TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 122, 21 November 1908, Page 12

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

[The matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the local temperance bodies, who alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in it.] LOOKING TO THE FUTURE. St James's Budget, under a prominent heading, "No Publichouses," records certain unusual provisions in the will of a late wealthy ex-member of Parliament and philanthropist, who died in March, aged 67 years, Colonial Richard Pilkington, C.8., V.D., of Rainford Hall. St. Helens. Lancashire, head of Messrs. Pilkington Bros, Ltd., plateglass manufuctuiera and colliery proprietors, chairman of Richard Evans and Co., Ltd., colliery proprietors, and of tho St. Helens Cable Company, Ltd., J.P. for Lancashire, four times Mayor of St. Helens, Conservative M.P. for SouthWest Lancashire, 1899-1906, having made provision for his family, tno teetotaller, in his (will, aays: — "My experience acquired as a large employer of labour and as a justice of the peace, and my observations of what is hourly taking place, have convinced me that tho present facilities for the sale of_ intoxicating liquors operate to tbe prejudice, both .morally and materially, of largo masses of the community, and tßat those facilities ought to be curtailed. As I desire to give practical effect to my conviction, I direct that any sale of my real estate to any purchaser, being one of my sons or any other porsqr, shall be sub.iect to the following condition : — "That my son oi other purchaser, his heirs and assigns, shall not^ during the period mentioned, so far as it may be m Ins or their power to prevent the same, allow any present or " future building, structure-, or erection erected oi &et up upon any part of my real estate, to be used for the sale for consumption on or off the premises, of any ale, porter, beer, wine, spirits, or other intoxicating liquors or for the purpose of receiving orders for the sale thereof, or knowingly let or lease any part of such real estate for tho purpose of being used for any such purpose." He further stated "If any tenant should so use any building, the landlord is to put an end to tho tenancy at the earliest date which the law wili allow, in order that the premises may no longer be used for such purpose, .and that effect may be given to this condition as far as it be possible." lie made this condition to last for twenty-one years after the decease of the longest-lived survivor of her late Majesty Queen Victoria, and he stated that he would have made it to last longer had tho law allowed But he ndded that he recognised that circumstances n.ight arise which might render it expedient to relieve portions of his real estate from this prohibition, and he, therefore, authorised his trustees, if they sbould unanimously agree, to release any part or parts thereof from tho condition wholly or in part; but he entreated his son, who might become the purchasar of hii real estate, and his heirs to carry out his intention loyally and in no grudging spirit, assuring him and them that he had not introduced this condition into his will without anxious thought, and without being fully convinced of the propriety of the condition. A provision in M,r. Asquith's Licensing Bill, if carried, should stop the evasion of the present law by which a publichouse losing its license is immediately conveited into a so-called clvb — a greater nuisance than before, and bettei able to circumvent the police. Under the new Bill, fi\e years must elapse before a club can be. installed in premises from which a publichouse license has been removed. The lecent Olympic contests have bi ought into prominence the fact that an inscription recently discovered at Delphi reveals that the athletes in training for the festival were forbidden to drink wine, and to secure the observance of the rule a fine was imposed, half of which went to the temple and half to the informer Speaking on the subject of the Licensing Bill before the latest Mothodist Conference in Britain, Sir John Bamford Slack made some good points. Quoting from some liquor trade organ a statement that those engaged hi the traffic would "sooner submit their caso to' the judgment of his Satanic Majesty than to that of Bishop Gore," he remarked that evidently "there was only one judge in the universe to whom they dare submit their case." Dr. Sheldon, writing under date of 9th August to Mr. J. Newton, the Alliance Parliamentary agent, sayg : "We have just had our Primary Election, a new law being observed for the first time. We now elect all our State officials, from Governor down, including our State Senator, by direct vote of the people, without a convention of boss politicians — a great advance in popular government. Afe this election we had an overwhelming victory for the law and order Temperance candidates, sustaining and strengthening our prohibitory law. Tho saloon is dead in Kansas, and it has no resurrection eitlier in this world or in the world to come." "Does it< profit a nation," Sir "Victor Horsley lately asked, "to take a sleepingdraught every night?" The moderate drinker, he added, was a drug-taker, for alcohol was a narcotic, and the man consumed it was really taking a sleepingdraught. How was this unfortunate country to "wake_ up" when it spent from 160 to 180 millions of money annually on sleeping-draughts? "The publiohouso is the purveyor of tuberculosis." It was no "ignorant and prejudiced fanatic" who made this startling statement. It was ma.de, speaking advisedly and with a full sense of responsibility, in June, 1901, at the British Medical Congress, by the late Professor Bronavdel, dean of the faculty of medicine in Paris and leading member of the medical profession in France. He continued : "In fact, alcoholism is the most uotent factor in propagating tuberculosis. *The strongest man who has onoe taken to drink ib powerless against it. A universal cry of' despair arises from the whole universe at the Bight of the disaster caused by alcoholism." There was something grotesque as well a.H audacious in a recent attempt to suborn General Booth as an opponent of the NoLicense movement— the general is in the thick of the fight, and every member of the Salvation Army ib a living testimony to the side on which he fights. Little less impudent was the attempt of "the trade" in the United States to claim Abraham Lincoln as a supporter. Lincoln was foully glain by the hand of a drunkard 'over forty years ago, but the "Lincoln Legion" of America now uses tho form of pledge drafted by Lincoln himself in 1846, as follows: "Whereas tha use of alcoholic liquors as a beverage is productive of pauperism, \ degradation, and. crime, and believing it our duty to discourage that which produces more evil than good, we therefore pledge ourselves to abstain from Ino use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. Lincoln was a life-long abstainer As a boy he gave a pledge to his dying mother which ho faithfully kept. At that time drinking habits were so general that he was thought "peculiar," but oven when a candidate he nevex concealed his piinciples. He was one of the "Washingtonmns, an early American temperance society (184-0-184-3). "I find," says Dr. Max Gruber, Professor of Hygiene, Munich University, "no scientifio grounds for indicating a given amount of alcohol as harmless and a matter of indifference if it is given habitually. On the contiary, it seems to me in tho hignest degree probable that tho regular use ol a much smallci amount than one to onu-and-a-quarter ounces doos harm to the vast majority ot mankind." Sixteen dollars and forty cents, according to tlie Anti-saloon League Yearbook, is the retail price of the product in whisky of a busliel of corn (maize), with the aid ot variouß harmful products and adulterants How aie these 1640 cents distributed? The fanner who grows tho corn gets 25 to 50, tho Government gets 440 as whisky tax ; the railway company, 100 ; the drayman, 15 ; the retailer, 700. Besides this, the man who drinks the whisky gets . . . drank ; his wife gets hunger and sorrow; Ins children get rags and insufficient fnnd.