Temperance Items

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 61, 10 November 1892, Page 3

Temperance Items

Professor DaTid Swing is reported tc hare said recently, while discussing the causes of poverty :— " People tali about the single tax system remedying the evil of poverty. Drinking is the most prevalent vice ol our age. and increased pay with less hours of work will not work out the reform. Whisky would rejoice in double pay and eight hours of work. It would give it a better opportunity," Mr Gladstone's attention has been drawn to a statement in the press that the slare traffic was far more iniquitous than the liquor traffic, and yet when that was abolished compensation was paid to those interested, Mr Gladstone himself being now in the enjoyment of a cons siderable amount of ' unearned increment derived therefrom.' Mr Gladstone sent the following reply:— "June 24,1890. Dear sir, — As usual, the statement is all wrong. It was not a question of an expectation of a renewal, bul of a full and formal title by law. It was the pos» session of slaves (not traffic) which was abolished in 1807 without compensation. What the Gladstone family have enjoyed is a large aggregate loss, partially diminished by compensation. Bat the compensation was a noble grant, and the loss was one which it was their duty to face without complaint or opposition.— Yours, &c, W. F. Gladstone." Goldwin Smith says : •• The ultimate issue of the struggle is certain. The enthusiastic energy and self-devotion with which a moral cause inspires its ioldiers always hare prevailed, and always will prevail, over any amount of self-interest or material power arrayed on the other sider. The alliance is already powerful, and growing in power. It will conquer; and the publicans, having stood out to the last, will be shut out from compromise, and feel the edge of the victor's sword." Archdeacon Farrar asks ; " What makes these slums (of London) so horrible?" I answer with certainty, and with the confidence of one who knows —Prink ! I tell tho nation with confidence, founded on experience, that there will be no remedy till you save these outcasts from the temptations of drink. Leave the drink, and you will build them palaces in vain ; have the drink, and before the year is over your palaces would be reeking with dirt and squalour, with infamy and crime. Mr Oharlss Absolon, was born less than a couple of years after the battle of Waterloo, but he is still able to hold his own in the cricket field. In 1888 he carried his bat through the innings no less than three times for the Pall Mall Wanderers, and on one of these occasions was at the wicket three hours, counting out, too, all his runs. He has, we learn, been a total abstainer not from alcohol merely, but even from tobacco, for 30 jears.and now in his 74ih year he can still take the £cwt on his little finger and make his mark 7ft high.