A PASSIONIST ON DRINKING IN AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 23, 5 October 1894, Page 29

A PASSIONIST ON DRINKING IN AUSTRALIA.

From a two colamn report in the Lismore Morning Star of Father Hilary, the Passionist, at 8t Carthage's Church, we (Sydney Freeman') take the following : —

In travelling from place to place he came across a certain class of people who, if they had a small amount, must go on drinking until they brought themselves to the verge of death. Such people were bound under the pam of grievous sin to take the teetotal plei^e, and if they were honest to their God and their conscience they would do so. There was another class, kind-hearted, and of a social, generous disposition, who iiked to be with good friends, but had the misfortune to take too much, and from time to time get drunk. They did not get drunk through the craving for it, but through a spirit of sociability, if he might use snch an expression. Such were bound to take a partial pledge to limit themselves to a certain quantity and never go beyond it. Here was the crucial point where S3 much argument comes in. But it was no use trying to legislate extreme laws for the multitude, for it was the experience of many that extreme laws do not last. If a man limited himself to one or two glasses a day he had greater hope for him than for the man who by fits and starts breaks out, even after two or three years. He knew a man who vowed to G»d not to take more than two drinks, and he kept it. Those who take this pledge should al3o say that they would put down that reckleia and wasteful habit of "shouting." How many young Australians were ruined by it. They had come to him and told him how they had been one of a party and after one drink each had " shouted " in turns, and instead of having one drink they had perhaps 15. They did not like to be the exception, and so they went on. He thought those who kept a pub. lie-house could help the cause of intemperance in a very Bub. etantial way by not on any account giving drink to those who had enough. It was a very simple way of putting the matter, bat it meant a lot, and if such a rule was followed what ru<n and degradation they would do away with at the present day. Ha knew that there were some places where this plan was observed. If there were any Catholics, holders of licenses, listening to him that night, he would tell them unless they observed this rule they were falsa to their religion, their country, and their God. They might pray and fast, go to the sacraments, and give alms, but so long as they gave drink to thoße who came into their house drunk, then he said over their bouses should oe set the sign of the Damon of Destruction. They should not call themselves Catholics, he said they were not, if for a paltry, dirty, threepenny-bit they could give a man, already drank, a glasa of beer. They were damning hia soul or helping to do so. If on the other band they strictly adhered to the rule of honest trading they were doing more than all the preachers and all the

temperance lectures in the country. Again, the yonng should not get drink, no one under the age of 21, and they Bhould take the pledge, the teetotal pledge, for they did not want drink. How often he had been horrified to inept n clean little child bringing home a jng of hcPT, nnd sipping it as chc went along. Ha was sometimes asked what about drinking Australian wine, and had known the pledge »o be taken without including Australian wine. This may seem a strange thing, yet it is a notable fact that in wine-drinking countries— the Bhine (Germany), Bpain and France, wherever the vineyards are cultivated, that one scarcely ever met with a drunken man and never a drunken woman. He should be glad if in Australia, which was a wine-growing country, there waß nothing taken but wine, no beer, whiskey, brandy, gin or rum.