Temperance Items.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 18, 20 July 1895, Page 3

Temperance Items.

In the Times newspaper, DrDawson Barns lately published his annual British Drink Bill. The figures show that last year the national expenditure was £138,---854.829, against £140,866,262 for 1892. The average expenditure per head for every man, woman, and child, was £3 125. But as there are now millions of teetotalers in Great Britain, the amount spent by consumers must have been very much more. The average for 1892 must have been £3 16s lid, and for 1891, £3 15s. On Guard for January supplies patti•culars of the returns for December of the Army Temperence Association of India. The total number of branches was 196, with a membership of 21,596. There are two regiments m which there are over 500 members of the Association, namely, the Royal Lancaster with 544 (a percentage of 54 4 of the strength of the regimsut) and the Ist Kiug's Royal Biles WJth 532 (a per centoge of 53 2). The Mark Lane Express recently published a list of upwards of a hundred materials said to be employed by brewers m- place of malt and hops. The following are a few of the delectable articles:—Sulphurous acid, sulphiteof lime, dried sulphite of calcium, caustic soda, phosphate of lianf, calcic sulphite, glucose aprodtte, catechu, ehlorode of magnesium, saccharum, tartaric acid, patent heading powder, permanganate of potash. These will be enough to suggest to the beer consumer that he is not drinking mere concoctions of malt and hops, but other concoctions, the basis of whicu may be the druggist's shop or the chemist's laboratory. . . The Duchess of Sutherland has jo-ned the Total Abstinence section o£ the CE.T.S. In the Swiss Federal Constitution thtre is a clause to this effect : that 10 per cent, of the income derived from spirits shall be employed in the fight against alcohol drink.