THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43382, 8 October 1908, Page 3

THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

[To the Editor.] Sir, —ln the last number of the Home Journal is a very frothy letter by Mr Isitt in which he attacks the Auckland hotelkeepers in very strong languagelanguage only fit for a low tap-room ; and not alone Mr Isitt, but nearly every other leader in the Crusade, seems to think his one mission is to abuse the brewers and hotelkeepers. This may be conducive to temperance or it may not, but lately I read the life of that Apostle of Temperance—Father Matthew—and I could not help contrasting his methods with the methods of the No-License leaders of New Zealand. Not once in all his sermons on drink does he abuse the distillers or the publicans. His methods were to convince the people that drink was bad, both for body and soul, to exhort the people not to go to the drinking places, and to lead them to take a solemn pledge, and to lead them to pray to God to keep them strong in their good resolutions. Father Matthew devoted practically his whole life to this noble cause, he spent all his m ney in it, he sufiered many and bitter trials, yet no temperance reformer has ever equalled his success. He closed half the distilleries of Ireland, for want of custom, the people did not drink ; there was no sale for the whisky, and distillers soon stop their work if there is no sale for then- produce. From one end of Ireto the other, from the green south to the orange north, he preached his Crusade and he numbered his converts by i hundreds of thousands. He went to ' England and America where he also had . unparalleled success. He came back to Ireland and being old and penniless the British government granted him a pension of £.‘300 a year in recognition of > his great services in raising his fellow men out of the slough of drunkenness. Read any of his sermons on the curse of drink- no angry word, no frothings and ravings, ] o Bill'ngsgate, or ribaldry th it is the stock in trade of the present day temperance orator. No, but he gives, in calm, cool language the evils of drunkenness. He portrays the wretchedness he has seen through drink, he appeals to the finer feelings of his listeners, he reasons with them, and he wins them thus. For the No-License orators of New Zea'and of the present day I have no time, not from Isitt down to the newest recruit that thumps a drum at the street corner. That they are sincere in their work is, in the great majority of cases, open to grave doubt. They opposed the only true temperance proposition—No Licence No Liquor. ' Why did they do it ? Simply because though they want to close the bars they want to keep the bottle in their own cupboards. There is too much of the money box —big salaries, etc., —about the whole business. No-License as it exists in New Zealand to-day is a farce, pure and simple. Were it not there would not be such immense quantities of drink consumed as is the case in the NcLicense districts.

The only way to my mind, failing another Father Matthew coming amongst us, to combat the evils of drink is to have General Option for the whole Dominion and No License to mean No Liquor. Then in the course of time a nation would grow up knowing nothing about what poor Tom Bracken truly described as “ The Greatest Curse of All.” For the great majority of the socalled Temperance orators John Fullers’ Variety Company is the proper stage for them to appear upon. They are blasting the cause of temperance, and trueminded men ought to hoot these wandering mendicants off the stage when they come along.—l am, etc., Temperance.