DIFFERENCE AMONGST THE ABSTAINERS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1860, 9 February 1880, Page 2

DIFFERENCE AMONGST THE ABSTAINERS.

There appears to have been some slight differences of opinion manifested at the annnal meeting of the United .Kingdom Alliance at Manchester. This in itself is, perhaps, of no great importance. The partisans of the Permissive Bill will console themselves with the thought that differences of opinion as to details are a sign of vital earnestness as to the principle at stake ; while those who are not admirers of that stringent measure for coercing individual freedom or individual wilfulness will look with pardonable equanimity on dissensions among Sir Wilfrid Lawson and his adherents. It must be owned that the first point in dispute was sufficiently trifling. Sir Wilfrid, who is now the president of this union of repressors, intimated a belief that there would be a general election before their n?xt annual meeting. Mr Pope, Q.O.| the honorary secretary of the movement, interjected an expression of doubt. Amazsd at this note of dissent, Sir Wilfred stuck to his opinion, which he held as good as that of an eminent Queen's Counsel. The learned counsel, who is certainly interested in the matter as a leading member of the Parliamentary Bar, stuck to hia ; and the difference was left drawn, to be settled hereafter by the wisdom of her Majesty's Ministers. This was play, but the next issue raised waß serious. It arose out of the substitution by Sir Wilfrid liawson of his resolution in favour of local option for the Permissive Bill. The point in dispute was whether this was " a lowering of the flag." This mystio phase was bandied to and fro, the one party affirming and the other denying that the flag had been lowered, and it was not uitil after a long debate that some appearanco of unity was established. The conclusion, indeed, remained obscure. On the whole, it would seem that those who resented the change were pacified; but though their voices were silenced, their heads Bhook with suspicion. The Permissive Bill they knew, but what was this Local Option resolution which had been dangled before the House of Commons? It was at beet a double-face device, not consistent with their primitive simplicity, not of a character to satisfy the Old Guard who went for rhe Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.