PLAIN TALK

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1699, 31 October 1887, Page 4

PLAIN TALK

It has been said that the end and the teat of good government is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. If this be true, it must be owned that no government extant is satisfactorily conducted. For observation shows that as a rnle political energy 1b expended upon secondary concerns, while politicians employ all their dexterity m avoiding action upon the great problems which most deeply involve the destinies of the masses. There is to-day m the English* ■peaking countries no each tremendous, far-reaching, vital question as that of drunkenness. In its implications and effects it overshadows all else. It is im> possible to examine any subject connected with the progress, the civilisation, the physical well-being, the religious condition of the masses, without encountering this monstrous evil. Ie is at the centre of all social and political mischief. It paralysis benefioent energies m every direction. It neutralises edacatlonal agencies. Ie silences the voice of religion, It bsiflas penal reform. It obstructs political reform. It rears aloft a mass of evlly-inspired power, which at every salient point threatens social aud national advance ; which gives to fgnoronoe and vice a greater potency than intelligence and virtue can command ; which deprives the poor of the advantages of modern progress : which debauches and degrades millions, brotalising and soddening them below the plane of healthy savagery, and filling the centres of population with creatures whose condition almost excuses the immorality which renders them dangerous to their generation. All these evil*, all this mlsohief, all this destruction of human souls and intellects, go on among us daily and Hourly. There are none so ignorant or inattentive as not to have personal experience of some of them : some hearth darkened ,• some famiiy ecattered ; some loving heart broken ; come promising career ruined : eonae deed of shame done. Yet how hard it Is to get this gigantic evil attacked aerionsly. Temperance organisations Jiave, indeed, been figting it for years, ; yet popnlar inirtia has resisted their utmost tfinrta. hut has all been d6ne that might and should have been dope by the organised agencies that represent the Me>her life? What are d ctrinal points, for example compared to this evei -present, ever active insidious influence ? What ar,e sectarian differenoeß by the side of tbis national curse ? Can the churches fold their bands and flatter themeelveß that their duties are all fulfilled, while the masses prefer the saloon to the pnlpit, and while sum rules m politics and society 1 Are the higher educational agencies doing all m their power to advance civilisation while they Ignore this obstaclo to progress ? Can any political organisation be said to represent the beat aspiration and the strongest needs of the people, while this abiding source .of misery add crime and poverty is allowed to spread and flourlph? There is needed Bomething of that sacred fire which kindled into m extloguishable heat the zaal of the Abolitionists, ard which compelled the abandonment of human slavery, to rouse the national indignation and abhorrence against this very much greater evil. Nothing short of this, It is to be feared, will impel timeserving politicians to approach m a spirit of esrnettQess a sublet wbioh ia distasteful to them maloly because they think they oannot afford to do without the help and Eupport of the daea who derive from the dei;radatlon of the foolish and ignorant the means whereby they continue to rule and plunder those whose sagacity is proof againet their flnares " New York Tribune. "