The tom-foolery of the permissive bill / [a Templar].

Date:
[1872?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The tom-foolery of the permissive bill / [a Templar]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Exactly so ! For the propagation and the defence of the Truth every true man, as the Saviour taught the Pharisees and Tories of Judea, came into the world; and it is ‘ astonishing ’ to the worldling to “what lengths” martyrs and missionaries, apostles, patriots, and enthusiasts, will go in “ their desire to do what they conceive to be right.” They will go to the prison, the scaffold, the battlefield, the stake—or even the Gross. Editors and moral sceptics, who regularly say their Prayers by rote, as parcel of their Conservatism, read of this in Church,—and when they come out into the world, and find self-denying men living that creed, and voting it, are just as much puzzled and astonished as their Proto¬ type of old,—-that Pontius Pilate who asked, What is truth ! and, consenting to the crime of tolerating the murder of the Innocent, vainly washed his hands of the blood, and infamy, and guilt that eternally cling to him ! Not all the Editorial washings and objur¬ gations of the supporters of the blood-stained Traffic, can ever get rid of the guilt that clings to it. The wails of orphans and the sighs of widows ; the outraged wife, the degraded husband; the raving lunatic and murderous crifhinal—furnish a dreadful testimony against the cruel Traffic, which must and will bring down upon the nation a providential judgment, as it imposes upon all concerned a moral responsibility that cannot be for ever evaded. We know that this conviction of ours is ‘astonishing’ to the Journal—but for all that, “ Cod is not mocked,” and “ whatsoever men sow, after that sort shall they also reap.’1 The Journal is quite right in assuming that the extraordinary and for ever-increasing evils of the liquor-traffic Jo, in our judg¬ ment, require extraordinary remedies; for have not a series of ordinary ones been tried for a series of centuries, and failed? Nothing but an effectual remedy will satisfy the Alliance : and the Permissive Bill ought, therefore, to be at once passed into law. If any measure short of prohibition should 'prove effectual, then the prohibitory power will not be used ; and is, therefore, unobjection¬ able ; and if an amended License System in the future fails to be satisfactory to the community, will even the Journal maintain that no effectual remedy shall be applied ? If it do, then we have the satisfaction of knowing, at least, that society will not much longer tolerate such dog-in-the-manger legislation, whether from real Tories, or Sham Liberals. The Journal “ fancies there will be some considerable opposition on the part of the Permissive Bill people, to the very moderate measure of the Government.” Yes! it is full of fancies; but the fact is, that the Alliance does very