TEMPERANCE BUDGET.

Otago Witness, Issue 1894, 22 May 1890, Page 31

TEMPERANCE BUDGET.

[Published Under Arrangement With the New Zealand Temperance Alliance.] The quiet toleration of what we know to be immoral will undermine our own principles and relax our own moral tone. "The prohibition-cursed State of Iowa" is the way the Brewers' Journal puts it. The United States Monthly says : "To wreck a train is a crime, but to wreck a human soul is a privilege that the State sells." Temperance teaching in the State schools of Victoria has been made compulsory. A significant sign of progress. The lowa Farmers' Alliance, at its last annual meeting, passed strong resolutions against the repeal of the prohibitory laws. lowajhas entirely paid off her State debt, and the taxes are to be reduced one-fourth. New Zealand Farmers' Alliance want distilleries \ reintroduced. Are they wise ? The Danger of Fermented Liquors. — Albert Day, M.D., Superintendent of Washingtonian Home at Boston : " I have treated nearly 7000 cases of inebriety, and eighttenths of that number originated from wine and malt liquors." The Archbishop of Canterbury states that the evidence seems to be irresistible that in most country places in the United States the system of prohibition realised its object. I Dr Peck has stated that a caravan of 82 orossed the great African desert from Algeria to Timbuctoo ; 67 drank liquors and wines to ward off disease. Arriving at Timbuctoo, all were taken sick ; 66 of the 67 died, while every one of the 15 total abstainers survived. The chief railroad inspector of lowa reports : " There is not on this line one barrel of whisky now carried where theie was a cartload, and not one keg of beer where there was a train-load, four years ago." The Hon. James Blame in September 1888, speaking at Farmington, Maine, said:' " Maine, for the last 37 years, has been under a prohibitory law. I think that the State has derived great advantage from it. I think that the State is far richer and far better because of that law than it would have been without it." Dr Wright, one of the officials of the London Temperance Hospital, estimates that nearly or quite 4000 churches in Great Britain, including all the various denominations, are now using unfermented wine for sacramental purposes. Among these is to be counted Mr Spurgeon's great Tabernacle and its associated missions, with upwards of 4000 communicants. The British Medical Journal (November 2) says that "in the United States 25 State Legislatures, besides the National Government, have made scientific temperance a compulsory school study in their respective States and territories. This area includes more than two-thirds of the entire population. Thus some 12,000,000 children are, by law, taught the nature and effects of alcoholic and other intoxicating beverages. The National and States Governments have also adopted graded series of temperance text books issued by leading publishers. In both North and South Dakota Prohibition becomes a part of State constitutional law. The manufacture as well as the sale of alcoholic liquors for beverage purposes is prohibited. The Dakotas, therefore, take rank with Maine and Kansas, the other constitutional Prohibition States of the nation. It is significant that the initiative for Prohibition was not taken by the Republican party, nor" by the Temperance party, but by the Farmers' Alliance, which contributed 20,000 votes to the fight. There is encouragement to us here. The day may come when, moved by public opinion, others than the Temperance party may demand redress from Parliament for the wrong inflicted by the drink traffic. The moral spectacle such a movement would present would far transcend the grandest national movement of the present century. Dakota's Farmers' Alliance has earned for itself the loud acclaim of every well-wisher of his country. Colonel Lehmanousky, who had been 23 years in the army of Napoleon, said at a temperance meeting: — "You see before you a man 70 years old. I have fought 200 battles, have 14 wounds on my body, have lived 30 days on horseflesh, with the bark of trees for my bread, and snow and ice for my drink,

the oanopy of heaven for my covering, without stockings or shoes on rry feet, and only a few rags for clothing. In the desert of Egypt I have marched for days with a burning sun upon my head, feet blistered with a scorching sun, and mouth filled with dust, and with a thirst so tormenting that I opened a vein in my own arm and sucked my blood. Do you ask how I survived all these horrors 1 I answer that under the providence of God I owe my preservation to this fact — I never drank a drop of spirituous liquor in my life."