TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4227, 24 September 1892, Page 2

TEMPERANCE ITEMS.

In tbe course of charging the Grand Jury at the Summer Assizes in the New Victoria Law Courts, Birmingham, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge said:—"Thero was one painful case, one of wilful murder. That the man in question did minder his wife seemed beyond question; the proof was clear, and the facts onoon-' tradicted. The only question would be whether or no tho case was one in which the provocation was sufficient to justify a reduction in the charge from murder to manslaughter. The case was a painful one, because it was distinctly the product of drunkenness. Few people hud opportunities of realising as he did the terrible effects produced by intemperance. Of course there were cases which stood quite aside from tho influence of the publiohouse—crimes such as perjury,forg6ry, false pretences, and others—which required the assistance of education, But drunkenness was mainly the cause of the commoner sorts of crime, and if England could bo made sober threefourths of her goals could be closed. He trusted all in positions of authority would do what tliey could to set their faces against this great evil. 1 '

Lord Chief Justice Coleridge bus made a noteworthy addition to the long roll of judicial dicta as to the evil influence of drink, In an address on "Holding One's Tongue," Lord Coleridge discussed the lute Bishop oi Peterborough's famouß s&yiug that te "would rather see England free ilnm 80t>er." and remarked upon it that if Bishop Mogee could have gone on circuit, and could hftvo seen the misery, the wasting desolation, which drir': brings with it, Lord Coleridge t!iii:';s he would have hesitated long befo: e he gave utterance to an opinion so certain to be misunderstood, "Anyone continued his lordship, "who sits in my position must know that if you could make England sober you ■might indeed in another sense make her free, because you might—not literally, of course—hut you might speaking broadly, shut up threefourths of her gaols, Speaking, generally, almost all the crimes of violence, and many of the crimes into which dishonesty enters, are begun or are completed in the publichouses."

Writing on pauperism, the Cooperative News says; "In Stepney, Mr Booth found that drink accounts for only 12-6 per cent, of the cases as a principal cause, though it is set down as ut contributing cause in about 13 per cpnt more, In St. Pancras drink stands for Dearly 22 per cent. ; and a similar investigation, though on a smaller scale, made by Mr MoDougall in Manchester, made it responsible for as many as 52 per cent. In an enquiry of this kind something depends on the personal bias of the investigator, but in London Unions Mr Booth seems quite dear that drink alone will not account for more than % per cent. It may seem strange at first sighlthat an immense proportion of thoso who suffer from drinking habits are or have been married. But this does not mean that marriage lead* to inebrity. It moans simply that drink becomes total when a oian has a wife and children. The single man may drink with comparative impunity ; the married man who drioks destroys his home,"

Lady Henry Somerset gave an able address at a drawing-room meotingof the British Women's Temperance Association held at Mrs Massingberd's. She Baid Temperance workers need mind very little what nameß they were called, nor heed how hard and cruel were the blows levelled at them, or how sharp the stones people threw. All reformers are stoned until they succeed, They must be conient to sacrifice reputation, if need be, so that the wrongs of social life be redressed, the evils under which England droops and languishes destroyed. Those who liberated the slaves were called fanaiics; all reformers in all ages had boon called hard names, had been insulted and misjudgod, Earnestly seeking a aolution to the enigma of wrong-doing, the mystery of iniquity, the deep questions of life, they should trouble themselves very little indeed about such paltry considerations. A real deep desiro to help tlioir follows would bring into powerful vitality all the nobility and strength of their own natures,

At an influential meeting of the friends of the London Police Court Mission for the Bescue of the helpless (conducted by the London Board of the Church of England Temperance Society) held at the Mansion House, London, recently, tho Lord Mayor, who ocoupied the chair, "declared that at least 98 per cent, of the cases that came before the magistrates at the Mansion House Police Court, were duo in some way or another to an association with drink. There was no doubt that drink was-the primary cause of almost all trie crime whi a was committed in England at the present time,"

The Bath licensed vitunllers bad their annual meeting the other day. The concluding sentence of their "report" is very suggestive:—" The only desire of the members is to protect their own interests, and to do this effectively we must fight our opponents—iu the way they have so well 1 taught us—through the ballot box." Commenting on this, The Wale.:. Ttmptmm Herald says:-" What a sharp contrast there is botween the Temperance reformer, self-sacrific-ingly working for others weal, and using the franchise fortbedelivei'anco of his fellow men and for tho highest good of his country, and the liquordealer ' protecting his own interests, 1 and using the franchise' to do this effectively.' We have read somewhere that 'selfishness always defeats it-; self."