TEMPERANCE GOLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 114, 10 November 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEMPERANCE GOLUMN.

i [The matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the local Temperance bodies, who aloue is responsible for the opinions expressed in it.] TWELVE JUDGES ON THE DRINK j QUESTION. ! __ "Public-houses are just so many allurements and ambushes, so many traps and pitfalls in the path of the working men." — The late Earl Cairns. "If England could be made sober, three-fourths' of her gaols might be I closed." — The late Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. ■ "If the people of this country would be weaned from the fatal habit of drinking, crime would be diminished onehalf." — Lord Justice Kaye. "Every day I live, and the' more I think of the matter, the more firmly do I comd to the conclusion that the root of almost all crime is drink." — Justice Haw- ! kins. [ "These publicans seem to serve men Up to the last possibly moment, in order to make unholy profit out of their horrid traffic. Though the trade is a licensed trade, surely it cannot be properly regulated. ''-^Justice Grantham. " The measure of alcohol consumed in a district is the measure of the degrada--tion of the people." — Baron Dowse. 11 Seventy -five per cent, of the divorce cases that come before me in the Divorce 1 Court originate in drinking." — Sir James Hannen. " The terrible thing is that a man often enters the public-house respected and respectable, and leaves it a criminal." — Justice Keating. t "There is no question more widej reaching than that of tho liquor traffic on the social, mofal, arid political condition of the. working-classes." — Lord Russell of Killowen. ' " Saturday is pay day, drink day, crime day." — Lord Bramwell. "He thought Uiat he might express with some authority, after fifteen years' experience as a judge, that most of the crimes, of violence proceeded . either directly or indirectly from, drunkenness. It was the duty of all who valued the prosperity of the country to strive to diminish and put an end to this vice of drunkenness, and in doing this they must not be too nice about it." — Justice Mellor. "It was no excuse that the inflictor of those wilful and cruel injuries (murder) was the worse for drink, and not only no excuse but no palliation or extenuation, thafhis evil passions nad been stirred up by drink, so that he did things which he would not do in sober moments ; but other people must be protected against cruel violence, whether a person was drunk or sober." — Lord Young. ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY ON FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. I At a public meeting at the Foresters' Hall, Canterbury, for the object of propagating the principles of Itechabitism, His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, j wearing the sash of the Order, presided, and in the course of a brilliant address, made some eulogistic remarks concern- | ing the Order: — "He had always looked upon the society of Rechabites as being, on the one hand, the best of temperance societies, and, on the other hand, the best of benefit societies. It was the best of benefit societies because it proceeded upon very definite '. lines, and, he should say, knew better what it was about than any other benefit society that could be named because it laid hold of one of tie most important principles which ought to govern , all benefit societies—the encouragement of those habits which tended to maintain the health of the society, and of every individual member of it. ... He turned from the one aspect of the Rechabite society tq the other, because, while it was a benefit society, j.u was also a temperance society, and amongst temperance societies he knew no better than that, because it taught a lesson which he thought could be well taught in no other way. The Rechabite society taught all the other •societies this great lesson— that temperance, so far from being inconsistent with length of life, inconsistent with true service to God and of man, so far from being inconsistent with hard labour and such labour as benefited all mankind, was just the society which lengthened life, diminished sickness, and proved to all people, by the facta of its own history,

that temperance was really the most wholesome thing that they could possibly practice." .