TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 770, 3 December 1886, Page 6

TEMPERANCE.

HOW WE CIVILISE. Addressing a large meeting ef Temperance politicians in the Great Assembly Hall, Mile Enel, London, on July 3rd, Mr Arnold White, a candidate for the borough, said that 4 last year he was in South Africa, in Buchuanaland, with Sir Charles Warren, and during that time saw a great deal of the magnificent tribes of the dark continent with whom the English had come into contact. There were five native tribes near Cape Colony, by the great river Zambezi. The .tribe nearest the English colony was dissipated by drink and foul disease; the tribe next to them was not quite so dissipated, but still suffering terribly from the vices brought by the Europeans ; the next tribe was better, and the further tribe were a magaifieeut set of temperate and chaste men ; while the furthest away from the contaminating vices of what is called civilisation was one that the English might well copy from. One of the most pathetic sights he ever saw was an old chief of the tribe on his knees to the expedition, entreating that the cursed ‘ brandy bottle might not be brought to destroy his people. The leader of the expedition (Sir Charles Warren) was, fike Gordon, a Christian soldier, aud he conducted hi 3 expedition on temperance principles, and on that account it was the most successful one that had ever been undertaken. There was a tribe called the Basutos, lying to the east of Cape Colony, and one could stand on a hill aud see the countries of both natives and Englishmen. On the native side could be seen ploughs, harrows, and other implements of industry, but on the English side there was nothing but neglect. It could be said that on the black man’s side was civilisation, and on the white man’s barbarism ; and why ? It was drink, and nothing else. Tne English people were responsible for the destruction of the natives by drink. They had taken the Bible in one hand and the brandy bottle in the other ; where they had made two or three Christians, they had destroyed hundreds and thousands. 1 SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE TEACHi ING IN THE UNITED STATES. The United States Legislature have passed a Bill entitled * A Bill to provide for the study of the nature of alcoholic drinks and narcotics, and of their effects upon the human system in connection with the several divisions of the subject of physiology and hygiene, by the pupils in the public schools of the Territories and of the District of Columbia, and in the Military and Naval Academies and Indian and Colored schools in the Territories of the United States.’ This measure is the first professedly and exclusively temperance enactment placed upon the national statutes. To Mrs Hunt, the indefatigable Superintendent of the National W.C.T.U. Department for promoting this work, is 1 due the honor of working this measure through the legislature. All the precedents were against her. Liquor influence in at least one House of Congress seemed to be supreme. The word had gone out that legislature machinery had been arranged so that every Temperance Bill should be strangled. The brewer’s attorney at the national capital was watchful and boastful. Yet Mrs Hunt was so successful in winning friends that thelßill passed the Senate without a contrary vote.or even a word of opposition, was indorsed by the House of Representatives, with only 8 votes recorded in the negative, and was promptly signed by the President;