The Globe. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1876.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 738, 31 October 1876, Page 2

The Globe. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1876.

Theee is a reverend gentleman somewhere near Wellington, who holds peculiar views in matters connected with publicans, and with those sinners who but too often suffer from too close an intimacy with the good things dispensed by them. The gentleman in question, strange enough, rejoices in the appropriate name of Toogood. Of course, we would not, for one instance, be thought desirous of finding fault with opinions which he, or anybody else, may think fit to hold and enunciate with reference to drunkenness, its concomitants, and evil effects. We leave him, for instance, in the peaceful belief that—as he stated in the Wellington Synod, in the locality of a small village called Marton—more than £IO,OOO a year is spent in drink ; that the country police in that remarkable locality, who wink at the unpleasant parts of their duties, Are too intimate .with publicans, while

Magistrates hare no power of interfering, But when Mr. Toogood speaks, as he did last week, in terms so sweepingly offensive of Good Templar and Itechabifce Societies, he treads upon tender ground, and becomes at once a fair mark for criticksm. The reverend gentleman informed the Synod, of the great distrust he felt of these two mentioned societies, which, he asserted, “ were generally composed of men, “ who for their misconduct and “ shady transactions in business, “ had been turned out of other “ societies.” “It seems to me,” added “Mr. Toogood, “ that men join these “ societies, and yet drink when they “ please, trusting to a fine of ss. to “ whitewash themselves again and “ again.” We can scarcely conceive that anyone in possession of even the smallest modicum of experience, or of common sense, could give vent to such an unqualified and contemptuous mode of condemning, wholesale, bodies of persons such as those referred to. We fancy poor Mr. Toogood has not travelled. He looks at things from a purely Martouian point of view ; his vision has doubtless seldom reached further than the four corners of that Arcadian spot where “£IO,OOO a-year,” with a population of some two hundred people of all. grades of society, is so generously lavished upon the Bonifaces of the place. Young speakers, it must be said, are apt sometimes to run into exaggerations and to confuse figures. The Council-hall of the Wellington Synod is an awe-inspiring building, and the stern visages one meets there are quite enough to jerk out of beginners’ brains, conceptions evolved from ambitious minds. Perhaps, in time, the Eev. Mr. Toogood may be able to satisfy his hearts’ desire, and to succeed in shedding lustrous oratorical light without the aid of farfetched and impossible notions.