TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 753, 6 August 1886, Page 6

TEMPERANCE.

MR G- A. SALA’S TEMPERANCE

EXPERIENCES ON THE ROAD. Mr G. A. Sala’s latest letter to the Daily Telegraph from the * Land of the Golden Fleece,’ deals with the * Australasia on Wheels.’ The following extracts will be read with interest :—• ‘ The carter whom you meet on a bushroad is, as a rule, a very good fellow ; he passes the time of day cheerfully ; retails such news as he has touching a mob of travelling sheep or oxen which he has met, or a coach which has broken down or stuck in the mud ; and is not averse, when he has not joined the Blue Ribbon Army, from taking a drink at Mr O Goggerdan’s wayside hotel, should he and you be baiting at Mr O'Goggerdan’s establishment. The Blue Ribbohites, the Rechabites, the Good Templars, and similar associations have done, and are doing, an immensity of good among the bush people in Australia,; nor would it be fair to omit mention of the fact, to which I within the experience of the last twelve months can bear witness, that in the Far West of the American Union, temperance is making appreciable strides. * Inside or out ’ was the menacing alternative proposed by the Western cowboy to the ‘ stranger ’ to whom he offered a drink. In the West, between Chicago and Frisco, at the beginning of 1885, I was asked over and over again to liquor by the roughest of rough customers whom I casually met; and the quiet reply of ' Swore off ’ was quite sufficient to elicit a friendly nod of acquiescence from my intending entertainer. We are apt to laugh a good deal at the temperance enthusiasts, with their banners, brass bands, pseudo-masonic hierarchy, and other pomps and vanities, and it may be tomfooleries ; but there may be pomps and vanities, and, possibly, even a little tomfoolery, associated with other organisations besides teetotalism ; and the last-named, certainly, cannot do anybody any harm. Swift held tnat the greatest benefactor of humanity was he who caused two blades of grass or two ears of corn to grow where one only had grown before. It may be that no inconsiderable amount of benefit may be conferred on the English-speaking races by the temperance advocate who persuades us to drink one glass of wine or one pint of beer instead ot two. I do not believe in total abstinence, nationally. I am inclined to fear lest a total abstaining nation should become a gluttonous, grasping, selfish,. tyrannical, morose, and intolerably conceited nation ; but I do believe in the practicability of a traditionally hard-drinking nation—we have been drinking hard for twelve hundred y ears —growing gradually less drunken, and 1 hope to have ere long occasion to show that the habits of Young Australia tend very

conspicuously indeed in the direction of moderation in the use of strong drink.’