Judge Hale's Testimony Against Drink
Illustration★★★★Sir Matthew Hale, one of the oldest Chief Justices of England, gave the following testimony against strong drink ; “The places of judicature, which I have long held in this kingdom, have given an opportunity to observe the original cause of most of the enormities that have been committed for the space of twenty years, and by due observation I have found that if the murders and manslaughters, burglaries and robberies, the riots and tumults, the adulteries, fornications, rapes, and other enormities that have happened in that time, were divided in five parts, four of them have been the issues and products of excessive drinking—of tavern or ale-house drinking.”
The point
Chief Justice Matthew Hale testified from decades on the bench that the vast majority of crimes he saw were the direct products of excessive drinking.