THE TRUTHS ABOUT ALCOHOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7644, 22 May 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE TRUTHS ABOUT ALCOHOL.

Joseph Cook, speaking recently in New York, aaya : —"The truths about alcohol are now so well known that you can't get a life assurance company anywhere to put you, if you are a moderationist, into the same class as a total abstainer. There may be thoso here who think that liquor drank in moderation is harmless ; there may be others who think that the doctrine of uncompromising total abstinenceif an insult to the memory of Christ. But you will find that the life assurance companies do not agree with you. Fanaticism, you say again ? This is not fanaticism, but the outcome of conservative, or cold-blooded commercial experience. As the nineteenth century draws to an end so much light is being poured upon this question of moderation v. total abstinence that any man who prefers the f inner as the rule of individual conduct must be pronounced benighted. For my part, although I greatly reverence the societies which have the double pledge, I would blush to ask any part of society to drop below the standard fixed by the life assurance companies. 1 would blush to recommend to anyone a less extreme tendency in the matter of intoxicants than the fourteen legislatures have put themselves on record as recommending to the children. And the Churches should blush to drop below the standard of text-books taught in the schools. I hold that it is time for the platform and the Church to unite with the parlour and the school in bringing society up to the level established by the life assurance companies and the fourteen States Legislatures. . . . The Queen of Madagascar refuses to fjive license for any price for the sale of liquor within her dominions ; and I would rather have that noble Queen for my political leader, so far as the temperance question is concerned, than several of the religious newspapers that are published in this city."