IRISH ASSOCIATION FOR PRETENTION OF INTEMPERANCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43113, 13 July 1907, Page 1

IRISH ASSOCIATION FOR PRETENTION OF INTEMPERANCE.

(Continued from last issue) S|| Publio opinion all round rwaijp coming to the side of Temper--,! ance. It was beginning to bell reoognised that the drunkard in | the past had been let dowu todffj lightly; that he was no longer regarded as merely .his own | greatest enemy, but that he wasp as well the cruel and selfish ' enemy of his wife, and children, ff (Applause.) Before he concluded JJ he (the chairman) would ask ■ them to remember that the Gaelic League* and similar as- jg sociations (applause) — coin* f posed of young men and young women, had banded themselves M together to revive the language "i and customs and industries 7of Ireland, but had also made Tern- i perance a foremost plank in their 1; platform* They would, he hoped || and believed, direct the tone of jtj the households of the What they were now saying itUp their leagues would, he hoped, §j be said in every home in in the future. (Loud Mr william redmond, m.p., ;r who was enthusiastically receiv- | ed, proposed the first resolution — <c That this meeting hearts ily approves of the policy of the -k Irish Association for the Pre- J

vention of Intemperance ” which, he said, was not only acceptable to himself as an individual member of the Irish Party, but to fully one-haif off the members of that Party. (Applause.) Mr T, W. Russell would bear him out in the statement tbr.t there had been' always members of the Nationalist' Party ready by voice and vote in the House of Commons to declare their opinion that Ire« land could not afford to wait for Temperance until the dim and distant future. (Applause,) The last year had been one of

very great importance for Temperance reform. The Bill which became law last year was, in his; opinion, the greatest step for 4 ward the Temperance Party had made in the last two generations. (Applause.) The speaker de.< fended the compromise which had been made with regard to the measure, and without which, he pointed out. the Bill could not become law. There were three lines of arguments advanced against Temperance legislation. The first was that i it was a humiliating and degrad.- ! ing thing for Irishmen to go to England aud beg English M.P’s to pass laws to make Ireland a sober nation; and it had been 'ad vanned more than once that all such legislationshould remain over until Irishmen had the power of dealing with such social reforms on the soil of their own ■ country. That was the first argument. The second was that tho movement for Temperance j was really defaming and running (Ireland down —that they held | Ireland up before the world as ; drunken people without a proper , sense of self-respect and selfcontrol; and, thirdly, it had often beeu said that to interfere with the licensed trade in Ireland would be to interfere with one of the last remaining industries of the country—(loud laughter)—aud that the traders were, as a body, up-right citizens many of them public spirited and generous men. Dealing with the first argument, he asked could Ireland afford to wait for Temperance reform until she got Homeßnlc? ( c ‘JSTo, no.”) A quarter of a century ago, at thebeginning of his Parliamentary career, that argument had attracted him, as it had attracted ' greater men than he could hope to be; but he now failed to see how Temperance should be the one matter upon which they were not to seek reform, pending the establishment of a Govern- i ment of their own. -i

(To be Continued,,