The Evening Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and Echo. TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1892.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 69, 22 March 1892, Page 4

The Evening Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and Echo.

TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1892.

For tho cau3o that laci; ajoistancs, For tho wronz that needs resistance, For tho fatura ia the distant, •. Aad the cocci that -wo can do.

The annual Convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which opened its sittings this morning, has an interest extending beyond the range of ordinary temperance circles. We have no desire to anticipate the addresses that will be delivered by the delegates on a variety of topics during the next few.days. When the ladies have placed before us their special plans for the promotion of temperance we shall deem their proceedings as affording legitimate material for comment, but the very fact that such a Convention can be called is in itself a matter of interest to all who have watched social reform in its various stages.

Thirty years ago the idea of a number of ladies leaving their homes and assembling together to propose measures for the restriction of the drink traffic would have been dismissed as the whim of an enthusiast. In the present day, when female energies are thrown into social reforms of every kind, it is difficult for us to understand how restricted was the sphere of woman a generation ago. Hannah More, in the early part of the present century, tells us that she and her sisters were looked upon with the gravest suspicion because they distributed tracts, and taught the children of some of the very poor to read. Elizabeth Fry, at a somewhat later period, found it difficult to convince her contemporaries that her prison labours could be carried on without a loss of female delicacy. In the case of these and other celebrated ladies, their rare talents and social position enabled them to triumph over the prejudices of their age, but in the case of less distinguished women they could not take any public part in social reform without becoming targets for shafts of scorn and hatred. The hand of genius has pourtrayed Dinah Evans preaching on the village green while the crowd listened in breathless silence, but the real female preacher of those days was usually the mark for scorn and contumely.

As the century advanced, women began gradually to take a more active part in social movements, the temperance organisations opened up a vast field for their enterprise, but it was not till they banded together in the United States and carried out what was known as the Anti - Whisky Crusade that women discovered their real power in causing the suppression of the drink traffic. They formed themselves into bands and raided all the saloons in the district. Boniface, who would have been proof against the entreaties of his own sex, was powerless against the tears, prayers and vigorous measures of his female opponents. Scores of saloons were closed as the result of tactics that were at first only the subject of ridicule. Of late years the ladies have largtely abandoned the system of making raids on godless saloon - keepers, and employ their talents in discussions, and the production of papers on the drink question at annual conventions.

The propriety of women taking a prominent part in the regulation of the drink traffic is hardly open to question. Women are not so directly slaves of drink as men, but indirectly there is no doubt they are the ,chief sufferers. Nor even in its direct aspect can it be said that women come off scathless. A considerable number of female names figure in the list of those fined at the Police Court, and while women are not so prone as men to drink to that excess that brings them under the ken of the police officer, they do, especially among the unfortunate classes, irtdulge to an extent which imperils health and shortens life. The horrors

of a drunkard's home are especially revolting to a woman from the very refinement of her nature, and whether she endures them as the wife of a gentleman, who, when filled with wine, is as foul-mouthed as the lowest debauchee, or as the wife of the vilest ruffian who drinks at the lowest haunts, her lot is one of the most wretched that a human being can be called upon to endure.

We have no doubt that during the next few days the various delegates tfill furnish the public with their respective plans of reform. Similar conventions have been held several times in the colonies, and schemes have been propounded, sometimes of a practical, and not unfrequently of a very impracticable character. The weakest point in such conventions seems to us to have been that the speakers have generally closed their eyes to existing facts; they have laid stress more upon what might be if the conditions of society were different, rather than upon what can be under the circumstances in which we live. It is easy for a lady to gain applause by vigorously advocating sweeping measures which are thoroughly Utopian in their character. It is much less easy to advocate those moderate reforms that can be gradually brought about as the result of combined effort.

The ladies will do well to remember that great reformations do not advance by leaps and bounds. Any such measure as prohibition would, we believe, not only be impracticable, but would recoil on the heads of those who advocated it. The colonial will not be forced into abstinence any more than the Scotch peasant would be dragged into chuich to listen to a foreign service. The Australian vigneron will not forfeit the income derived from the growing export of colonial wines to Europe without a struggle. For the adjustment of these and many other difficulties that beset the path of temperance reform, moral suasion, rather than force, is required. Women are eminently adapted, from the natural kindly feelings of their sex and from the time they are able to devote to this great branch of social reform, to assist in rearing a sober nation. In their efforts, so far as they are conducted in a spirit of justice and fair play, they will be seconded by the goodwill of all sensible men and women in the community. •