Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-09-16 00:00:00

[Continued from 15th Sepfem6or]

I may add another melaecholy illustration of the panful result of
a mother drinki ig. A deaf and dumb boy being removed to a distance
from his widowed mother, to one of those exeallent institutions a deaf
and dumb school, which, with other benevolett it stitu:ions, give a halo
to England's greatness, and shed glory roun2 her brow. After being at
the institution some time, he expressed a wish, which was conceded to
him, to see his maker. No doubt the filleted boy would look foreeard
to the meriting ue was is go with joyous antcipaton. At hat the
morning arrived ; off he starts; at every step doubtless his heart
would swell with the anticipation of his mother's embrace, and the
reciprecetion o: Kite affection. Alas how frail and uncertain are
human ho2es when resting on fallen hti vanity. At last the litt 'e
fellow comes ia sight of the abode cf her in whom his soul's affections
centred. He opens the long-looked tor door, and, lo instead of the
mother's kiss acid embrace, she was senseless drunk ; the sight was
overpowering to him, who had been instructed in the institution that
the drunkard canto', iuherit the Kiteglom of Heaven. The speechless
boy ran into a neighbour's house where he was won't to go prior to
bring removed to the ins notion, and there the pierced soul, in bleed-
ing agony, wrote upon the lithe slate he carried with hm, a
substitution for speech, the follewing dumb, but eloquent teetotal
oration—" Drunkards cannot inheric the Kingdom of Heaven;" " Ohs
my poor mother is drunk," and instantly expired. Aga'n, a y mth, 14
years of tv:e had been induce Ito steal by his drunken m' tier, that she
might obtain drink. The boy was wandering penniless and hunger,
tempted him to steel some bread, for which he was committed to pri-
son. The officer in cha-ge of him in l risen observed him reading the
Bible on funday, bat on giving him a second visit found him sus-
pended to a gas pipe, with his hammock g*rth and dead.—" Of e hom
wi 1 the blood of this child b 3 requ red, snag nnch, said the Savio sr,
PS ye did it not unto one of th 3 last of these my children ye did it not
to >le."

Drunkenness is like the mountains of Greenitnd, coil and covered
with perpetual snow—yes, druntenness blunts and blasts all the finer
feelings of human nature. It is a concentrated and masked fire which,
like a friction match on being excited, breaks into a consuming flame.
A single drop of fermented liquor has brought back to confirmed and
hopeless d nnkenness. Many a reformed (rankard who had fought
manfully with temptation until he believed he had slain his enemy.
an 1 proclaimed himself the victor.
I may aid another illustration of the evils resulting from
mothers' drinking Mr. B oughton, a magistrate of crest expe-
rience, at Worship-street Pulice, office London, in his examina-
tion before a parliamentary committee, made the following state-
ment :-" I have seen the dreadful effects when mothe.s drink.
If the fathers drink it is generally in the night time, at all
events, they must be at work in the day time ; but when mothers
drnk it is generally in the day tame, in the absence cf their
husbands ; and the children run about the streets, and if the girls are
goed-looking. they become prostitntes, and the boys thieves. I will
men•ion to the committee -this gentleman continued—a circumstance
I shall never forget, which will show the Hay the c naloc, of mothers
h 9 drink, operates. A very decent man, a mechanic, waited upon
me to ask my advice as to what he should do ;he said—l have two
daughters, the eldest not quite sixteen, and the other not fourteen
years of age; I have two boys also; my wife drnks, and ban
pledged my ounday clothes. and my tools; in 'act, ever; article she
could convey f ern the house. My tools I have had to redeem a h in-
dred times. Ihe children's clothes she has also pledged. The chil-
dren she leaves to look after themselves, consequently they run
about the streets., and I tear will become as abandoned as the mother.
What must I do? inquired the man with great earnestness. I gave
him the best advice I could, and he went away; the day but one after
he, however, came again, end addressing me on the beach, saying—
" What must I do, your worship, with the youngest girl, in his hand,
the mother of the child is drunk in bed, with drink, to obtain which
she has pledged some more of my tools; I cannot st.y at hcme to
look altar my children, i. I do th ey must starve—do inform me what
I must do."
There is another topic connected with drunl,enres., fearful and
appalli g as it is to contemplate, yet it is too momentous to pass over
unnoticed. Taking th • prostitution of Liverpool, Londcn, Bath, Hull,
and Bletol, as the b ts:s of calculation, there cannot be less than
'.'oo,ootl prostitu es in Great Britain, and this tremeadous army has to
be recruited ; and the'startling question tor each he id of a fam ly to
apply himself to is, shall my daughter, or stal any of my daughters, or
which and how many shall go to recruit that amazing and appalling
force. The prostitute's career is a very brief one. Every ten }ears
at the very furthest, terminates the present generation. A witness
before a Parliamentary committee, to enquire into the cause and
extent of crime, observed that he would call the attention of the com-
mittee to the fact, that poor wretched girls who lye by prostitution,
and are the very beat customers of gin shops, die off in about four or
five years. Four or five generations of these Trifottunate victims of
drunken. ess have passed away during the time I have occupied oue
house in London. Those who have become so notorious as to attract
attrntien, have soon become blotched and die two or three may-ba
are in the wo:khous3, where, by r •gular diet and medical attention,
their lives have been spared; but these monuments of their former
depravity are shunned by the otherwise most c rianinal of the inuees.
This witness in his evide..ce says that pr. Kitutes are the very best
customers of Gin-shots. In affirmation of that statement a brewer,
at a public dinner of the licensed victuallers of London, proposed the
following toast -" fur best friends,
.the unfertunate females o
London."

Now, amid the machinations of the devats es cf drunkenness and
• the ternptatiois they create, I ask what father c,in have tha confidence
to assert that the fair fl teen-headed girl, on whose roseate counte-
nance he loves to look and trace the ima;e of himself at the cessation
of each day's toil, as with a fondling arm en; irling his neck, and wi Is
sparkling eye, ber yet gureless and ruby lips unfold to him the his-
tory of each day's play, shall not become a recruit in that army of
blasched, brended, peace destroyed, moral blaated, and tope-bAghted
creatures to which I have been directing atten ion What mother
possesses the assurance that the little girl she new presses to her
bosom, while breeding over her future s'estinies, shall not beco-ne a
strumpet lurking in alleys, or walking the streets during the hours
the burglar setks his plunder, or the beast of the forest his prey.
Those of my readers who are parents, and still indulge in the soul-
destroying sin cf dram drinking, oh abst: in, for the sake of your chit-
den, and es; ecially for the sake of yratr claughters. To our children
the affairs of the present generation must be transferred, and by them
the nation must he continued —they are yet innocent, and it should
be our care that they ere virtuous, we ought, therefore, to remove
from them those examples that infect, end those temptations that
corrupt by the adoption of total abstieence principles. Total abstinence
is like a magnificent latdseape, reposing in life and beauty; all it says
-is goodness, love, and benevolence; it is like the apocalypstic angel in
tae sun—the only sate foothold- apart from Christ and his holy reli-
gion; fur the present and tee future I: is the only safe :sheler from
the avenging power cf alcoholic dr nks.
If, as Judge Colatidge observes, all the [criminals and prostitutes
°we their depravity to the drinking customs of that society on which
they luxuriate in rime, I appeal to the common sense of the reader,
to every feeling and sentiment which ennoble human nature, I ask is
it not the duly of parents, chri Oats, philanthropists, patriots, and
citizens of every grade and denomination. to show themselves the
friecds of the oppressed as...d degrade'', chi mpions of freedom, the li-
berators of the slaves of drue kermess, to do all in their power to sup-
press drunkenness, aid by that means superess the appalling amount
of evil I have feebly attempted to describe. Would to Cod that all
who drink the deadly poison would adopt total abstineuze priecipha,
then would they emerge like mountain crags from the mists of night
and darkness, and reflect the l'ghtgof Han who watched their birth,
and overrules their actions, and testifies that whatever else is
present God is present.

MODERATION WON'T DO. What is it? Two Iri.hmen der ribed it
as fo:'ows,-: —A medical man, who:e shoo is in the northorn le:,
was astonished at seeing a sta!wart Irishman enter, and very coolly
hand him a bottle containing liquor, saying, " Will you take a ho't of
that, if you plats's." Thi surprised doct as directed, and, han !-
lug i back, rsceived the following solution of the enigma :—" Ye see,
su-, that I have tak my affidavy that I would drink in moderation,
and just nothink barrin wat I got from a d Aher's hal ; so you see.
sat, ii gl on drink this pint a Wskey j Ist as its been in yer han,
and not brake any pledge."

c,f• An Iribh hbourer being b-ought before Mr. Yardley, of the Thames

Police Court, London, charged with helix; from whose stomach

one pint of raw rum ha 1 be ;n extracted by the doctor to save his

ire, on being askei what he had 'o say in reference to the charge or
being drank, repudiated the idea al:ogetlar, and deckred that he
°ply took drink in moderation; that he never was in the habit of

taking more than two pints at a time, aid supposed the the ale mu&

have turned sour in his stomach—so that a moderator's stomach will

tarn ram foto soar ale.

A moderator Is like the man 1i the rapl's of the Niagara, rolling
over ant ove-r, and borne along by the resin less current he seizes a

rock at the foot of a stupendous perpendicular cliff, requiring almost

superhuman agen y to rescue him f om impebding death and eternal

rain. Ti the molerator that agency is total abat'nence —drualtaz d

851ze it ; moderator lay hold on
A moderator may he compared to a blind beggar on a dangerous
road ; the beggar's dog get; away from him when skirting the edge
of a tremendous precipice and he is left to expldre the path with his
iron shod staff; on the very verge of the cliff this blind guide the tariff

srps through bis fingers and skims away down the abyss below; all

unconscious, its owner stoops to regain it, stumblesiferward and is

hurled Into destruct:on, whereas total abstinence brings the blind
drunkard by a way th3t he knew not, leads him into paths to which he
was heretofore a stranger', and to "High places of the earth, that be