TEMPERANCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42742, 1 July 1905, Page 1

TEMPERANCE.

CBr Bsponsraa.) . ■■ • - -■; Though we may be able tp timate approximately the fluences of drinking habits $ the causes of vice, pauperis crime, insanity, etc., yet all, we can only reach an imp feet calculation of the wasted human" energy and /matCrg bi#-it,is utterly: impossible approximately estimate the m al as well as the physical ei produced by them. | The part most overlooks because least obvious,; is t amount of the disease, weakni and imbecility that istrahsin ted from parents, and it, oft appears in defective mental physical organisations, or feeble development and su feebleness and defect predispt to intemperance as well " ag disease. Aside from the expense j suiting from the use of into eating drinks, it is a crime- r the deepest dye to, authorize t law a traffic in an article f 3 destroys the minds of men ai women, converting maniacs, and sinking them 1 neath the level of brutes. iSocii sows the seed and must- reapnj harvest, 1 not only * of insanitjj but of idiocy, one of the si| is visited upon the childrl of the intemperate to the thfij generation; for alcohClmokSj changes men add women of ini3 to demented; beings ; but epc tracts the vital nerve powers; 3 the infant before it sees the ligj! of .day or breathes the life-gmsa oxygen. : These : unfortuiiS ante-natal victims of alcohS live but to embitter the liyCsJ their parents, a . ,plago;e, anS mock to civilization, and an in pediment in theworld’s to a higher, nobler state of societ and humanadvancement. ;,f The doctrine that drunkennei is transmitted to offspring is >l old rit least as Aristotle, for 1 said, that a dftmken wotpa brings forth children like herself ;” and Plutarch amra that “ one drunkard begets ah ther.” Dr Caldwell says: ff By habit 1 of intemperance parents not onl ; degrade and ruin themsejyel but transmit the elements of lim

degradation and ruin to posterity.” The constitutional the children of intempemte pi ents are often physically raf mentally weak and lax ;.rfhe are predisposed to craye 'stiml lants, often become drunkard and transmit to their offspril should they have amy. sti mooter montnl nrcmn IrmacP'' more lax constitutions, and enh upon them liability to meiti and physical diseasesTand a disposition to their own vice? The free use of intoxicau if it does not - pj duce drunkenness, is often suff cient to produce a predispositib] in children to intemperance an< various diseases of body an< mind; and a continuance of th cause will transmit from genera tion to geLeration, p imbecility of puipose, dullheg of intellect, vicious habits, ah deterioration of the race. ; S This can be seen in every rao< in every country No large cit but presents numerous illUstra tions and evidences of thiis trutH The criminal and dangeroi classes of every society, .are M • this class, for the vast Biajbrit of them are but fbebly orjgamset mentally or iphysicaliyv v , v; •.. .