Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1874-04-01

England-a man n0tOriOuSly beyond the |
reach of any purely Christian considera-
tions-declared against the beerdrink-
ing of England on strictly sanitary
grounds. Our literateur declares that
the Englishwoman can outwa!k her
American sister. That depends entirely
upon the period of life when the task is
undertaken. The typical Englishwo
man who has stood by the beer diet until
she is more than forty years old, is too
fat to walk anywhere easily out OF doors,
or gracefully within.
During our late civil war this matter
Of drinking for health sake was thor
oughly tried. A stock of experience
and observation was acquired that
ought to have lasted for a century
Again and again, thousands and thou
sands of times, was it proved that the
man who drank nothing was the better
man. He endured more, he fought bet
ter, he came out of the war healthier
than the man who drank. Nothing is
more easily demonstrable than that the
liquor used by the two armies, among
officers and men alike, was an unmiti-
gated curse to them. 1t disturbed the
brains and vitiated the councils of the
officers, and debilitated and demoralized
the men. Yet all the time the delusion
among officers and men was that there
were both comfort and help in whisky.G
The Ielusions of drink ard number
less, but there is one of them which
stands in the way of reform so decidedly
that it calls for decided treatment. We
allude to the notion that it is nice
thing to drink nice liquors or wines at
ones home, to offer them to ones
friends, and to make them minister to
good fellowship at every social gather
ing while it is very different thing to
drink bad liquor, in bad places, and in
large quantities A man full of good
wine feels that he has right to look
with contempt upon the Irishman who is
full Of bad whisky. 1t is not long time
since the election of a professor in
British university was opposed
solely on the ground that he neither
drank wine nor offered it to his
friends; and when, by small major
ity, his election was effected, the other
professors decided not TO recognize him
socially. There are thus two men whom
these sticklers for wine despise-viz.: :
the man who gets drunk on bad liquor,
and the man who drinks no liquor at all
Indeed, they regard the latter with a
hatred or contempt which they do not
| feel for the poor drunkard. The abso.
lutte animosity with which many men in
society regard one who is constantly op-
posed to wiue-drinking, could only
spring from delusion in regard to the
real nature of their own habits. The
sensitiveness of these people on this sub
ject, however, shows that they suspect
the delusion of which they are the vic
Tins. They claim to be on the side OF
temperance. They depreciate drunken.
ness, and really don't see what is to be
done about it. They wish that men
would be more rational in their enjoy.
ment of the good things of this werld
ETC., ETC.; but their eyes seemed blind to
the fact that they stand in the way Of all
reform The horrible drunkenness oi
| the larger cities of Great Britain, with
which no hell that America holds can
compare for moment, can never be re-
formed until the drinking habits of the
English clergy and English gentry ere
reformed. With eleven-twelfths of the
British clergy wine drinkers, and water
drinkers tabooed in society, and social
drinking the fashion in all the high life
of the realm; the workman will stand by
his gin, brutality will reign in its own
| chosen centers undisturbed, and those
centers will increasingly become what,
to a frightful extent, they really are
fostering sores upon the body social,
and stenches in the nostrils OF the world.
The habits, neither of Great Britain
! nor America, will be improved until men
of influence in every walk of life are
willing TO dispense with their drinking
customs. Hundreds Of thousands Of
English speaking men 90 to a drunk
ards grave every year. There is moth
ing in sanitary considerations as they
relate to the moderate drinker, and sure
" nothing in the pleasures of the mod
crate drinker to mitigate this curse. i
is all a delnsion. Tie water drinker il
the healthy man and the happy man
Spirits, wine, beer, alcoholic beverages
of all sorts are burden and a bane
and there is no place where q good maj
can stand unshadowed by a fatal delu
sion, except upon the safe ground 0
total abstinence Until that ground i
taken, and held, by good men every
where, there can be no temperance re
form. The wine-drinkers of Englan,
and America have the whisky drinker
in their keeping. What do they propos
to do with them 2-Dr. j. G. Holland
a, Cc,.;b,ey,' . fog. Horcb