A WOMAN ON THE ASYLUM FOR INEBRIATES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXV, Issue 3780, 30 September 1869, Page 6

A WOMAN ON THE ASYLUM FOR INEBRIATES.

" Our remedies oft in ourselres do lio, Which wa ascribo to Heaven." To the Editor of the Daily Southern Cuoas. Sir, — I have waited patiently for a eight of the letter " Asylum for Inebriate* " which you have ho long had '• under consideration." Words cannot tell how thankful I am to know that even one or two are turning their thoughts to Auckland's great need— an asylum for inebriates. Total abstinence will never reach the goal it proposes to itself,— it ia simply stemming Niagara with a straw, and, 10 long as men are comtent to play with the straw, no good will be done. We are all so wedded to our pet schemes as to be unwilling to own they have in any degree failed. Make the asylum self-supporting (I had almost said I hate charities). Hundreds of drunkards' wives would work their fingers to the bone to support their husbauds daring their incarceration, with the hope (faint at the best, fctill a hope) that, for the devil who enters, the asylum shall restore to her a man. The drunkard ia not a man. God forbid we should so confound things that differ as to call the drunkard a man. "He hath 'a devil and is mad," and should be treated accordingly. Satan must stand aghast to see how awful wickedness in in the person of a drunkard— bis victims (usually), the wife of his bosom and the ohildren God has given him. The drunkard is the same in every land and clime, from peer to peasant — cruel, marvelltusly ruel. In thousands of instances they are known to kill their wives by inches, with every refinement of torture, the while gloating over their unjust, unbounded power ; and, as good, true women drop into the cold grave, struggling against such fearful odds, society looks listlessly on, washes its hands of all responsibility, aaya, " Poor things, what a pity, but then— they are only women, what matters though they die ? A man may do what he likes with his own surely, so long as he does not kill her at one blow ; if he should so dare to overstep the mark, we'll make haste and hang him, even though that death-stroke may have been the greatest kindness he has done her for many a long year." Women quail before brute force, in which men are bo superior. Every door on earth is shut against the drunkard's wife. Blessed be 9ed, heaven is always open to her. Are all men so mannish that not one has the manly courage to plead the cams of the weak against the strong ?— a vary unpopular oause to plead, no doubt. Woe ii me that I can say nothing likely to touch men's hearts, when they have for bo long been wilfully, resolutely blind to the wrongs they know women to suffer at the hands of bad men— for overpaying, no matter how vile, " The mau is one of us ; wa must shield iiim at all coat*." Husbands and fathers — men of England, men of Auckland — have pity, have meroy on the drunkard's wife. Protect her earnings, and say out loud, the man who will not work thall not eat ; the Bible warrants you in saying so. I do not pretend to know how protection should be given ; but well I know that, if, in order to get it, the poor broken-spirited wife must face legal difficulties and a bench of magistrates, the most deserving will ahrink from it, Silent suffering will never remedy the evil. Bad men are not in the leait moved by it, except to their own shame and their wives' sorrow. So long as women are content to accept suffering as their lot, men will, of course, de> nothing. Oh, that the good, true men of Auckland would, with heart and voice, demand evenhauded justice for the drunkard's wife, and bear in mind how long, hovr well, how eilently she has suffered. — I am, &c, A Woman. September 24, 1869.