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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    would we could stop the entail, but the truth is that perhaps the ouly manufacture of importance we have in the district is the manufacture of beer—the only thing that gives employment to the poor agriculturist, with very few exceptions. That gives it a strong hold upon the people there. If a man wants better wages than those offered to the agricultural labourer, the only person he can go to is the brewer. These are all matters of considerable interest and importance, and I think we should teach our youths something about them. Here, my lord, I venture to make a suggestion, and I hope it will be taken in good part, but I do think it would be a graceful proceeding and a bit of poetical justice if the great manufacturers and purveyors of beverages which contain alcohol would come forwardandprovidethemeansfor giving this teaching. (Laughter.) Their customers want to know how to use the drinks which they manufacture and sell. (Laughter.) It is very important that they should do so; and I know that many of those gentlemen who are most benevolent and kind-hearted, most unwilling to do injury to their fellow-creatures, might probably come forward and assist us, and I should suggest the forming of prizes or a scholar- ship, which would elicit opinions and foster study on this impor- tant subject. I commend the suggestion very respectfully to their favourable attention. (Laughter.) Of course we do not want at a meeting of this kind to assume a tone of dictation as to modes of procedure : what we want is to fairly urge upon the country the necessity and importance of eucouraging temperance teaching in public elementary schools. I want to express a hope that temperance teaching will not be con- fined to public elementary schools ; that if it begins with them it won’t end there, and that it will find a place in schools of a higher grade—(cheers)—until its importance is recognised there, and then we may really try with some effect to wake up the educated and influential classes of this country to look into this question, as many of them are looking into it, in a way they never did before, so as to get to understood the principles which underlie the whole subject. Temperance reformers have done something—nay, we may thankfully say they have done much—though they have ouly after all scratched the cuticle of the matter, and not gone so deeply as they want to go into the heart and brain of the country. Hence we have to make the public feel what is the real value and import- ance of this subject which we are commending to their notice. One effect of sound education is to banish superstition, and especially pernicious superstition, and if there is one superstition that is more deeply rooted than another in this country, it is that these drinks are harmless and necessary, necessary for people in health —I won’t presume to say anything about people who are not in health. But this is really the most wretched superstition that