The English working classes may be said to be soaked in beer.

They are made dull and sodden by it.

Their efficiency is sadly impaired, and they lose whatever imagination, invention, and quickness may be theirs by right of race.

It may hardly be called an acquired habit, for they are accustomed to it from their earliest infancy.

Children are begotten in drunkenness, saturated in drink before they draw their first breath, born to the smell and taste of it, and brought up in the midst of it.
The public-house is ubiquitous.