The Star. THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1889. Demon Drink: Miss Ackerman.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6541, 9 May 1889, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, MAY 9, 1889. Demon Drink : Miss Ackerman.

As we have said in these columns many a time already, the way. to strangle the demon of strong drink is by educating public opinion. But the education must be circumspect. By educating is not meant exaggeration, flat statement that is j not absolutely true, and wild denunciation. It is by such conduct that too many wouldbe reformers have done the cause of temperance most serious harm. It is tie fierce deliveries of such lecturers — Sir William Fox is one of them — that turn the popular mind into a wrong groove, and make people call temperance and total abstinence fanaticism, and those who preach them fanatics. Nothing in the world can do a good cause niora harm than to be able to fling the sneering taunt " fanaticism I" against it, with some show of justice. Lat the eloquent Miss Acker man remember this. It is a little lesson in human nature which, to judge from her words last night, she has not yet fully learned. For instance, every Christian man docs not believe in the iniquity of the traffic in strong drink. To state such a thing is so monstrously to overstate as to discredit the value of every succeeding statement from the same mouth. There are thousands of good, sensible, Godfearing people in this provincial district of Canterbury who simply smile at such a ttatement. Letitbeieiuemborc-d, too, that while they smile a tithe of their trust in the lecturer is fading, and a tithe of their

ympatby with her cause evaporates. She Us lost ground. No preacher in bo great aid holy a cause can afford to lose euoh grmnd. . r Jhe vast majority of the population Bee no harm in the moderate use of Btroig drink. To them it has no temptations, and their experience of years is that it britgs them pleasure without ill effects # It ia felly, therefore, to say to such people that every Christian man believes that the traffic in strong drink is wrong. They will not believe in the statement, and tbey will not believe in the person who makes it— a far more important matter. Tiust'in the preacher of a cru6ade iB the touchstone of success Miss Ackerman<musY discriminate. It is not the traffic in etrong drink that doeß the mischief ; it is tae abuse of strong drink itself. Miss Aekerman can show vividly enough (for she bas a splendid command of language and rare oratorical . powers) the hideous ruin that the abuse of strong drink brings on individuals, on families, on whole communities. Let her acknowledge the stern facts which the experience of her own country and Canada should have taugh'o her, to wit, that man — the majority of mankind, that is — will have strong drink in some form, Maine liquor laws, prohibition and Scott Acts notwithstanding. Humaifi^H nature will be served. Repress, prohibit^^B legally bully, and you get rebellion atu^H conf usion worse confounded, in' this as inj^H all other matters. No; teach strong^H human nature to serve itself in moderation^! and with sense ;j teach weak human nature J^ that strong drink, in its miserable case, is ' raging, and wine a mocker, and is better left alone. Persuade, reason, educate, convince, but do not dogmatise, overstate and leave common sense, experience and human nature clean out of eight. -