THE PARSONS AND THE DRINK QUESTION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1922, 23 February 1885, Page 2

THE PARSONS AND THE DRINK QUESTION.

(To the Editor). Sir.—Your correspondents "Bit o' Blue" and "P." rail at ministers of the various denominations in this township for not taking a more decided stand on the liquor question, but the fqllowing extract from Reynold s Weekly newspaper will prove to your correspondents that it is far more dangerous ground for the parsons to tread than perhaps they imagine and leads to some inconvenient and awkward queries:—" The Archbishop of York has discovered, and declared to the world, that the drink expenditure exceeds the whole rental of the country. But hardly had he given lip to the wonderful discovery before a certain drunk wrote to the papers in the following pungent style: ' Touching the figures lately given on the drink cost of the land by the Archbishop of York, let us take a far smaller, sum, Bay for instance the £10,000,000 that he and his fellow parsons appropriate—what would this not do? It would pay the schoolpence of thewholonation. It wouldsupport all the hospitals. I can imagine a working man standing pn the silent margin of the other shore and looking at the strange con? course, of people pouring into the City Beautiful from every point of the compass and in every variety of orcdal dress, I can imagine him saying, too, " Heaven seems easy "of access from anywhere &nd any.' how'so long as a'nian is sincere," 'and yet England pays ten millions a year (enough