Temperance Items

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 114, 12 October 1901, Page 1

Temperance Items

[advertisement.]

(Published by arrangement.} DUNEDIN SISTERS MISSION. “ Little need for a mission but Liquor.” ANNUAL MELTING SPEECHES. DAILY TIMES REPORT, STSTER OLIVE. Sister Olive regarded it as a source of great encourag ment and a privilege to meet with so many sympathisers. Theit mission was a work o! discovery and restoration —to seek out not only the poverty and degradation, but also the cause of it, and to endeavour to ameliorate it by striving to raise the conditions *f life to those fr -m which the viotim fell. A great deal of crime and misery was cfc* to environment. The result* of ten mouths’ experience in mission work in Dunedin had been such as to not only encourage but to impel her to advance with it. She was convinced that if it were not for intoxicating liquor th*ra would be lit. le need of a mission. Pro* ceeding, Sister Olive gave some graphic details of the work ahe was engaged in, and was listened to with great interest throughout the whole of an able and eloquent address. DR. BARNETT. Dr Barnett congratulated the mission on the good £work accomplished, and upon the ability and tact of their representative, Sister Olive, who possessed every quality necessary to the carrying on of her useful work. In his professional capacity he was brought into contact with those engaged in like philanthropise labours to those described by Sister Olive, and he bore testimony to their kindness and unflagging zeal. Ha agreed entirely wit h the statement that the great majority of oases of crime and misery were due, either directly or indirectly, to drnnkonuess. Nine-tenths of the number of accidents were due to the same cause.

AS IN THE SOOTH, SO IN THE NORTH. Addressing the Grand Jury at Gisborne, Mr Justice Connolly said;— “It is a very shocking thing to see how drink is a prime factor in almost all these cases. In every one of them except & very serious charge of robbery, tb 8 prisoner when he was arrested said he was so drunk that he did not know what he did ; and also in the case of this fight between these two Maoris there is no doubt th t one of them at least, was drunk, and the probability is, they both were, Also in this case of assault on a child the man was drunk, or had been drinking. It is very strange that in these cases the parties almost always seem to admit their drunkenness as if it were an excuse for subs quent crime. I always look oa it as an aggravation, A man has no right to put p himself iu a state in which he commits violent acts which probably he might not do if id a stale of sobriety. It ia a shocking thing, 1 think, to find drink—which seems to have teen unknown amongst the Mao.ij in the earlier days—to have taken possession of a great number of them, and that they do these shocking acta.”