expect to be able to determine what there is in the constitution or habits of certain individuals, which renders them peculiarly susceptible of their agency, whilst others, exposed to precisely the same influences, escape with entire impunity. And of all tropical climates, we would ourselves choose that of India as affording the most satisfactory test,—both on account of the large number of Europeans resident there, the variety of their habits, which enables us to place one set of individuals in contrast with another, and, what is of the first importance, the exact statistics afforded by the experience of large bodies of men, and collected by the highest authorities without any party predilection, so that they may be safely appealed to on either side.

It is in India that we see, in all their dreadful malignity, the constant operation of causes of disease, which here make themselves apparent only when we are visited by some devastating epidemic. Thus, regiment after regiment, when quartered in a particular station, is nearly deciminated by cholera and fever within a twelvemonth; there is no marsh in the neighbourhood, no foetid accumulation about the barracks; an artillery company quartered within a stone's throw may be ordinarily healthy; nothing can be assigned as the cause, save the insufficient space for the lodgment of the men, which involves deficient supply of air; and this being remedied, fever and cholera almost disappear, and the general sickness and mortality are brought down to the ordinary average.

Hence, if our doctrine be correct, that the habitual 'moderate' use of alcoholic liquors tends to produce a state of blood resembling that which is produced by insufficient respiration, it is in India that we ought to find the surest evidence, that entire abstinence from these beverages confers the greatest immunity from the attacks of zymotic disease, and, on the other hand, that even the moderate consumption of alcoholic liquors will powerfully augment the potentiality of insufficient ventilation.

We choose India, then, for our battle-ground with the champions of the Burton Pale Ale; and it is most assuredly not for them to decline the combat within these lists; for among the great benefits which the Messrs Allsopp and their coadjutors claim to have conferred upon mankind, the greatest, on their own showing, is the saving of life and health which has resulted from the extensive consumption of their liquor by European residents in India, as tested by an experience of thirty years. Upon this subject, their hired scribe, the London Citizen,' becomes highly eloquent; the very profitable nature of the trade affording the strongest motives that a venal writer can appreciate, to use his endeavours in its defence:

'Since the period in question, the consumption of the article has increased with a rapidity commensurate with the growing knowledge of its potency in warding off the deadly effects of climate the pernicious consequences of exposure to the blighting heats and not less dangerous malaria and nightly dews which planted the seeds of death in thousands of our countrymen in the East, and which, in former times, on an average of years, dug the graves of fifty per cent. of all new comers within thirty months of their arrival. Things in India are changed since then. Fearful experience, dearly purchased, has brought its plentiful crop of knowledge, and, amongst other descriptions of knowledge, that of the dietetic observances which all must cbey who would live to see Old England once more, and not die during their probationary "seasoning," as it is locally termed. The consequence is, that, at the present day, the scale of mortality in most of our Oriental possessions can be calculated at the Institute for Actuaries, for ordinary seasons and circumstances, with nearly as much precision as for the meridian of Devonshire or Hants. Improved dietary regulations have done much towards this auspicious change; and amongst the articles whose use has conduced to the sustainment of the stomach and the digestive faculties, to the abrogation of the old and gloomy proverb which associated "an Indian liver" with early decay and death, a most honourable and conspicuous place is assigned to Allsopp's Pale Ale." To the increased consumption of this salutary preparation may, in great measure, be ascribed the presence amongst us of so many "old Indians," veteran octogenarians, the bulk of whom, fifty years ago, would have died in their prime, but who now survive to "sit at home at ease," in the enjoyment of their well-won wealth and laurels. Such is the verdict of the medical profession, and in that verdict good sense and intelligence acquiesce.'

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Now, let us examine a little more closely into the facts of this case. We freely admit, and shall probably surprise many of our readers by the admission, that the extensive consumption of pale ale in India has had a most beneficial influence upon the health and longevity of the European residents in that country. The testimony to this effect, which we have received from numerous disinterested sources, is too strong and tco unanimous to be resisted. But in order to make evident that the real bearing of this fact is against, and not in favour of bitter ale, we have only to inquire, for what beverages has the bitter ale been substitutedwhether for water, or for the stronger alcoholic liquors? No one who knows anything of the past and present habits of Europeans in India, can have the slightest difficulty in replying to this question. The terrible fatality of the 'seasoning process was due, there can be no kind of doubt, to the excessive use of wine and spirits, which were taken under the delusive idea that they afforded the safest and best means of keeping at bay the noxious influences of the climate; and the health and longevity of the European residents in India have improved, in the precise proportion in which they have given up the use of alcoholic beverages, or substituted the weaker for the stronger. For those who cannot bring themselves to abstain from everything of the sort, the substitution of a malt liquor, containing a small proportion of alcohol, is doubtless the next best thing; and hence it has been that, as was pithily said to us, a few years since, by the surgeon to an Indian regiment, 'Since our officers have taken to drinking bitter ale instead of brandy and water, promotion is no longer expected to take place more rapidly among them, than in

any other departments of the service;' a statement which recalls to our minds the toast that was formerly common at the Indian mess-tables,- A bloody war, or a sickly season.' The latter of these fearful occurrences has now comparatively little influence upon the chances of the Indian officer's rise; and whilst much of the improvement in his health is to be set down to a better accommodation of his general habits to the requirements of the climate, and especially to the greater care now taken in securing the free ventilation of his apartments, there can be no doubt that a large share of it is due to the general substitution of Burton Pale Ale for spirits and wines, that is, to the substitution of beverages containing a minimum of alcohol for those containing

a maximum.

Very strong evidence to the same effect is afforded by the experience of the comparative rates of mortality of the three divisions of the Indian Army, which was published some time since by Lieutenant-Colonel Sykes, whose official position gives to these statistics the stamp of the highest authority. The annual loss by death, in the European troops of the three presidencies respectively, on an average of twenty years, previously to the date of the returns, was as follows:

Bengal,
Bombay,
Madras,

73.8 per 1000.

50.7 per 1000.

38.4 per 1000.

Now, there cannot be shown to be any other reason for the extraordinary difference in these rates of mortality-the annual loss of a regiment a thousand strong being nearly twice as great in Bengal as in Madras, and nearly one-half more than in Bombay-than the mode in which the troops (to use an American phrase) are 'liquored.' The Bengal army, we learn from Colonel Sykes, has no supply of porter, but is furnished with rum, a spirit peculiarly unwholesome in hot climates. On the other hand, the Madras army consume large quantities of porter, and drink comparatively little spirits, what they do consume being arrack, which seems in a degree less pernicious than rum. The Bombay troops had only recently commenced the consumption of porter; and the spirit they drank is understood to be more wholesome than rum, and less so than arrack. We have since been informed by Colonel Sykes, that the substitution of porter for spirits has produced the same good effect in the Bombay army that it had previously worked in the Madras; the mortality in the former during the last few years being reduced nearly to the level of the latter.

So much, then, for the good effects of the substitution of good malt liquors for spirits, and especially for bad spirits, among the European troops exposed to the various morbific influences of India. We have now to look at the other side of the question, and

to inquire what are the effects of the substitution of Total Abstinence for Temperance under the same circumstances? With this view we shall draw upon the experience of the Madras division of our Indian army, which may be considered as representing the principle of 'temperance,' in the ordinary acceptation of the word, exhibiting the results of the habitual 'moderate' use of alcoholic beverages, and these being, to a great extent, the much-lauded malt liquors, instead of the distilled spirits, whose pernicious qualities Messrs Allsopp would probably denounce scarcely less earnestly than ourselves. In the statistical return of sickness and mortality for the year 1849, published by Government authority,* we find a more valuable distinction drawn than any such return had previously included; namely, a classification of the entire force into intemperate, temperate, and total abstainers. As all our previous statistics of this kind merely separated the total abstainers from the non-abstainers, it was always in the power of the latter to say,-'we admit that excess is bad, and the superiority in health and longevity of total abstainers over drunkards is a palpable fact, especially in India; but the intemperate must be excluded, if you wish to prove the case of total abstinence as against temperance.' This has now been done in the Government return to which we allude.† And how does the account stand? The number of deaths among 450 total abstainers during the year 1849 was 5, or 11.1 per 1000; whilst the number among 4318 temperate men (consumers of malt liquors in moderation) was 100, or 23.1 per 1000, being rather more than double the previous proportion. As to the intemperate, the increase is frightful, for among 942 such men the number of deaths was not less than 42, or in the quadruple ratio of 44.5 per 1000. Now it is worthy of remark, that the number of admissions for sickness among the total abstainers was but little less than that which presented itself among the temperate, being 130-8 in the former, and 141.5 in the latter; but it is obvious, from the comparatively low rate of mortality among the former, that their disorders were of a far less degree of severity.

This, it will be observed, is not a picked case; it is the general experience of the European army of the Madras Presidency. We shall now follow the course of a particular regiment, noted for containing a large proportion of total abstainers (among them the colonel and nearly the whole of the officers), and for the extreme sobriety of the remainder of the men; and shall examine its hygienic condition under three different conditions, viz., in a healthy station, in an unhealthy station, and on a march :-During the year 1846-7, whilst the

* This table will be found in the Scottish Temperance League Register for 1852, p. 78. † See the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, May, 1851.

84th regiment was quartered at Fort St George, Madras, it only lost 13 men out of a strength of 1072; that is, at the rate of 12.1 per 1000, which, as the station is in most respects a favourable one, may be regarded as representing the necessary mortality of European soldiers in India; but the average number of deaths among the so-called temperate regiments, quartered in the other reputedly healthy stations of the Presidency was, for the same year, 30.2 per 1000, showing a reduction in favour of the 84th, in the proportion of 5 to 2 (or 2 to 1), upon a rate which, for soldiers in India, was remarkably low. The 84th was then marched to Secunderabad, a station which had long enjoyed the bad repute of being the most unhealthy in the Madras Presidency; its barrack accommodation being notoriously insufficient, and its average annual mortality, for the fifteen years preceding, having been 75 per 1000, or more than double the average of the other stations in the Presidency. During the year 1846-7, which the 84th had passed with so little diminution of its numbers at Fort St George, the 63d, a regiment by no means distinguished for temperance, had been quartered at Secunderabad, and had lost 73 men in nine months. The loss of the 84th during the next year, in the same quarters, was only 39, or 34.2 per 1000, and this notwithstanding that the general average of the other stations was rather higher than during the preceding year, showing that the comparative immunity of the 84th was not due to any superior healthiness of the season. Thus, then, it appears that whilst the increase of mortality among the 84th regiment, caused by its transfer from the comparatively healthy quarters of Fort St George to the crowded and ill-ventilated barracks of Secunderabad, was from 12.1 to 34.2 per 1000, or 22.1 per 1000, the increase upon the already high annual mortality in the latter, due to the superaddition of fermented liquors, as proved by the comparison of the mortality of the 84th, with that of previous regiments, was, to say the least, 40 per 1000, and with an intemperate regiment rose to much more. How cogent, then, is the evidence which experience yields in support of our proposition, that by obstructing the due purification of the blood the habitual use of alcoholic liquors exerts an influence of precisely the same kind with imperfect ventilation; since we here find that the two agencies combined, produce an effect upon the mortality of the troops exposed to them, which neither can exert separately? Of the difference of average mortality among the troops quartered in the healthier stations, above that of the 84th whilst in Fort St George, which we have seen to be as 30 to 12, or as 2 to 1, the principal part may be fairly considered as representing the difference between a set of total abstainers and of 'temperate' men, the average mortality of the

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