"Drunken Liverpool."

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXI, Issue 6695, 22 September 1896, Page 1

"Drunken Liverpool."

At Pembroke Chapel, Liverpool, on a recent Sunday night, the Rev. 0. F. Aked preached a remarkable sermon from the words, " Hell hath enlarged her desire, and opened her mouth without measure," (Isaiah v., 14.) The publican who sold the liquor to a drunken man was *a criminal, and ought to be prosecuted again and again. If one method failed, another must be tried, and the shame of failure must be made to resb upon the parties to whom it properly belonged. The man who encouraged drunkenness to the extent which doctors' and nurses' and missionaries' tales represented, the man who, for the sake of gain, helped men to drink themselves into that state whioh assault statistics and hospital figures and assize trials set forth, ought to be hunted down and trapped like a beast of prey, and rendered harmless by measures as strong as ever the case demanded. Mercy to such loathsome creatures was mere poltroonery. Mercy to a tiger, crouching to make its spring upon a child and mercy to a publican deliberately selling drink to men until they go out to tarn our Liverpool streets into a reeking hell, was dastardly incompetence. Whatever might be the difficulties in the way of getting evidence and securing conviction?,, the community ought nob to rest content without makme a more determined effort to stop the accumulation of gold by the devilish process of dehumanising men already reduced to the level of African savagery. What an infernal thing (Mr Aked concluded) this liquor traffic is 1 God, what devilry it has let loose upon our Liverpool homes and our Liverpool streets And there are fools who to municipalise it, and people who are nob fools want to help them. The liquor traffic is such a thing that there are no gloves thick enough to enable yon to touch it without getting your hands filthy. And think yourself lucky, too, if you do not get them bloody. We ought to have power to protect ourselves against this immoral trade and onr city against its ravages. We ought to have in our hands a means whereby we can clear out the hideous thing as soon as we have the mind and heart to do it. No Legislature has a right to force upon an unwilling people a trade which lives by the means of death. It is an outrage that I should be taxed to maintain the swollen tyranny of the drink trade —and taxed I am by police rates and poor rates, and innumerable calls upon my private charity. Ib is an outrage that our brothers and sisters and the coming generations should be exposed to the temptations, the dangers, the horrors that these facts and figures represent for the benefib of the selfish few whose hands are red with tho blood of outrage and crime. It is a revival of passion that we want—a passion of pity for the weak, of love for the victim, of hate towards the system and the traffio which have enlarged the appetite of hell.