TEMPERANCE CRUSADES.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 229, 31 January 1885, Page 2

TEMPERANCE CRUSADES.

Temperance crusades have been no new thing i n Auckland at any time these last thirty years. The name of temperance reformers is legion, and besides the profits of the business, there is the honour and glory, the gratification of holding large audiences spell-bound, and the ambition to be pom/ed out in the street as the hero of the hour. The feeling that animates the temperance lecturer is near akin to that which rouses the energies of the actor, disguise it as he may. Father Henneberry at his mere beck induced vast audiences to rise en masse and take the pledge ; but out of the thousands who did so, how many have remained staunch to their vows? Many of them forgot their pledges as -soon as they left the building. There 'is a kind of impulsive enthusiasm that attacks mixed assemblages of people, under the maoi^of the oratory of an effective speaker^ Wo appeals more to the emotions than the reasoning facilities. But, on the other hand, there is action which is the result of reflection and conviction. So when when 1 hear that Mr Booth has induced so many hundreds of thousands of people" to sign the temperance pledge, and has distributed miles of blue ribbon, the thought that suggests itself is— how many of his conversions will be real or permanent V Of course, I shall be told that if gnly a percentage of these people can be reclaimed from

drunkenness a great good will be achieved ; but this is not the question. The crucial question is whether or not Mr Booth and his supporters are entitled to take their stand on fallacious statistics, and to c aim credit for an amount of work which has not been done. The reformation of one drunkard is a point gained, but the dissemination of humbug and hypocrisy may do an amount of harm that is incalculable.