TEMPERANCE BUDGET.

Otago Witness, Issue 1897, 12 June 1890, Page 31

TEMPERANCE BUDGET.

[Published under Arrangement with the New Zealand Temperance Alliance.] ' Mr Herbert Gladstone speaking at Chester said he would frankly admit that the Temperance party had it in their power to wreck the Liberal party if they thought that they would benefit by doing so. The lowa House of Representatives has rejected the proposal to sanction the establishment of a certain number of public houses in the State with a very high license duty, and has decided to retain prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquors, The following is from a South American Journal : - " Any man that will stick to his dear old party while 80,000 persons are gcing into a drunkard's grave each year is a man that will stick to his dear old coffin when Gabriel blows his trumpet on the resurrection morn." A Home paper says the Reobabites Friendly Society of Total Abstainers had an annual death rate per thousand, of persons aged 25, of 3 722, as compared with one of 7 370 members of the Order of Foresters ; at the age of 35 they had 4 "337 as compared with 10130; at tho age of 45 they had 6*272 as compared with 15-110. Hereditary. — In a leading article in the Times we read :—": — " That certain criminals have generally certain physical and mental characteristics ; that there is a hereditary predisposition to certain offenoas is manifest. A multitude of familiar facts prove it. There io, for example, the well-attested history of the progeny of a drunkard ; 200 thieves and murderers, and 288 paupers and prostitutes traced their lineage to him A petition, signed by over 5000 persons in different parts of the colony, praying that scientific instruction with regard to alcohol may be introduced into the public schools of Quensland, has been presented by the Christian Temperance Union to the Minister of Education Early this year. The Minister has granted the request, and is arranging for the introduction of Dr Riohardson's " Temperance Lesson Book," which was one of the mauuals which the recent intercolonial education conference rejected as extreme. Mr George Steadman, aged 43, is the champion wrestler of the world. George met an irrepressible interviewer the other day, who measured him and found him 47in round the cheat, sft 10% in in height, and ISst 31b in weight. "Good weight that," said the in terviewer. " Yes, but if I was put to it I could take a stone off," said George almost solemnly. " But you see, I have taken to innkeeping, and although I am of temperance drinkers the strictest, and never walk lees than six miles a day, an inn- keeper's life is not conducive to make one lean." Mr Simmons, governor of Canterbury prison, is authority for the following : — " The number of prisoners who have been committed to the prison with which I have been connected during the last 10 years amounts to 22,000. Among them I have come in contact with ministers of the Gospel, numbers of perBonß who were once members of Christian churches, as also children of pious parents ; but 1 never met with a prisoner who was a teetotaller. From the experience I have had I calculate that from 90 to 100 per cent, of all crimes are committed through taking intoxicating drinks, in a direct or indirect manner." PBOHIBITION : HOW IT WOBKS IN KANSAS. Governor Martin, who has retired from the governorship of Kansas, after serving two terms, and who at first was against constitutional Prohibition, said in his parting address, January 1889 — "Fully nine tentha of the drinking and drunkenness prevalent in Kansas eight years ago has been abolished. In the oapital district, containing nearly 60,000, not a single oriminal case was on the docket when the present term began. The business of the police courts of our larger cities has dwindled to one-fourth of its former proportions, while in cities of the second and third class the occupation of police authorities is practically gone. These suggestive and convincing facts appeal alike to the reason and conscience of the people. They have reconciled those who doubted the sucoess, and silenced those who opposed the policy of prohibiting the liquor traffic " The present Governor, Hon. L. U. Humphrey, upon taking his seat, sent a message to the Legislature, in which he bore glowing testimony to the sucoesa of the prohibitory law. In it he said : — "As an issue in Kansas politics, resubmission of constitutional Prohibition is as dead as slavery. The saloon has been out-lawed and made a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth—or that part of it within the territorial limits of Kansas." THE PUZZLED GENTLEMAN FROM JAPAN. A iistinguished Japanese official visited New York recently, and a member of the municipal government, who had been in Japan and can speak the language of that country, undertook to Bhow him around. "Is that an officer making an arreßt?" asked the Japanese, as he saw a man stop a milk waggon, " Not exactly," replied the offioial. "He is a milk inspector, and bis duty iB, under the law, to sea that no impure milk is sold in the city. If the milk is all right he will let the milkman pass on ; otherwise he will arrest him." " What is impure milk ? "— " Milk that has been mixed with chalk or water." "Is the chalk a poison ?"—" Oh, no, it impairs the quality, that's all." 11 Does water in milk make anybody sick ? " — "Why, of course not. But when a person pays for milk he wants milk, not water, which he can get for little or nothing when he desires it. It is a swindle on the public to put water in the milk." " But you say no one ia hurt by it ?"— «• Feelings are hurt, that's all," Soon after they passed a low corner saloon, when the door opened and a man who came staggering out, tripped, Btruck his head against a lamp post, and fell heavily on the side walk, where he lay as one dead. "What is the matter with that man?" aaked the foreigner from Japan — " Full of benzine,' replied the municipal officer with a glance of disgust. " Benzine ? What's that ? "— " It is the name we have in this country for poor liquor — poiaon whisky, you understand ? " 11 Is there any good whißky ? "—"" — " Oh, yes ; there is good whisky, but some saloons can make more money selling bad whisky." "Bad whiwky is poison ? "—Deadly poison sometimes." " Has a man a license to sell whisky same as tha milkman has to sell milk?" — "Of course, or he couldn't carry on business:" " And do you inspect the whisky as you do the milk ?"—"? "— " Never." " Yet there may be poison in it, while milk is adulterated with chalk or water that does no harm in particular, you say." "Ahem," said the city official, twisting about uneasily, " let us look at the markets." At the markets they found officials inspecting the meat that was on Bale. " What do they do that for ? " aßked the Japanese,—" To Bee that the meat ia healthy," was the reply,

'• If a man should eat a pieoe of unhealthy meat would h9 stumble on the side walk and split his bead open against a lamp post, aa the man did coming oue of the saloon ? Would the watered milk make him do it?"—" Why, certainly not." "Yet you inspect meat and milk, and let men sell poisoned whisky that kills people, as much as they please. I can't understand your country." And we ask, who can ?— Texas Sittings.