The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-10 00:00:00

MR. MILL UPON THE PERMISSIVE BILL.

-A. correspoimence has passed between Mr. Dawson
Burns, the secretary of the United Kingdom Alliance,
and Mr. Mill, on the Permissive Bill. Mr. Mill was
reported to have said at a recent meeting : " I am against
allowing the majority in any place to make law s regulating
the tastes and morality of the minority." Mr. Dawson
Burns writes to the hon. member for Westminster : " I
respectfully submit that, philosopher and statesman as
you are, this observation is neither statesmanlike nor
philosophic. As a general proposition, it is wanting
in that clearness for which your style is eminently
distinguished. If you mean that majorities have no
right to legislate so as to check the indulgence of the
tastes (i.e., likes and dislikes) of minorities, and so
as to affect the moral condition of the community, I
cannot see what room you leave for any species of legisla-
tion, or how the duties of a legislator can be other than
negatively defined. If this be not your meaning, I fail to
perceive any pertinency in your remark as directed
I against the Permissive Bill. I further submit that your
reply both suggests a wholly false issue, and entirely
suppresses the real issue between the friends and oppo-
nents of the bill. It suggests a false issue, for you
very well know that if the qticstion were one of mere
personal taste (as of one kind of food in preference to
another) or of private morality (as of covetousness against
benevolence), the Permissive Bill could never have been
drafted. Your reply also suppresses the real issue,
because it leaves completely out of sight the indisputable
peculiarity of the drink traffic, and its acknowledged
connection with all the evils which i'npoverish, crimi-
nalise, and degrade immense masses, and thereby impose
heavy burdens upon all classes, and seriously impede,
where they do not thwart, the most generous and active
efforts for social prosperity and well-being. lam not
aware that in your published writings you have questioned
the right of public interference with the liquor traffic for
public ends ; all that you have ever claimed being that the
right of use involves the right of purchase, and therefore
the right of sale. But this right of sale does not necessi-
tate the upholding of the licensing system as now insti-
tuted, and, short of entire prohibition, it would admit of a
reduction in the number of drinking-shops, leading to a
great abatement of prevailing evils." Mr. Burns further
complained that Mr. Mill had not received a deputation
on the subject.
To this Mr. Mill makes the following reply :—" It is
quite true that my answer to the question about the
Permissive Bill was very inadequate, but it did not
pretend to be adequate ; it was only intended to give
a general notion of the kind of objection I have to
the bill—viz., that the use or non-use of alcoholic
liquors is a subject on which every sane and grown-up
person ought to judge for himself under his own
responsibility, and that interference with that private
responsibility, from known good motives, and with however
much apparent justification, is not, in my eyes, made allow-
able by the fact of its being sanctioned by the vote of a
majority. My reason for not accepting the proposal of an
interview was merely that, each side being already well
aware of what the other has to say, it was probable
that any oral discussion would be lost time. For the same
reason I hope you will excuse me from replying to the
arguments in your letter. But I will not conclude without
saying that a much better licensing system might easily
be had than that of leaving all to the discretion of the
magistrates, and that I should not necessarily be opposed
to any proposal on the subject because it might involve `a
reduction in the number of drinking-shops.' This, of
course, does not affect my opposition to a bill for allowing
a two-thirds majority in a locality the power of prohibiting
the sale of alcoholic liquors. Allow me, at the same time,
to say that I have never expressed myself otherwise than
most respectfully concerning the intentions of those who
support the bill, and the great moral value of the end they
Vursue."

'AT ARCHBISHOP OF YORK ON MODERN
POSITIVISM.

The ArcTanstfop of York discoursed at some length on
modern positivism at Edinburgh some days back. His
concluding remarks were as follows :—" As to leaving out
God, and freedom, and duty, and immortality, from any
scheme wishing to be called philosophy, that is a thing im-
possible. The evidence for them is less clear and the research
more difficult than forthe facts of science. But though we
might prefer the clearer and simpler proof, still, if that
is unattainable, we must be content with such proof as we
have. It is better for us to know God and duty imper-
fectly than not to know them. To see God dimly through
a glass is better than to give up looking for him. We
estimate knowledge, not by its clearness, hut by the value
of its objects. The world offers just now the spectacle
humiliating to us in many ways, of millions of people
clinging to their old idolatrous religions, and refusing to
change them even for a higher form ; whilst in Christian
Europe thousands of the most cultivated class are begin-
ning to consider atheism a permissible, or even a desirable
thing. The very instincts of the savage rebuke us. But
just when we seem in danger of losing all, may come the
mom cot of awakening to the dangers of our loss. A world
where thought is a secretinl of the train.gland—where
free-will is the dream of a madman that thinks he is an
emperor, though naked and in chains—where God is
not, or at least not knowable—such is not the wstld
as we learnt it, on which great lives have been lived
out, great self-sacrifice dared, great piety and devotion
have been sent to soften the sin, the ignorance, and the
misery. It is a world from which the sun is withdrawn,
and with it all light and life. But this is not our world
as it was, nor the world of our father. To live is to think
and to will. To think is to see the chain of facts in crea-
tion, and passing along its golden links to find the hand of
God at its beginning, as we saw his handiwork in its
course. And to will is to be able to know good and evil ; and
to will aright is to submit the will entirely to a will higher
than ours. So that with God alone can we find true
knowledge and true rest, the vaunted fruits of philosophy.
Were I to advise any student of philosophy, I would
say to him that philosophy should not consent
to narrow the field of her inquiries, but that
she should learn circumspection and caution from
the past. What man can know ; what man ought
to do ; and what man is and what he may hope to be,—
these are the questions about which philosophy has
been busy from old time. Let her abandon none of
them. Philosophy is but wise and disciplined thought
upon the subjects on which all men think. Philosophy,
whilst she is teaching morals and religion, will soon come
to a point where her teaching ends ; and she will confess
that, in order to know duty, a life of duty must he lived,
and in order to know God the soul must learn to love him.
She will send her scholars to seek in revelation and prac-
tical obedience the higher culture that she can only com-
mence. But with eternity all around us, with the mystery of
lignorance and vice and misery on every hand, with the
mystery of the soul which can obey God, which is tena-
cious, beyond all things else, of its religious creed, even of
a wrong creed, and yet is so niggardly of its obedience
with the mystery of the hope of immortality, with the mys-
teries of sorrow and affection, we cannot think that sensation
ern comprehend our all. Nay, amidst all that is so awful in
our life, and so great, we look upon our complete philosopher,
sitting in his storehouse of sensations, and still discoursing
glibly of his own greatness, with a touch of kindly pity ;
as we think of the children playing in the nursery when
death is in the house. We know in part. It is far better
go. The perfect knowledge shall be kept back from us all
through this lower life, and given us only in another state,
when self-conceit shall be purged away, and with perfect
love and perfect self-submission the perfect knowledge may
be safely added. ' Now we see through a glass darkly, but
then face to face.'"

TWENTY YEARS' TELEGRAPIIING.--Tn 1848 the
whole length of telegraph wire erected in the United
States was under 13,000 miles ; in 1868 it is about 120,000

A LESSON IN TIIEOLOGY.—At Rochester, New
York, a woman named Mary Swingler has just been sen-
tenced to six months' imprisonment for cruelty to her
adopted daughter, seven years of age. The woman had
burnt the child's hands by forcibly holding them over a
cooking stove until the neighbours interfered. The
woman's reason was that the child had stolen a piece of
candy, and " she intended to give her an idea of what
hell is."

ADVANTAGE OF BEING POOR.—A poor man never
aas any taxes to pay. He can sit down and laugh the
assessors to scorn, and read off the big appropriations
made by councils with a feeling of indescribable exhilara-
tion. A poor man can enjoy life. He lives in a rented
house, and it needn't worry him any to see it abused, and
his equanimity need not be disturbed if it burns down.
A poor man can repose on the bosom of his family and
know that there is no avaricious young man prowling
around after any rich daughters. Nobody wants the poor
man to die.

TEMPERANCE MEETING AT EXETER HALL,—On
Monday evening a united demonstration of the metropo-
litan temperance organisations and societies took place at
Exeter Hall, the chair being occupied by Mr. George
Cruikshank. The building was nearly filled, the attend-
ance being chiefly composed of the working classes.
Upwards of seventy societies and benefit associations were
represented. As a commencement to the proceedings a
procession numbering about 500 or 600 persons marched to
the hall. The chairman delivered a telling address, in
which he earnestly advocated the cause of temperance.
He was followed by Mr. M'Currey, Mr. Burthom, Car.
Lain Phipps, R.N. (who spoke of the dreadful effects pro-
duced by intoxication in our army and navy), Mr.
Leicester, Mr. Grundy, Mr. Mosely, Mr. J. Groves, Mr.
Wightman, and others, all of whom denounced__ the use f
Intoxicating liquors as a gust pi SQCietY.