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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 15, 16 July 1887, Page 4

Speaking at Christchurch the other day, Mr Glover said : —lf we hadn’t the drink we shouldn’t fill goals, lunatic asylums, benevolent associations, refuges, reformatories, rescue homes. The police force could be better employed than watching public houses. We shouldn't want the revenue to keep them up. Would not that be reform and retrenchment. Without the traffic our purchasing power would not be crippled and instead of sinking lower and lower as we are doing we should rise. If the traffic were not restrained we must be prepared to have poverty and distress. Licensing Committees were powerless unless the members had a big credit balance at their bankers to suppress the trade. The Licensing Committees were failures, and those who did shut up houses were persecuted. The Committees were a sham, and it was a shame to throw upon the shoulders of five men the responsibility of closing the liquor shops. Mr Joseph Parker, of the City Temple, writing to the Daily Telegraph in contradiction of an article published in that paper which misrepresented the action of the Nonconformist ministers in declaring against the Coercion Bill, says : —Your leader is excellent when read backwards, as I am sure you mean it to be read. What do you suppose ministers have been doing ? From your leader one would suppose that ministers have been preaching about Home Bule and Coercion. Nothing of the kind. Three thousand five hundred Nonconformist ministers have signed a protest against Coercion. That is all. They did not sign it on Sunday. They did not sign it in the pulpit. They did not sign it whilst they had their pulpit robes on. You yourself grant us, “ as ordinary citizens out of doors, the fullest liberty of speech, writing and agitation.” We have only taken a very small portion of that liberty; why, then, do you censure us ? An American minister told a brother who came to supply his pulpit not to say a word against drunkness, lying, or stealing. " What then shall I preach against ?” The brother mildly enquired. “Preach agin the Mormons, go into them like thunder, there won’t be one of them present to teke offence."

A precocious " infant.”—ls an ille--sitimate child a necessary of life? he question has been raised by a scoundrelly young farmer named Edward Brett, in the Norwich County Court, and, we (Pall Mall Gazette) regret to say, decided in hie favour. Brett was the father of an illegitimate child, and he evaded a claim for £44 for maintenance of his own offspring on the ground that as he was under twenty-one when the child was born he was entitled to claim protection under the Infants’ Relief Act—a bastard now being a “necessary.” The County Court judge decided that the rascal’s plea was good in law, but offered facilites for appeal. We hope the dicision will be reversed by a superior court. “Infants” who are old enough to become fathers of other infants are assuredly the last people in the world who ought to be relieved by law from the duty of maintaining their own offspring.