Intemperance and crime

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1881

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UDMEfi BAfiBlDGE UBSARY, STORRS, CT

INTEMPERANCE

AND

CRIME

.33

By NOAH DAVIS,

CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW YOSK,

NEW YORK:
National Temperance Society and Publication Houses

58 READE STREET.
1S81.

nimmttF UBRABYt STORRS, CI

-^

/

COPYKICHT, 1879, BY

/. N. STEARNS, PuBusiUNG Acirvi.

PREFACE

The following paper was kindly prepared by Chief
Justice Noah Davis, by special invitation, for a
Parlor Conference, one of a series now being- held
under the auspices of the National Temperance
Society.

It was read by the author on the evening of De-
cember 17, 1878, in the parlors of Hon. Wm. E.
Dodge, President of the Society, and listened to
with profound attention by a large number of
guests, including many distinguished representa-
tives of the professional and mercantile life of the
metropolis.

INTEMPERANCE AND CRIME.

I AM invited to speak to-night of the relations
of intemperance to crime. The theme is a hack-
neyed one, as old as alcohol, and one can not
consider it without a sort of anger at the selfish-
ness of the men of past generations, who have
said all our good things before we were born.
Little is left to us but to array their testimonies
and confirm them by our own experiences.

No one doubts the existence of sin. Through-
out Christendom a million spires rise to heaven
in proof and condemnation of it. Yet the ugly
fact remains, and will, until the devil is finally
chained to make room for the millennium. But
this is no argument against the reiteration of
godly preaching and Gospel truth. Said Chief
Justice Marshall, to a lawyer who began His
argument in the Garden of Eden : '' It is safe
to assume that the court knows something."
On that authority I shall assume that this
audience knows, by hear say, of the existence
of crime and intemperance, and proceed to
speak of their correlations. It is not quite sus-

6 Intemperance aitd Crime.

ceptible of proof that the relation of Intemper-
ance to crime is that of caicsa cansans. There
are other causes, such as hate, avarice, jealousy,
lust, and revenge ; but these are narrower in
their circles of evil ; more easily repressed by
individuals and society ; more subject to moral
influences and restraints, and are not sanctioned
by law nor dealt out under statutory licenses.

But among all causes of crime, intemperance
stands out the ''unapproachable chief" This
fact may be established both affirmatively and
negatively.' It is proved by the existence of in-
temperance, and equally as well by its non-ex-
istence ; just as the tides of the ocean may be
proved by the flood and by the ebb. First, let
us briefly consider the proof by existence. The
proposition is, that whenever and wherever
intemperance is most prevalent, crime is most
abundant. Crime is the mercury of a political
and moral thermometer which intemperance
and its opposite affect as heat and cold. This
recognized fact has created an elementary prin-
ciple in the criminal common law — that drunk-
enness is no excuse for crime.

No principle is better, or was earlier, settled,
and it was rested upon the manifest fact that, if

Intemperance and Crime. 7

allowed as an excuse, all crime would prepare
and fortify itself by intoxication. Hence courts,
even in capital cases, were compelled to treat
drunkenness as an aggravation of crime, and to
hold that a drunken intent was equally as felo-
nious as a sober one. In common acceptance,
the drunken man is temporarily insane. It is
fortunate that in a country where making drunk
was a business licensed by law as a source of
governmental revenue the wisdom of judges
discarded popular notions, and the natural infer-
ence from that kind of legislation, and gave us
principles and rules by inheritance which I fear
we would not have had the virtue to originate.
Intoxicating drinks enable men to commit crimes
by firing the passions and quenching the con-
science. Burke, the Irish murderer, whose
horrible mode of committino- his crimes has

o

taken his own name, in his confession states
that only once did he feel any restraint of con-
science. That was when he was about to kill
; an infant child. The babe looked up and smiled
'in his face, ''but," said he, '^ I drank a large
glass of brandy, and then I had no remorse."
His case is one of thousands. Many times in
my own experience have young men looked up

8 Intempera7ice ajid Crime.

to me, when asked what they had to say why
the sentence of the law should not be pro-
nounced, and falteringly said : ''I was drunk;
I would not and could not have done it had I
not been drunk."

That habits of intemperance are the chief
cause of crime is the testimony of all judges of
large experience. More than two hundred
years ago Sir Matthew Hale, then Chief Jus-
tice of England, to whom as a writer and judge
we are greatly indebted for our own criminal
law, speaking on this subject, said: "The
places of judicature I have long held in this
kingdom, have given me an opportunity to ob-
serve the oriorinal cause of most of the enormi-
ties that have been committed for the space of
nearly twenty years, and by due observation I
have found that if the murders and manslaugh-
ters, the burglaries and robberies, the riots and
tumoits, the adulteries, fornications, rapes, and
other enormities that have happened in that
time were divided into ^\g. parts, four of them
ha^e been the issue and product of excessive
drinking — of tavern and ale-house drinking."
Leaping over two hundred years of English
history and jurisprudence, I call one other emi-

Intemperance and Crime. 9

nent judge of great experience to testify. Lord
Chief- Baron Kelly, perhaps the oldest judge now
on the English bench, says in a letter to the Arch-
deacon of Canterbury: '' Two-thirds of the crimes
which come before the courts of law of this
country are occasioned chiefly by intemperance."
Not less explicit is the testimony of those
whose official duties have brought them in con-
tact with convicted criminals. Speaking of in-
temperance, the Chaplain of the Preston House
of Correction said: ''Nine-tenths of the En-
glish crime requiring to be dealt with by law
arises from the English sin, which the law
scarcely discourages." And the late inspector
of English prisons says : " I am within the truth
when I state that in four cases out of five, when
an offense has been committed, intoxicating
drink has been one of the causes." The rea-
son for this is not found in English skies. A
committee of the House of Commons of the
Dominion of Canada, reporting in 1875, state
that ''out of 28,289 commitments to the jails
of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, dur-
ing the three previous years, 21,236 were com-
mitted either for drunkenness or for crimes per-
petrated under the influence of drink."

lO I7ite7nperancc and Crime.

This is not a mere provincial imitation of the
fashions of the mother country ; for, alas ! in
our own land, under our beloved republican in-
stitutions, the same startling facts exist. Mas-
sachusetts, great keeper of Plymouth Rock and
of the virtues that landed there, tells the same
tale. The report of her State Board of Chari-
ties for 1869 says: "The proportion of crime
traceable to this great vice must be set down,-
as heretofore, at not less than four-fifths," and
her inspectors of State prisons in 1868 gave
the same proportion. Coming closer home, we
have the testimony of our Board of Police Jus-
tices in their report of 1874: "We are fully
satisfied," say they, " that intoxication is the one
ereat leadine" cause that renders the existence
of our poHce courts ncccssar)-."

Of seventeen cases of murder, examined sep-
arately by Dr. Harris, corresponding secretary
of the Prison Association, fourteen were insti-
gated by intoxicating drinks. The line of wit-
nesses miofht stretch out to the crack of doom.
The case would only be a little stronger. It is
established beyond argument by official statis-
tics, by the experience of courts, and by the
observation of enlightened philanthropists, that

I7itempera7tce and Crime, ii

the prevalence of intemperance in every coun-
try is the standard by which its crimes may be
measured. Whatever man or woman can do
that checks intemperance, diminishes crime,
lessens vice and misery, and promotes virtue
and happiness. Whatever man or woman does
do that spreads intemperance, increases crime,
promotes vice and misery, and lessens virtue
and happiness. The State has no soul to damn.
The corporation of New York will never stand
at the great judgment bar. The official who
goes in to-day and out to-morrow will carry his
own load of vice or meed of virtue ; but neither
State nor municipality will ever rise to the sim-
plest of all duties — the prevention of crime and
misery at the fountain-head — until the people
are brought by individual effort to realize the
necessity of that heroism.

The relation of intemperance to crime is also
strikingly shown by the diminution of the latter
wherever the former is wholly or partially sup-
pressed.

Whether the suppression be the result of pro-
hibitory laws, or of the efforts of the advocates
of temperance, makes no difference with the
general truth of the proposition. Taken in all

12 Intempermice a7id Crime,

its aspects, perhaps the most wonderful tem-
perance reformation of any age was that led by
Father Mathew in Ireland. I can not speak
his name without emotions of deepest venera-
tion. Worthier he than all others to be called
the patron saint of Ireland. Before the close
of October, 1838, Father Mathew had enrolled
more than 250,000 names on his pledges of
total abstinence. Well, names are nothing.
Things are much. Lord Morpeth, when Sec-
retary for Ireland, in an address on the condi-
tion of Ireland, gav^e these statistics. Of cases
of murder, attempts at murder, offenses against
the person, aggravated assaults, and cutting
and maiming — there were, he says, in 1S37,
12,096; 1838, 11,058; 1839, 1,097; 1S40, 173.

Between 1838 and 1840 the consumption of
spirits in Ireland had fallen off 5,000,000 gal-
lons ; the public-houses where liquors were re-
tailed had lessened by 237 in the city of Dub-
lin alone ; the persons imprisoned in the Bride-
well (the principal city prison), had fallen in a
single year from 136- to 23, and more than 100
cells in the Bridewell being empty, the Smith-
field prison was actually closed.

To what can be attributed this amazing array

Intemperance and Crime. 13

of facts and figures ? Not to war, nor to pesti-
lence, nor to famine, for these are, unhappily,
the beeetters of crime. Tlot to a sterner execu-
tion of the laws, nor to greater severity of pun-
ishments, for these always relax as crime dimin-
ishes. Not to changes in the excise laws of
the country, for they, for the most part, remain-
ed intact. No, it must stand as an historic
truth that one bold, humane man, planting him-
self en the rock of temperance, and supple-
"-'^nting his priestly power with Christian char-
ity and love, by his burning zeal and eloquence
awoke all the emotional nature of his volatile
race, and built up a barrier of voluntary pledges
between them and the great curse of their coun-
try.

Something analogous is even now in prog-
ress in our city. Analogous in that its leader
and advocate is an Irishman full of the enthusi-
astic eloquence of the Irish nature ; in that its
motive power is humanity and love ; in that its
chief object is the rescue of the fallen victims of
drink ; in that it seeks to reach the intellect
through the avenues of the heart, by appeals to
man's better nature ; and God grant that it

14 Intemperance and Crime.

mav be analoeous also in the mlo-ht of its ex-
tent and influence !

I have selected the one strong example of
the repression of crime by the successful eftbrts
of the friends of temperance not because it
stands alone, but because time will not permit
the detail of more. I feel bound to add, how-
ever, that in my judgment the efforts of tem-
perance organizations in our country, whatever
we may think of the wisdom or discretion of
some of their modes of action, have done more
to prevent crime by spreading and maintaining
temperance, especially among our rural popula-
tions, than all our numerous and complicated
systems of police. .

The relation of intemperance to crime is also
plainly manifest where drunkenness is repressed
by partial or complete prohibition. The cases
of towns and villages where, by the arrange-
ments of their founders, no liquors or intoxicat-
ing drinks have ever been allowed to be sold,
furnish strong evidence. Vineland, with its
10,000 people, without a grog-shop, and with a
police force of one constable, who is also over-
seer of the poor (with a salary for both offices

Inte^npcrance and Crime. 15

of $75), reports in some years a single crime,
and a poor-rate swelling to the aggregate of
$4 a year. Greeley, in Colorado, is another
town of 3,000 people, and no liquor-shop. It
uses and needs no police force, and in two years
and a half $7 only was called out of its poor-
fund. Bavaria, Illinois, a town of the same
population, with absolute prohibition, was with-
out a drunkard, without a pauper, and without
a crime. A small town in Western New York
was founded some years ago by a gentleman
who made it a condition in all his title-deeds
that if liquors were sold, the land should revert
to him. The condition became the subject of
litigation in our courts, and was held to be valid
and enforceable by ejectment.

I well recollect when that case was argued
before the General Term, of which I was then
a member, that a very distinguished lawyer and
politician, not long since the president of the
State Convention of his party, came up to the
bench after the argument, and said to me:
*' Judge, if I had been arguing that case I
should have made a stronger constitutional ob-
jection." '' Well," said I, '' what objection
would you have made ? " '' Why," he replied,

l6 Inte7npera7ice and Crime.

*' that the provision is plainly a violation of the
Constitution, inasmuch as it prevented free
speech." '' How so ? " I asked. '' Why, don't
you see," said he, ''that it would be utterly im-
possible ever to hold a political meeting of my
party there ? " That village has none of the in-
cidents of intemperance ; and the same thing is
true of numerous other places whose founders
have established prohibition.

It may be said that these are not fair exam-
ples, because the inhabitants were all teetotal-
ers or temperance men. They are less conclu-
sive, perhaps, but they certainly show the value
of the absence of temptation. How is it, then,
where prohibition exists by absolute law ? I
will not take Maine, the hackneyed theme of so
many contradictions, further than to state that
in 1 870 her convictions for crime under prohibi-
tion were only 431, or one in every 1,689, while
in our State (exclusive of this city), under license,
the convictions were 5,473, or one in every 620
souls. Can it be that the rural population of
New York is so much more addicted to crime
than the people of Maine ?

But take Connecticut — commonly called " the
land of steady habits." Under the prohibition

Intemperance and Crime. 1 7

law of 1854, crime is shown to have diminished
75 per cent. On the restoration of hcense in
1873, crime increased 50 per cent, in a single
year, and in two years in Hartford, according to
official returns presented by the Rev. Mr. Walker,
crime increased in that city 400 per cent. In
New London the prison was empty, and the
jailer out of business for awhile after prohibi-
tion went into effect. Connecticut has now a
local option act. Under it New London lately
voted for no license.

I found in the New York Herald, a few
mornings ago, a letter from New London la-
menting at great .length the present suffermgs
of thirsty souls in that city. The concluding
portions of the letter are so naive and so much
to my purpose that you will pardon me for
reading them :

" There are, of course, two sides to the ques-
tion, and one of them is perhaps exhibited in
the records of the police of this town for the
month during which the prohibitory law has
been in operation. The ' force ' consists of a
captain, a sergeant, and five patrolmen. The
captain states that the number of arrests for m-
toxication heretofore averaged between thirty-

1 8 Intemperance mid Crime.

five and fifty per month. Seven was the num-
ber for November — in fact, it was only six, as
one of them got tipsy on the night before the
law went into operation, but was not arrested
until the following day. The whole number of
arrests on all charges each month is about lOO,
and the number of persons locked up on other
charges than drunkenness shows a correspond-
ing decrease, because many crimes grow out
of that.

"Another point is that the class of persons
most injured by drinking find it impossible to
obtain liquor. The poor wretch who on Satur-
day night would get drunk and squander his
week's earnings can find no one to sell him rum,
because no sooner does he venture in the streets
in a drunken condition than he is arrested and
forced to testify against those who sold him the
liquor. That class of excessive drinkers is thus
benefited by the law, and it is to bring this about
that the moderate drinkers suffer annoyance
and strangers total deprivation.

"Again, the houses where gambling and
other vices flourish complain of the new law.
It seems odd at the first blush that they should
be afraid to break one law in establishments

Intemperance and Crime. 19

which depend for their existence upon the in-
fringement of another, but it will be seen that
if their customers become intoxicated they would
be the means of calling attention to the places
where the liquor was obtained, and that would
lead to the latter being closed. Cider is about
the only drink to be found in such places, and
as a consequence they are less frequented than
formerly. -There is nothing to over-stimulate
the nerves or fire the blood in a glass of acrid
New England apple-juice — quite the contrary,
indeed, is its effect. New Haven has voted to
abolish the licensing of the liquor-traffic by a
majority of one thousand, and probably the
same grave and funny aspects of the case will
be found there."

But we have had a striking example in our
own city. The Metropolitan Excise Law of
1866 was absolutely prohibitory on Sundays.
Prior to that law there had been no material
difference in the number of arrests made on that
day and on other days of the week. Taking
Tuesdays for comparison, there were from
January i, 1867, to October i, 1868, of Tues-
day arrests 11,034, of Sunday arrests 5,263,
showing a difference of 5,771. A larger differ-

20 Intemperance and Crime.

ence probably prevails under our present law,
and the older citizens talk of the quiet and good
order that now exist on Sundays, as in striking
contrast to the condition of things when liquors
were freely sold on the Sabbath.

On the day of our annual elections a statute
draws around each polling-place a circle of
absolute prohibition, within which no intoxicat-
ing drinks may be sold or given. Contrasted
with former days, who fails to recognize the
chanee from excitement, disorder, and crime to
almost universal quietude and peace ? And
who does not see that the measure of peace de-f
pends upon the vigilance with which the police
enforce the statute ? During the spasmodic
efforts of the police authorities of this cit)- about
one year ago to enforce the Excise law, one of
the Police Commissioners told me that in his
opinion arrests for crime (other than for breaches
of the Excise laws) had fallen off between thirty
and forty per cent. Yet there was no general
and complete enforcement of the law. This
fact speaks volumes for what might be accom-
plished in New York.

But I am not here to argue for prohibition.
My sole purpose is to establish that intemper-

Intemperance and Criine, 21

ance is an evil factor in crime by showing that
whatever limits or suppresses the one, dimin-
ishes the other in a ratio almost mathematically
certain. Whether judging from the declared
judical experience of others, or from my own, or
from carefully collected statistics running through
many series of years, I believe it entirely safe
to say that one-half of all the crime of this coun-
try and of Great Britain is caused by the in- *
temperate use of intoxicating liquors ; and that
of the crimes involving personal violence, cer-
tainly three-fourths are chargeable to the same

cause.

The practical question is : What can be done

about it ?

If intemperance were a new evil, coming in
upon us for the first time like a pestilence from
some foreign shore, laden with its awful burden
of disease, pauperism, and crime, with what
horror would the nation contemplate its mon-
strous approach. What severity of laws, what
stringencies of quarantine, what activities of re-
sistance would be suddenly aroused. But,
alas ! it is no new evil. It surrounds us like an
atmosphere, as it has our fathers through count-
less generations. It perverts judgments, it

22 Intemperance and Crime.

poisons habits, it sways passions, it taints
churches, and sears consciences. It seizes the
enginery of our legislation, and by it creates a
moral phenomenon of perpetual motion, which
nature denies to physics ; for it licenses and
empowers itself to beget in endless rounds the
wrongs, vices, and crimes which society is organ-
ized to prevent ; and, worst of all for our coun-
'try, it encoils parties like the serpents of Lao-
coon, and crushes in its folds the spirit of patriot-
ism and virtue.

Is the case, then, utterly hopeless? No ;
not while the spirit of Christ has a tabernacle
on earth.

The duties of the present hour lie immedi-
ately before us :

First. — To see to it that our present excise
laws take no step backward. The outcry that
the present laws must be changed because they
can not be enforced is insidious and false. They
can be enforced. The fault is not in them, but
jn faithless officials, who in cowardice dare not
or in treachery will not obey the plain letter
and spirit of their injunctions. If the present
laws were decently enforced, there would not
be to-day in the city of New York one place

Intemperance and Crime, 23

where liquors could be sjld by the drink which
is not in fact a public inn, necessary for the
actual accommodation of travelers, and having
all the conveniences essential to such accommo-
dation, and kept by a person morally fit to be
trusted with the responsibilities which the law
devolves upon inn-keepers and exacts from them
as licensed venders of intoxicating drinks.

Second. — It is our duty to stand by those who
seek to enforce the law and compel official
obedience to its provisions. Dr. Crosby's
organization commands respect and deserves
support. It asks nothing of its enemies but
obedience to the law, and nothing of its friends
but to aid it in compelling such obedience.

Third. — Since all the courts have given their
final sanction to the act for the protection of
women and childhood from the injuries drunken-
ness visits upon innocence, there is no excuse
for us if we do not see that that law is put in
vigorous operation. If enforced, it will give
many a wife a sober husband and many a child
a sober father, for the fear of the law will be the
beginning of wisdom to many a drunkard-
maker.

Lastly. — We ought to stand by and encourage

^-;<2j 1Xxh5

24 Intemperance and Crime.

the reform that is reaching the hand of brother-
hood and love to the thousands of drinking men
and women in our city. Francis Murphy should
be armed with our sympathy, our prayers, and
our means to aid his noble work ; and, most of
all, the victims of rum who are bravely striving
with his aid to reclaim themselves should be
helped and encouraged in their efforts, not by
alms that demoralize and debase, but by em-
ployment that will encourage self-reliance and
strengthen the hopes of permanent reform.
What is to hinder an organization for such a
purpose, with good men and capital enough to
make it effective ! A hundred thousand dollars
devoted to that end would be returned to the
community an hundredfold in saved taxes, in-
creased industries, and, above all, in men,
women, and children rescued from the miseries,
vices, and crimes of drunkenness.