DEATH STREET.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1887, 9 August 1884, Page 4

DEATH STREET.

Mr Hoyle, a Biitish statistician, gives the fearful picture, what lie terms a bird's-eye view of the results of the drink traffic. " I have already stated that if the drink -shops of tho United Kingdom were placed end to end they vrould form a street stretching fiom Land's End in Cornwall to John o'Gio.its at the north of Scotland over 610 miles. Let us suppose the street, along with its needful appendages, formed. What would the picture be like ? In the first place, to grow 8,000,000 bushels of giain or produce which is necessary to manufacture the L 134,000,000 worth of drink which has yearly been consumed since 1870, a corn-field would be needed stretching two and a half miles each sido of the street — that is, a cornfield five miles wide, and stretching the whole length from Land's End to John o'Groats. Let the reader imagine such a cornfield, and think of all the grain produced from it being destroyed by the manufacture of intoxicating liquors. Suppose we stait from Land's End along the stieet. On the right hand side every quarter of a mile there would be a malt manufactory, and every two miles a distillery. On the lett band side of the stieet eveiy thr^e quarters of mile there would be a laigo union work-house, in which to lodge indoor paupers who had been impoverished by drinking ; and, in addition, a row of bouses the whole length of the stieet for out-door paupers. When we had proceeded two miles there would be a reformatory for the lcclomation of young criminals. Having gone two miles further there would be n hit go county gaol to lo'lgc adult ciiminals ; and two miles further a monster lunatic asylum. These dctatched establishments would all be repeated at similar distances from end to end of tho street. Let Us suppose the whole of tins population turned into the street— 1,000,000 paupeie, 700,000 drunkards, cay 300,000 criminals, 300.000 vagrants, and say 70,000 lunatics. If these weio placed three abreast and two yai ds apai t they would foim a procession which would reach the whole length of the Btreet — 640 miles from Land's End to John o' Groats. But there could be another procession necessaiy, and, if possible, one even still more awful and heartrending. I have said that 120,000 Semature deaths occur yearly through rink. Let us picture the dead beiu^ carried along the street to their la^t resting - places, and supposing each funeral procession extending twenty yards, then there would be a piocession of funerals 640 miles long. Just pause and think of it, Christian men and woman. Think upon such a street being possible in Great Britain. Think upon the picture of that weeping, howling, cursing, raving multitude. Think upon the " far off land " in our midst, where prayer is not, and the Bible is not, md love but husks and slavery chains. Ponder it and weep, if by godless apathy yo have done nothing to lessen its agonies of woes. This street of death, skirted by the highest forms of civilisation and Cbiistian temples, whose bells ring death-knells to their hopes ; and stately mansions where delicate women sip their winp and call it nectar, and cultured men catch glimpses through the windows and talk giandly of social problems and the degiddcd masses, and then lounge and drink and talk again ; by schools within whose walls they leaint and studied, until dunk came and blasted the promise of then youth. Tho pictuie of Death-street should be learnt, in all its hideous details, by eveiy temperance speaker, and repeated on every platform in the Kingdom. Jf I were a great painter, Death street would be my subject, and I would put upon canvas so viv4d and real that the world should stare and every finger have a living voice. If I were a great poet, it should be my theme, and every verse should teem with imagery more terrific than that of the •' Inferno,"' and every line throb with the passion of mourning, lamentation, and woe. If I were a great musician I would compose a dirge for the funeral procession. It should contain the low cry of the starving infant, the last shriek of the murdered wife, and will yell of the drink maniac, the muflled sigh of of the mother's breaking heart, the laughter of a bacchanal, the sob of a child's despair, an orphan's cry, a father's curse, the crack of a broken limb fiom a husband's hand, the whisper of forgiveness from lips closing for ever, the i attic of a convjft's chain, the rasping of a felon's rope, the splash of the suicide, the win/ of the assassin's bullet — all these mad and merry sounds which Bacchus only can inspire should blend and swell and shriek and wail along the route of death. Were I a member of Parliament I would cease not to thunder the details of this picture into the ears of British senators until their sluggish blood was warmed into speech and action ; telling them while they were sharpening swords for party warfare thousands of English men and women were being ground to deatli beneath the wheels of our national Juggernaut ; and w hilo debating estimates of this and that, and setting about the Laud Bill, every fortnight £5,000,000 has gone to support the ghastly processions of Death-street ; and in Ireland, while in the year 1881 seventeen persons met their death through agrarian crimes, through the liquour traffic seventeen persons come to a permature grave every two hours both day and night throughout the year. If I were an archbishop I would call upon my brethren to help me, and appoint a day for humiliation, ■and come before Almighty God to ask Him to turn away His wrath fronv us, that we as a nation be not slain and buried as the sinning nations of the past.

,It has been discovered that a set of torpedo gear of the value of £500, sent from 1 London to Portsmouth Dockyard on April 14, has never been seen nor heard, of since, and all trace otitis lost^ an, all-ray . between poachers and „ lyatcherp ,<;ook place.^on Teamer Moor, Iss J^n£esJt>or,pugh's estate, joear Scar[bo^ojjgh, I,^1 ,^ Jgagjpnd, .recently,',, and -a»'^M^ik ,9?^^ Georgo was ;:^#PlliS Kii^Sbhw jlying- in > a .precarious lirate. E"rank Pearson, ,i, ;a i pptorwua^ 'poacher, is in custody chargpd withfehoot- 1 jug wtt^awliuwt juM< ;