THE USE OF WINE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 1055, 26 May 1910, Page 22

THE USE OF WINE.

“AN ELEMENT OF COMMERCE.”

In proposing the toast of the trade at a gathering at Sydney of the U.L. V. A, of New South Wales, Aiderman R. IX. Meagher, N;L.A. sail “I find the use of wine as far back as the second father of mankind, the Patriarch Noah, who at one period of his life must have had a surfeit of cold water. Wine was a great element of commerce—though there seems~a~*cdnflict of opinion as to what was on the manifest of the trader John Williams. It is clear from the Book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament that the ancient Phoenicians carried it as cargo in their argosies that sailed the Mediterranean. The Phoenician that traded in the '‘cursed stuff” was the maritime power that ruled the; waves: of the then known world thousands of years ago,. as Great Britain still using the “cursed stuff” rule s the waves to-day. The Great Founder of Christianity took as the basis of one of his greatest miracles—-the changing of water into wine—not into ginger beer. In the buried cities of antiquity we find artistic utensils of your ancient and honorable calling. Under the sands of the Libyan 'desert —the scientists of today, discover the ruing of an ancient civilization, goblets, flagons, tankards, and demijohns are the silent witnesses that speak to us from the vista of the past of a highly cultured people, who enjoyed life and in their tongue sang “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and “Auld Lang Syne” 5000 years ago. Who can be a student of literature and not observe what a prominent place in the works of great writers of all tongues—inns and innkeepers occupy —in ancient, medieaval, feudal and modern times? In olden times, before the inventing of printing, inns were storehouses of knowledge—where village gossip congregated and information was sought as to the movements governing the destinies of men—parochial or national. Here travellers from'distant parts of the known earth met and interchanged ideas, here the big book of human experience was opened, and I Will admit gome of its pages—moistened by the flowing bowl which made the heart beat quicker,

opened the springs of friendship and poured out fountains of wit and humour and kindly feeling to fellow menYour trade has administered to the comforts and welfare of millions of the human family in the past. It is doing so in the present. It will, in spite of all fanatics, do so in the future —until the Heavens roll up as a scroll, and Time shall be no more. Your opponents attack you because drink has been taken to excess, but does that tarnish the moderate use of what all-wise Providence has placed upon earth for the enjoyment of healthyminded men and women. Everything in this world can be abused. Religion, that great moral force which lifts men’s minds from mundane things beyond the starry canopy of the Heavens, itself has been abused. Because men who never touch a drop of alcohol have tortured and killed their fellow men for the honour and glory of God; because men who never touched drink have in various ages invented instruments of torture, built dungeons, forged chains that rusted in human flesh—piled fagots round the feet and burnt some of the noblest spirits who walked the earth. Am I going to say religion is a failure? On account of these excesses, which are on record in the bloodstained pages of history, I am not going to say religion is an evil? But I do say the excesses of alcohol in all ages pale into insignificance besides the crimes, the tortures, the miseries and tears brought to the human family by excesses in “religion”—Fair Play.