TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10269, 11 February 1899, Page 5

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

+ This column is published by arrangement' with the Temperance Societies of Canterbury, who alone are responsible for the opinions expressed in it. It is requested that all communications intended for this column be addressed "Temperance," "Press" office. The conductors of this column have to acknowledge the receipt of ls each from C.E., L.C., A.D., C.S.D. It has been said that drunkenness is on tho decline. The official record for 1898 shows an increase over the previous year. and Police Court records appearing in the columns of the "Press" disclose the fact that the drink traffic can lay claim to fresh victims every week, and to show the truly alarming rate of this increase we give the number of first offenders committed for drunkenness from July to December of last year. These total 183. of which number 25 were women. The total first offenders for the year is 340. During the same period (six months) 31 prohibition orders were taken out. six of these orders being against women.' Within the past few days the fruits of the tratnc have been very evident. A bench of Justices dealt leniently with a man for indecent exposure because he was so drunk that he did not know what he was doing, and another man was sent to gaol for a month for being helplessly drunk while in charge of a horse and cart, endangering his own as well as other people's lives. People in the neighbourhood were alarmed by the fearful shrieks of a woman, found uy the police on the pavement in one of our streets helplessly drunk. Tho foregoing facts are not pleasant to contemplate? Too many dismiss them from their minds with the remark, "It's a pity'these"people do not know when they lvave had enough"—a very easy and comfortable way of getting rid'of a Christian citizen's responsibility, which is at least to see, or make some effort to get the law of the land enforced in the interests of these weak-minded fellow-men and women of ours. Our legislature has affirmed the principle over and over again that it is a function and duty of the State to protect man against himself. The principle is recognised in tlie power given to our Magistrates to make orders prohibiting the supply to persons given to intemperance, and again the principle is asserted in our licensing legislation, wherein it says a man shall not be supplied with liquor while under its influence —not when he is drunk, but before he or she becomes drunk. Our worthy Magistrate, Mr Bishop, drew the attention of a witness in the Oxford drinking case, who was giving an easy-going interpretation to tho term, to the fact that the law said a man was not to be served with drink while under its influence. How is the law observed? The cases noticed here supply the answer. Evidence of flagrant violation of this law may be seen every day and night in our streets, mostly at night, as a constable remarked to tlie writer. If the hotels were closed at six o'clock there would be far less drunkenness. The unanimous testimony of life assurance societies is that indulgence in alcohol shortens life. Mr John Wilson, M. P., presiding at the annual meeting of the Scottish Life Assurance Company, Limited, gave the following as the experience of the Company during the last fifteen years, 1883-1897 :— Claims Actual Perexpected. claims, centage.' Temperance section 492 232 47 General section ... 155 107 69 Those insured in the general section are, it is needless to say, moderate drinkers, any excessive drinkers being excluded. Hence the fact'is established that quantities which do not produce any immediate palpahle injury do in the course of time injure the constitution and lead to premature "The Medical Temperance Review." _ "Be total abstainers (nepsate), be watchful, for your, enemy the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may drink down." (1 Peter v., 8, literally translated). —"The Medical Temperance Review." The Rev. John McNeill, the popular evangelist, has consented to devote some time this winter to work in the Scottish Highlands, and the programme * include * .mission to Stornoway. Mr McNeill, has just declared strongly against the use of fermented wine at the Communion. \, a ™ eeting more and more terious about it, he L-s "I do not like that perfume in the church bn the Sabbath day Ido not like to be compelled to see uus drink, which is mv main obstacle, the one thing that is causing so much misery and mischief, made the type of "thS greatest blessing that has cometTus. It is at once the greatest curse, and in symbolic form, on a Communion Sabbath, it symbolises the greatest blessing that has come to the world. Now, that cannot bTright. I wish, the Church, of God would rise uo and ourge and purify herself from .all. complicity with this thing. THE GREAT PLAGUE, 1664-65. The London of Stuart times was badly built and badly drained, so that it afforded a fruitful field for any contagious disease.: Through the winter months tlie plague was greatly checked by the cold weather, but no decided means were adopted for its suppression. In the following spring' ita. de-j vastations became alaiminjv-and all who could fled from the plague-stacken city. During the months of August and September, when the nlague. reached its height, the people of London were dying at the rate of 6000 per "week. The story of the plague is one of the darkest pages in the chronic.es of a great city; and we read it to-day with a thrill of 1 horror. It was computed that in the twelve months, commencing 20th December, 1664, when the olague broke out in Drury Lane, and 19th December, 1665, no less than 60,000 nersons died. In that short time King Death reaped a terrible harvest from the seed sown by ignorance and sin. This sad picture of a city's woe is only a symbol of an evil in our midst to-day that is bringing desolation to many happy homes and carrying to premature graves thousands of the best and bravest. This evil, like the plague, spares neither sex nor age; no rank in life has been exempt from its ravages, and among its victims we. have to count some of the brightest intellects that the world has known.. It has dragged eloquent preachers from the pulpit, lawyers from the bar, judges from the bench, it has transformed honest men into thieves, it has stained loving hands with the blood of loved ones, and it has sent an awful throng of victims down to a drunkard's hell. The evil called intemperance is the plague of to-day. It is devastating. The -reatest living statesman of England 'has declared that drink has wrought more havoc in the world than the combined efforts of famine, pestilence, and war, and the statement-is, no doubt, substantially correct. But the same indifference that characterised our ancestors in 1665 is with us still. Eminent judges tell us from time to time how much of the crime of the country is caused by strong drink. Chaplains in jails echo the same stern statement, and doctors confess that one-half of our modern diseases spring from the same baneful cause. In a speech at Cambridge (England) the Bishop of Chichester mentioned that the last three mile footrace between Oxford and Cambridge was won by one of his own sons, who has been a lifelong abstained Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P.— "No statistics are needed to assure you that Temperance reform lies at the bottom of all further :political, social, and religious progress. Drink is the curse of the country! It ruin* the fortunes.* it injures the health, it destroys the lives of one in twenty—l am afraid I should be right in saying one in ten —of our population, and anything which can be done to diminish this terrible sacrifice of human life and human happiness is well worthy of all the attention and study which we can give it."—''The Australasian Christian Standard," July, 1897. Dr. Newman Kerr says:—"lf people but knew the effects of alcoholism on the moral sense .as I have learned them!... Why; I have had a patient, once beautiful and honourable, who emptied a glass of spirits, set the glass on the table, and declared he liad not touched it. Low cunning and base lying are the everyday results of alcoholism." —"The Australasian Christian Standard." July, 1897. 9557