There is a demand for these poisons; the brewer and distiller supply the
demand and gain thereby large profits; society beholds the profits and
adores the brewer. When a gentleman has sold enough alcoholic poison to
give him the vast regulation fortune which is the drink-maker's
inevitable portion, then the world receives him with welcome and
reverence; the rulers of the nation search out honours and meekly bestow
them upon him, for can he not command seats, and do not seats mean
power, and does not power enable talkative gentry to feed themselves fat
out of the parliamentary trough? No wonder the brewer is a personage.
Honours which used to be reserved for men who did brave deeds, or
thought brave thoughts, are reserved for persons who have done nothing
but sell so many buckets of alcoholized fluid. Observe what happens when
some brewer's wife chooses to spend L5000 on a ball. I remember one
excellent lady carefully boasting (for the benefit of the Press) that
the flowers alone that were in her house on one evening cost in all
L2000. Well, the mob of society folk fairly yearn for invitations to
such a show, and there is no meanness too despicable to be perpetrated
by women who desire admission.
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