Temperance Meeting

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 127, 18 April 1891, Page 2

Temperance Meeting

A well-attended temperance meeting was held in the Methodist Chapel last night. The early part of the time was taken up with singing and recitations. The event of the evening was Mr Grant's eloquent and earnest appeal, on behalf of the great temperance movement. He commenced by glorying in the reproach cast on the cause by ifcs opponents, " That it was principally supported by women and children." When the former would have the power to vote r and the children were all grown up, the temperance question would be quickly solved. Mr Grant said "it is not greater efficiency in administration but advanced legislation that the colony requires." The speaker who, now warmed into enthusiasm, went on to describe tbe inconvenience resulting from abruptly closing all hotels ; and then gave his hearers a solution of the liquor-tem-perance difficulty, which came on them as something attractive and original. He divided hotel-keepers into two classes — Those who hate the bar-trade, as a great evil, necessary to make the business pay, who keep themselves and children away from its contaminating influences as much as possible ; and those who prize its illgotten gains, and look on the accommodation compelled by law, as a great nuisance and trouble. He would separate for ever this iniquitious alliance of respectability and the most degrading business a human being can be engaged in. He would make the accommodation business pay by allowing the sale of liquor to be carried on in any sort of a shanty a man wished to build, where none bat the most depraved would be seen, to enter. Mr Grant concluded with a pathetic description of the direful results of drunkenness on men, woman, and children. The Bey. Mr Harris proposed a hearty vote of thanks to Mr Grant for his eloquent and impressive address, which was carried unanimously. — Communicated.