Temperance for other people: the joke that becomes The Flying Inn
generally confining themselves to imposing its morality only upon the refreshment of the lower classes
“Refreshment” is a decorous way of saying alcoholic drink. The Islamic allusion has a definite scriptural basis: Qur’an 5:90 tells believers to avoid intoxicants, alongside gambling and other practices. The restriction to the lower classes, however, belongs to Chesterton’s charge against British reformers, not to that verse, which addresses believers without the class distinction. His joke is that enthusiasts for religious agreement select another religion’s prohibition when it helps them regulate someone else’s pleasures. Qur’an 5:90, English translations collected by the Quranic Arabic Corpus.
The marriage reference probably invokes permission for plural wives. Qur’an 4:3 permits two, three or four, but also requires a man who fears injustice to marry only one; the verse’s opening concerns justice toward orphans. That qualification matters: the doctrine is not an unrestricted endorsement of male appetite. Chesterton’s parenthetical concession does not specify what he thinks can be said for it, and should not be expanded into a settled personal endorsement of polygyny. Qur’an 4:3.
The class satire later becomes a concrete fictional arrangement in The Flying Inn (first published 1914). In chapter IV, the liquor-control notice exempts medically certified drink and specifically named fashionable establishments, Claridge’s Hotel and the Criterion Bar. In chapter XV, Dalroy attacks the temperance millionaire who gives up the pleasures he shares with poor men while retaining his luxuries. These passages turn this paragraph’s compressed insinuation into a law and an argument: purported moral improvement can preserve privilege while withdrawing common enjoyments. This is a later development of Chesterton’s own theme, not evidence that such a law existed in 1908. The inspected witness is Project Gutenberg ebook 59239, reproducing the New York John Lane Company 1914 text. The Flying Inn, chapters IV and XV.
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