The Spectator: defending drunkenness since 1828

University terms are getting started and this year’s Freshers may be glad to read that The Spectator has always staunchly supported the right to get drunk. In the late 19^th century, the magazine took issue with the Permissive Bill, which would allow individual parishes to vote on whether or not to ban the liquor trade.

‘Unless the swallowing of alcohol is a mania in se, a positive offence against morals, then the advocates of the Permissive Bill have no logical standing at all, are simply trying to enable the majority to oppress the minority into acting on the majority’s opinion in a matter of indifference. They might just as well allow the majority to flog the minority for believing in transubstantiation,—for that belief leads to acts which, if the belief is wrong, do them more harm than the belief that alcohol is on the whole beneficial; or to put it in an easier way, they might just as well allow the majority in a cracked parish, because they held vegetarian opinions, to shut up the butchers’ shops.’

The four patron saints of Great Britain, (from left to right) St Patrick of Ireland, St George of England, St Andrew of Scotland and St David of Wales on a drunken spree.