Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    •with our teachers, and give them the knowledge they need on thu great and important subject. I am looking at the clock rather anxiously, and so must hurry on for I do 'not want, like Dr. French, to lose my second and third parts. (Laughter.) Another thing this hook wdl help to do ; it will help to do away with some of those delusions which are'so common amongst people, and which have been referred to from the chair. I happen to sit on the Birmingham Bench, and I recollect not long ago speaking to an old man who was taken up for drunkenness, and I said to him, “ It would have been better for you if you had had water.” It was a very innocent remark to come from the bench, but it was sneered at in one of the journals of our town, and the refrain was taken up by a good many of our working men, and many were the sly hints I heani. “ Ah ! he wouldu’t let us have our half-pint, if he could. W ater is better, is it? No water for me.” We want to get rid of the delusions that our people have got into them. (Cheers.) A man was before me yesterday for leaving his horse and cart unattended in the street, and having his dinner. At this meal he boasted of having had a pint of ale. He said, “ You’ll be sure to approve of that,” and his only regret was that he didn’t have a second pint of ale at his dinner. That is one of the delusions as taught by our teachers in the past ; but this book will be of use in dis- pelling it. It is not only the carters and the working population that are subject to this delusion, but even the House of Commons. (Cheers.) What a lot of talk there has been there about adultera- tion ! They have said, that if you only get pure malt and hops, and unadulterated brandy and gin, then you would have a drink that would be harmless. I need not tell anyone here that they distil the rankest poison from the purest malt and liops that were ever grown. That is one of the delusions that this book will help to get rid of. I am glad, therefore, that this book has been published, and on another ground also—viz., that this society has begun (and I hope this is not to be the sole product of its labours, for I am going to stimulate them to do more) to take the scientific question up first. There are irrefutable grounds to show that the health and well- being of the body, its vigour, its life, and its longevity—every- thing that contributes to the well-being and to the purity and health of our frame, depends largely upon our abstinence ; and this book, of all books that I have seen, points it out in the clearest and most indisputable manner. We want other school-books on the question. This is not suffi- cient as a reading-book. We want something more. You must go on to the money part of it, and let us have a manual of that kind. If Dr. Bichardson will not do that, Mr. Hoyle can. We can then deal with the question personally and nationally. And then let us have a third book, going into the moral and social