a well known disorder in the brain, occasioned by drinking too freely of spirituous liquors. Drunkenness appears in different shapes, in different constitutions: some it makes gay, some sullen, and some furious.

The ancient Lacedemonians used to make their slaves frequently drunk, to give their children an aversion and horror for the same. The Indians hold drunkenness a species of madness; and in their language, the same term (framgam), that signifies drunkard, signifies also a phrenetic.

Drunkenness, by the law of England, is looked up- on as an aggravation rather than an excuse for any criminal behaviour. A drunkard, says Sir Edward Coke, who is voluntarius daemon, hath no privilege thereby; but what hurt or ill soever he doth, his drunkenness doth aggravate it: nam omne crimen scribitur, et incendit, et detegit. It hath been observed that the real use of strong liquors, and the abuse of them by drinking to excess, depend much upon the temperature of the climate in which we live. The same indulgence which may be necessary to make the blood move in Norway, would make an Italian mad. A German therefore, says the president Montefoqueu, drinks thro' custom founded upon constitutional necessity; a Spaniard drinks through choice, or out of the mere wantonness of luxury; and drunkenness, he adds, ought to be more severely punished where it makes men mischievous and mad, as in Spain and Italy, than where it only renders them stupid and heavy, as in Germany and more northern countries. And accordingly, in the warmer climate of Greece, a law of Pittacus enacted, "that he who committed a crime when drunk, should receive a double punishment;" one for the crime itself, and the other for the ebriety which prompted him to commit it. The Roman law indeed made great allowances for this vice: per vinum delapsi capitatis pana remittitur. But the law of England, considering how easy it is to counterfeit this excuse, and how weak an excuse it is (though real), will not suffer any man thus to privilege one crime by another.

For the offence of drunkenness a man may be punished in the ecclesiastical court, as well as by justices of peace by statute. And by 4 Jac. I. c. 5. and 21 Jac. I. c. 7. if any person shall be convicted of drunkenness by the view of a justice, oath of one witness, &c. he shall forfeit 5s. for the first offence, to be levied by distress and sale of his goods; and for want of a distress, shall sit in the stocks six hours: and, for the second offence, he is to be bound with two sureties in 10l. each, to be of good behaviour, or to be committed. And he who is guilty of any crime thro' his own voluntary drunkenness, shall be punished for it as if he had been sober. It has been held that drunkenness is a sufficient cause to remove a magistrate: and the prosecution for this offence by the statute of 4 Jac. I. c. 5. was to be, and still may be, before justices of peace in their sessions by way of indictment, &c. Equity will not relieve against a bond, &c. given by a man when drunk, unless the drunkenness is occasioned through the management or contrivance of him to whom the bond is given.