The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-04-05 00:00:00

THE CHURCH CRUSADE AGAINST
INTEMPERANCE.

Sir Henry llomperm h4e w4ires.tl the following letter to
the Archbishop of Canterbury :

"I have loug had the conviction that there is no
greater cause of evil, moral and physical, in this
country than the use of alcholic beverages. I do nit
mean by this that extreme indulgence which produces
drunkennees The habitual use of fermented liquors
to an extent far short of what is necessary to eroduee
that condition, and such as iii quitecommon in all racks
of society, injures the body and diminishes the mental
power to an extent which I think few people are aware
of. Such, at all events, is the result of observation dur.
ing more than 20 years of professional life devoted to
hospital practice, and to private practice in every rank
above it. Thus, I have no hesitation in attributing a
very large prop irtion of some of the most painful and
dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as
well as those which every medical man has to treat,
to the ordinary and daily use of fermented drink taken
In the quautity whiela is conventionally deemed
noiderate. Whatever may be said in regard to its evil
influence on the mental and moral faculties, as to the
fact above stated I feel that I have a right to speak
with authority ; and I do so solely because it appears to
me a duty, especially at this moment, not to lie
silent on a matter of such extreme importance. I
know full well how unpalatable is such truth, and
how ouch a declaration brings use into painful conflict,
I had almost said with the national sentiments and
the time-honoured and prescriptive usages of our race.
Cherishing such convictions, I rejoice to observean en.
ileavoor to organise In a large scale in the national
Church a special and eystematio plan for promoting
temperance, and I cannot but iegard this as an event
of the highest eignificance. I believe that no associa-
tion in this country has means to influence society iu a
favourable direction at all comparable to that existing
in the English Church, and the example mil teaching
of its clergy may do more than any of the other &SAO-
Mations which have long laboured with the same ob-
ject to diminish the national ignorance on this subject,
and the consequent national vice. My main object in
to express my opinion sea professional man in relation
to the habitual employment of fermented liquor as a
beverage. hut if I ventured one step further it would
be t i express a belief that there is no single habit in
this country which so mullt tends to deteriorate the
qualities if the race, and so much disqualifies it for en-
durance in that competition which in the nature of
things moot exist, and in which struggle the prize of
superiority must fall to the best and to the strongest.
Noticing the above letter, "Only a Mother" writes the fol-
lowing to the Pali Mall Gazette
Sir,—Allow me, no teetotaller, but one of those who,
while approving of stimulants as an occasional
medicine, wholly disapprove of them SR a drink, to add
my little, word to the weighty words of Sir Henry
Thompson which appeared in the newspapers a few
days ago; especially with regard to my own vex and
my own reek in life. I sin the middle-age "louse-
mother 'of a tolerable largo household —matron and
mother, braimworker besides, having written books
for a quarter of a century. I have a wide social elide,
and, I hope, a not nano* influence in my pariah and
neighbourhood. My creed from my youth has been
that water is the beet and only drink, and that
alcohol, as a role, is not necrssary to either man,
woman, or child, except as a medicine, and then only
in very limited quantities, to be discontinued, like
medicine, as soon as the need for it is ended. 'I he
experience of a not over easy life has confirmed this.
But see how different is my obeervation. I go out to
hue heon after probably two heir, of domestic avoca-
tions and three hours of brain work, feeling tired err-
tainly, but I take my food ant a glass of water, and
revive. Other ladies also "feel tired "—but they think
nothing will restore them huts glaze of sherry. Others,
not tired at all, take it just as a matter of course,
even as, five hours after, they take the hock, claret,
or champagne with which the three elegem' beside
then, are filled, sometimes refilled, by attentive ser-
vants. If intermediately I meet my friends at a
garden party, or afterwards at a ball, be sure
they will once or twice have tasted the claret-cup
or nee, or something even stronger, being still
" tired. ' If they will count—which they never
do—they will find that lon an average they take
at least three glasses of some sort of wine in
the course of the day. Is this necessary? During not
much leis than fifty years I have never found it go.
Again, I visit a young musing mother, who tells me
she is obliged to take, for the sake of the baby, half
a pint of stout three times a day. To her second,
eighteen months old, she is administering half a tea-
spoonful of brandy in his food. "Oh, he takee it
regalarlx. by the doctor's order." Her eldest, a girl of
five, quaffs at dinner the daily half-glass of port wine
with considerable relieh. "My children require it."
sighs the mother ; "they are its delicete ?" No
wonder. My third friend, a chileless invalid, enlarges
,u the great cJnifiii t she has in her glaos of champagne
'at lunch, her eleven o'clock egg and sherry, or ler
tiny dose if port wine whenever she feels ex-
hausted. "I don't eat. so I most drink." she Says; "I
should be dead if I didn't." And when I see thin
excited look, the miserable false energy only kept sip
by such means, I am inclined to say, moinnfully,
" Better be dead." The fourth Melee I enter is one
where--moat exceptional fact, even liming women—
the watersbottles are emptied at Ohio and the ile-
canters left full. But the family is in tribulation sad
terror, owing to the threats of a cook who, having made
' too free with the kitchen heer-barrel, has seized a car.

_
Aug knife and proposed to kill the paour-maid, who
suggested she had better go to bed. 'I don't know
how it is," sighs the mistress ; "but so many women
servants get drunk now-asdave." I tell her my simple
story, that for twenty years I have never allowed beer
in my kitchen, or reckoned beer money in nay servants'
wages. They must either accept the alternative and
drink water—as I do—or give up my place. They
have never given up the place, and ours Is still one of
the very few lmuses where there is no trouble with
servan.s. tut when I suggested these facts she kook
her head. She had not coura,e to commence such a
reform.

--
Xet, if reform does commence, it must be from the
upper and not the lower ranks—alse, I firmly believe,
with women rather than with men. Let every mother
and inietress refuse strong drink herself, and keep it
from those whose welfare she has to her hands—her
children and her servants—and the leaven will soon
diffuse itself far and wide. To preach usefully one
must practise. Nor is it so very difficult. There is
more strength, even for poor tired women—and we
(Atm Liv very tired, we mothers of families—more real
strength bu S bit of hit ot2brown Nadal MIA *wit I
'milk, or even a glass of water, than in half a pint of
sherry. And, oh, if every young mother did but believe,
in spite of doctors and nurses, that stimulants are
not neeeseary to herself or her babe, what a difference
It would. Mike im the 'health hi the next gEnera- •
tion ; and how it might nullify a frightful fact, which
everybody knows, and nobody speaks of, that among
the middle and upper chmsee there are many confirmed
drunkards, become such simply because' as mothers of
large families, they got into the habit of comforting
themselves in their physical weakness and mental cares
by taking " just a little moie than was good for them."
or the children—dosed with wine or brandy from baby-
hood by the doctor's order—God help them ! Their
parents might as well have fed them upon poison. Be-
sides creating a perpetual want, it neutralizes the
ben, fit that stimulants often are, used medicinally and
cautiously, and laid aside, like medicine, as soon as
the need ceases, When I look at my own Might,
healthy, merry child, who knows not the taste of either
wine or physic. I long to say' to every mother, "Defy
doctors, old women, and all the world. Bring up your
children as Nazarites till they are old enough'to refuse
the evil and choose the good." Any one who has ever
known the wholesome cheerfulness and healthy
strength of mind and body produced by a constitution
which has always been kept pure from alcohol, and
which, even if delcatp, is sound, end owes nothing to
the factitious stimulant of any spirituous liquors—
any one, I say, who from youth upwards has known
the blesisiug of a life like this, will never be in doubt
which to choose.
. . _ . . . .

Pardon this letter, Sir. I give you my name, but to
the public it matters not. lam neither a man nor a
philosopher, but ONLY A MOTHER.
March 20.