883.

“Etude sur la Condition des Populations Rurales du Roussillon au

Moyen Age,” Jean Auguste Brutails. Alphonse Picard: Paris, 1891.

“Etude sur l’Esclavage en Roussillon,” Jean Auguste Brutails (In

“Nouvelle Revue Historique,” July-August, 1886).

“George Bernard Shaw,” Gilbert K. Chesterton. John Lane and Co.:

New York and London.

“History of the United States,” Cecil Chesterton. George H. Doran

and Co.: New York, 1919.

“Les Fortifications Romaines et du Moyen Age, dans le Quartier St.

Michel, Toulouse,” M. J. Chalande. Imprimerie et Librairie Edouard

Privat: Toulouse, 1914, (Pamphlet).

“Les Fortifications Romaines et du Moyen Age” (Pamphlet). Entre

la Porte St. Michel et la Porte Montgaillard. M. J. Chalande

(Pamphlet).

“St. Thomas Aquinas—A Biographical Study of the Angelic Doctor,”

Fr. Placid Conway, O.P. Longmans, Green and Co.: New York and

London.

“The Auxilia of the Roman Imperial Army,” F. L. Cheesman, M.A.

Clarendon Press: London, 1914.

“Life of St. Dominic,” Augusta Theodosia Drane. Burns and Oates:

London. Benziger Bros.: New York.

“The Spirit of the Dominican Order,” Augusta Theodosia Drane. R. J.

Washbourne: London, 1910. Benziger Bros.: New York.

“Dominican Biographies.” Catholic Truth Society: London, 1912.

“Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas” (translation). 12 vols.

Benziger Bros.: New York.

“Life of St. Dominic and Sketch of the Dominican Order.” P. O’Shea:

New York, 1892.

“Les Institutions de Tauler, Religieux de l’Ordre de St.

Dominique.” A. Tralin: Paris, 1909.

“La Tactique au XIII Siècle,” Henri Delpech. Alphonse Picard:

Paris, 1886.

“La Bataille de Muret,” Marcel Dieulafoy. Imprimerie Nationale:

Paris, 1899.

“Le Royaume d’Arles et de Vienne (1138-1378),” Paul Fournier.

Alphonse Picard: Paris, 1891.

“Mystères de l’Inquisition et autres Sociétés Secrètes d’Espagne.”

M. V. De Fereal.

“The Making of Western Europe,” C. R. Fletcher. E. P. Dutton and

Co.: New York, 1912.

“Cartulaire de Notre Dame de Prouille,” Jean Guiraud (Preface by).

2 vols.

“St. Dominic” (translation), Jean Guiraud. R. and T. Washbourne:

London. Benziger Bros.: New York, 1913.

“Les Bienheureux Dominicains (1190-1577),” M. C. de Ganaz. Perrin

et Cie: Paris, 1913.

“Lacordaire” (translation), Count d’Haussonville. Herbert and

Daniel: London, 1913.

“Francis and Dominic and the Mendicant Orders,” John Herkless, D.D.

Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1901.

“Philip Augustus,” William Holden Hutton, Ph.D. The Macmillan

Company: New York and London, 1896.

“The Meaning of History and other Historical Pieces,” Frederic

Harrison. The Macmillan Company: New York and London, 1902.

“A Century of Persecution under Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns” (from

Contemporary Records), Rev. St. George Kiernan Hyland, D.D., Ph.D.

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd.: London, 1920. E. P.

Dutton and Co.: New York.

“The Dark Ages,” W. P. Ker. Scribner’s: N.Y., 1904. Introd., pp.

6-8.

“Genius Loci, Notes on Places,” Vernon Lee. John Lane and Co.: New

York.

“Renaissance Fancies and Studies,” Vernon Lee. John Lane and Co.:

New York.

“A History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church,” Henry

C. Lea, LL.D. 2 vols. Williams and Norgate: London, 1907.

“Superstition and Force,” Henry C. Lea, LL.D. Lea, Bros, and Co.:

Philadelphia, 1892.

“The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies,” Henry C. Lea, LL.D.

The Macmillan Company: New York and London, 1908.

“History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” Henry C. Lea,

LL.D. The Macmillan Company: New York and London, 1908.

“An Historical Sketch of the Order of St. Dominic,” Father

Lacordaire. P. O’Shea: New York, 1869.

“Vie de Saint Dominique,” Father Lacordaire. Librairie Poussielque:

Paris, 1912.

“Letters to Young Men,” Father Lacordaire. London, 1903. “Cassock

and Sword,” Charles Lenz, Ph.D.

“Innocent III,” Achille Luchaire. La Croisade des Albigeois, Rome

et l’Italie. Librairie Hachette, 1907.

“Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus” (translation),

Achille Luchaire. John Murray: London, 1912.

“History of the Inquisition” (translation). Philip A. Limborch:

London, 1731.

“A History of the Holy Catholic Inquisition,” Introduction by Rev.

Cyrus Mason. Henry Perkins: Philadelphia. Corey and Fairbank:

Cincinnati, 1835.

“Histoire des Maîtres Généraux de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs,” R.

P. Mortier. Alphonse Picard: Paris, 1909.

“A Short History of the Crusades,” J. L. Mombert, D.D. News

Printing Co.: New York, 1894.

“The Bloody Tribunal,” John Marchant, Gent. Golden Key, London,

1756.

“John Lackland,” Kate Norgate. The Macmillan Company: New York and

London, 1902.

“A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages from the Fourth to

the Fourteenth Century,” Charles Oman, M.A., F.S.A. Methuen and

Co.: London, 1898. G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York.

“The Dominicans,” edited by Very Rev. Father John Proctor, S.T.M.

R. and T. Washbourne, Ltd.: London. Benziger Bros.: New York, 1909.

“The Spirit of Romance,” Ezra Pound, M.A. J. M. Dent and Sons:

London.

“Scholasticism,” Joseph Rickaby, S.J. Dodge Publishing Co.: New

York, 1908.

“Brand of Dominic,” Rev. William H. Rule. Carlton and Phillips: New

York, 1853.

“History of the Inquisition,” Rev. William H. Rule. Hamilton Adams

and Co.: London, 1874.

“Averroes et l’Averroisme,” Ernest Renan. Calmann Lévy: Paris.

“What is Modern Romanism?” George Franklin Seymour, D.D., LL.D.

Young Churchman Co.: Milwaukee, 1888.

“Mediæval Civilization” (translation), Dana Carleton Munro and

George Clarke Sellery. Century Company: New York, 1904.

“Renaissance in Italy,” John Addington Symonds. 7 vols. Smith,

Elder and Co.: London, 1904.

“Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece,” John Addington Symonds.

3 vols. Smith, Elder and Co.: London, 1907.

“Wine, Women and Song,” John Addington Symonds. Doubleday, Page and

Co.: New York, 1907. G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1907.

“Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Constitutional

History from the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward I,” William

Stubbs, M.A. 2 vols. Clarendon Press: London, 1875.

“Constitutional History of England—in its Origin and Development,”

William Stubbs, M.A. Clarendon Press: London, 1875.

“Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition,” Rafael Sabatini.

Brentano: New York, 1913.

“Summa Theologia of St. Thomas Aquinas” (translation). Benziger

Bros.: New York, 1914.

“History of the Inquisitions, including the Secret Transactions of

those Horrific Tribunals.” J. J. Stockdale: London, 1810.

“Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century,” Henry Osborn

Taylor. 2 vols. The Macmillan Company: New York, 1920.

“The Mediæval Mind,” Henry Osborn Taylor. Macmillan and Co.:

London, 1914.

“Ancient Ideals,” Henry Osborn Taylor. The Macmillan Company: New

York, 1913.

“The Empire and the Papacy,” T. F. Tout, M.A. Rivington’s: London,

1909.

“Life and Labours of St. Thomas of Aquin,” Archbishop Vaughan,

O.S.B. Burns and Oates: London. Catholic Publication Society of New

York, 1890.

“The Inquisition: A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive

Power of the Church” (translation), E. Vacandard. Longmans, Green

and Co.: London and New York.

“History of Languedoc,” Jean Joseph Vaissete. 16 vols E. Privat:

Toulouse, 1872.

“Bullaire du Bienheureux Pierre de Castelnau.” At Villemagne.

Librairie M. Valat: Montpellier, 1917.

“Dante and Aquinas: Being the Substance of the Jowett Lectures of

1911,” Philip H. Wicksteed. J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.: London and

Toronto. E. P. Dutton and Co.: New York.

“The Traditions of the European Literature,” Barrett Wendell.

Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1920.

John Bale Sons & Danielsson, Ltd., 83-91, Great Titchfield Street,

London, W.

[Illustration: LANGUEDOC AND ADJACENT LANDS IN 1209]

[Illustration: TOWN OF MURET 1213]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MURET, SEPT. 11, 1213

1ST PHASE: DE MONTFORT’S SORTIE AND SURPRISE OF FOIX]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MURET, SEPT. 11, 1213

2ND PHASE: THE DECISION]

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MURET, SEPT 11, 1213

3RD PHASE: DE MONTFORT, RETURNING FROM PURSUIT, ROUTS THE TOULOUSAN

MILITIA INFANTRY ATTACKING THE TOWN

]

[Illustration: APPROXIMATE RESTORATION OF TOULOUSE IN 1217-1218 TO

ILLUSTRATE ITS SIEGE BY DE MONTFORT

(MODERN STREETS IN DOTTED LINES)]

Transcriber’s Notes

pg i Added period after: Toulouse in 1217-1218 to illustrate its

siege by De Montfort

pg ii Changed: Father Astruc, Curé of St. Vincent’s Church,

Carcassone

to: Father Astruc, Curé of St. Vincent’s Church,

Carcassonne

pg xii Removed unnecessary ) from: Flanders in the early eighteenth

century).

pg 27 Changed: which has usually been called Albigenseanism

to: which has usually been called Albigensianism

pg 29 Changed: draining the country between the Cevennes

to: draining the country between the Cévennes

pg 46 Added quote after: general toleration of Valentinian, in the

fourth century.

pg 67 Changed: these people gave to extreme ascetism,

to: these people gave to extreme asceticism,

pg 60 Added period after: Plon-Nourrit Paris, 1913. Pp. 362-3,

author’s trans

pg 63 Changed: went against the heretics, no action whatsover

to: went against the heretics, no action whatsoever

pg 63 Changed: The other great chronic political controvery,

to: The other great chronic political controversy,

pg 83 Changed: had been “hereticated” on their deathbed

to: had been “hereticated” on their death-bed

pg 95 Changed: chronicler Peter de Vaux-Cernaiy Raymond

to: chronicler Peter de Vaux-Cernay Raymond

pg 117 Changed: account of aid given by certain near-by

to: account of aid given by certain nearby

pg 120 Changed: Mediterranean end of the Pyrenées

to: Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees

pg 129 Changed: Pamiers, Foix, and the upper Ariège.

to: Pamiers, Foix, and the upper Ariege.

pg 144 Changed: De Montford sent a knight

to: De Montfort sent a knight

pg 150 Changed: The Garonne flows northeast

to: The Garonne flows north-east

pg 153 Changed: Toulousains were out of easy bow-shot

to: Toulousains were out of easy bowshot

pg 156 Changed: William d’Encontre and William des Barras

to: William d’Encontre and William des Barres

pg 158 Changed: his chivalric enthusiasm by exchangnig

to: his chivalric enthusiasm by exchanging

pg 164 Changed: Courcon had persuaded to to take the field

to: Courcon had persuaded to take the field

pg 167 Changed comma to period after: “French” that it seemed wise

to make it defenceless

pg 171 Changed: swearing homage to his proper over-lord

to: swearing homage to his proper overlord

pg 173 Changed: After this exchange of compliments at Narbonne, de

Montford

to: After this exchange of compliments at Narbonne, de

Montfort

pg 176 Removed repeated word from: Guy and and his men ended by

pg 185 Changed: Louis promply went to work

to: Louis promptly went to work

pg 185 Removed extra period from: service from certain nobles not

keen for the expedition..

pg 192 Changed: North Frenchmen who came to sieze

to: North Frenchmen who came to seize

pg 215 Changed: come down to us concerning Waldenses, Arnaldists

to: come down to us concerning Waldenses, Arnoldists

pg 254 Added period after: Riverside Press: Cambridge, 1913

pg 256 Added period after: John Lane and Co

pg 257 Changed: “Averroes et l’Averroisme,” Ernest Renan. Calmann Levy

to: “Averroes et l’Averroisme,” Ernest Renan. Calmann Lévy