"His death," says Lady Masham," was like his life, truly pious, yet natural, easy, and unaffected; nor can time, I think, ever produce a more eminent example of reason and religion than he was, living and dying." With regard to intoxicating liquors, Locke's testimony was altogether in favour of total abstinence. Lord King, in his "Life," vol. ii., p. 60, remarks:-"His diet was the same as other people's, except that he usually drank nothing but water; and he thought that his abstinence in this respect had preserved his life so long, although his constitution was so weak." Locke was conspicuous for the thoroughness of his views upon total abstinence, and we suppose stands alone, as the man who refused an ambassadorship because he was an abstainer! The circumstance may be best explained in his own words, only premising that it was upon the occasion of the accession of William and Mary, when he was offered an appointment as ambassador to Brandenburg. He states in a letter to Lord Mordaunt :-"I think it much better that I should be laid by and be forgotten for ever, than that they should at all suffer by my ambition, and forwardly undertaking what my want of health and experience would not let me manage to the best advantage. . . . If I have reason to apprehend the cold air of the country, there is yet another thing in it as inconsistent with my constitution, and that is their warm drinking. . . . It is no small matter in such stations to be acceptable to the people one has to do with, in being able to accommodate one's self to their fashions; and I imagine, whatever I may do there myself, the knowing what others are doing is at least one-half of my business, and I know no such rack in the world to draw out men's thoughts as a wellmanaged bottle. If, therefore, it were fit for me to advise in this case, I should think it more for the King's interest to send a man of equal parts, that could drink his share, than the soberest man in the kingdom.” Several other portions of his correspondence contain references to the drinking customs of the time, and in a letter to one of his most intimate friends, Esther Masham, we have a further testimony to his own practice. Writing in July 1699, he says:-" I thank you for the care you take of my brewhouse and drink. 'Tis like a good Dib, and when I go into our nown (sic) country of Wales I promise you a bottle of the best metheglin for it." Esther Masham's note to this letter runs thus:-"Mr. Locke drank nothing but water. What he calls his brewhouse was a stone, in form of a great mortar, of so spongy a stone that water, being put in, used to run through in a very short time, and strained the water from any dirt that might be in it;"-in a word, the brewhouse was a filter! As a physician, he invariably advised his friends to become abstainers. Commenting upon his prescription for Lady Northumberland who lay ill in Paris, Locke adds, "I have proposed also a total abstinence from wine, light suppers, and early going to bed." In a letter to his friend Clarke in 1692, he says: "I am extremely troubled that your cold sticks upon you. Pray drink water, and carefully, no wine, and be as little abroad in the evenings as you can." In 1697, he advised the king, "whenever his asthma. was troublesome, to abstain from wine and heavy feeding." Then again in 1702 we have the following letter to his constant correspondent, Limborch :—“ I am sure you do well in rigidly abstaining from the use of wine and every other kind of fermented liquor. Use barley-water or some similar beverage instead, and eat very little flesh or savoury dishes of any sort. Be content with herbs and vegetables, oatmeal and bread. This diet will strengthen your constitution, and bring back the freshness of youth to your veins." Besides this practical recommendation of total abstinence as a professional man, Locke had conceived that it was the duty of the State to interfere with regard to the suppression of the liquor traffic. He advocated the principles of the United Kingdom Alliance nearly two hundred years before that great organisation sprang into existence. From 1696 to 1700, Locke was a member of the Government Commission on Trades and Plantations, and during that time submitted some proposals for Poor Law Reform, in which we find the following striking passage: "The first step, therefore, towards the settling of the poor on work, we humbly conceive, ought to be a restraint of their debauchery by a strict execution of the laws provided against it, more particularly by the suppression of superfluous brandy shops and unnecessary alehouses, especially in country parishes not lying upon great roads." Locke must also be credited with being the author of an Act of Parliament passed in 1697, “to protect the English lustring company by imposing very heavy penalties upon the smuggling or importation of foreign lustrings, and for two Acts passed in the following year, the one forbidding the exportation of corn, the other prohibiting the exportation of beer and ale, and the manufacture of any other alcoholic liquors by the fermentation of corn." In his "Thoughts Concerning Education," the philosopher gives some wholesome counsel to parents,advice, which, if accepted in its bearing upon the Temperance question, could not fail to exert an important influence for good. He tells us, "You must do nothing before him which you would not have him imitate. If anything escape you, which you would have pass for a fault in him, he will be sure to shelter himself under your example, and shelter himself so that it will not be easy to correct it in him in the right way. . You must always remember that children affect to be men earlier than is thought, and they love breeches, not for their cut or ease, but because the having them is a mark of a step towards manhood. . . . Teach him to get a mastery over his inclinations, and submit his appetite to reason. This being obtained by constant practice, settled into habit, the hardest part of the task is over." |