TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 946, 18 April 1890, Page 6

TEMPERANCE.

MR. FAR JEON’S OPINION. In his ‘ Toilers in Babylon ’ Mr Farjeon writes—‘ Brewers and distillers grow fat upon vice, and go smiling through the world, conveniently blind to the fact that the richer they grow, the more overcrowded become the ranks of those wretched ones from whose midst our prisons are filled, and whose lives are a standing reproach to humanity and civilisation.’ ARCHDEACON FARRAR ON THE SITUATION. The misery and degradation of the lowest olasses will hardly be touched till it has been recognised how silly, and often how meanly selfish, is the opposition to the efforts of Temperance reformers. Until the natioa sees that it is its imperative duty to diminish, ri not to end, by strong and determined legislation, the intolerable and interminable curse of drink, to control the liquor traffic by tht most stringent conditions, to punish drunkenness as a crime, and to put down tha needlessly multiplied temptations to this worst, most fatal, and most continuous cause of ruin and brutality, nothing will be achieved. If the English people is not serious enough, or righteous enough, to defeat tho tyranny of the drink traffic, it may fold its hands and await the certain and final catastrophe. If, on the other hand, we summon np sufficient courage to sweep aside base sophistries, and to save myriads from destruction, by grappling with this master-fiend of drink, all other legislative remedies wonld very soon become effectual. . Rookeries would be rebuilt; slums wonld be swept away ; virtue would be encouraged ; the interests of vice would be harassed; it would become much easier to do good and much more difficult to do evil.