The New Bloomfield, Pa. times. (New Bloomfield, Pa.) 1877-188?, 1880-03-30
SUNDAY READING,
Enuland's National Vice.
by THE REV. CANON FAnnAn.


nation and, so far from trying to check
this besetting sin, we encourage, we rem
der attractive, we protect, we indefinite
~ multiply, we thrust at every step be-
fore those whom il Is most likely to de-
stroy, innumerable temptations to 1t
and this we do, and continue to do,
though we know that so difficult is 1t
for the poor, even when they wish to
keep aloof from 1t so subtle, SO rapid,
fatal, enslaving, is the horrible fascina-
ton of 1t, that a man often becomes q
drunkard almost before he sees the aw-
fulness of his peril and when once he
is drunkard, most often he Is hurried
all downhill with fatal rapidity into in
durable ruin of body, mind and soul.
Can we then wonder that, more and
more, by common confession, confess
sion, alas how humiliating, of fact
how notorious, the national vice of
Great Britain Is drunkenness ? Not one
day passes without our witnessing its
terrible ravages. To the ruin it engen-
ders, all alike bear witness. From the
army, from the navy, from the police,
from guardians of the poor, from manu-
facturers, from merchants, from trades
men, from all large employers of labor,
from physicians, from judges, from the
clergy of every denomination, and most
often and most bitterly from the work.
ingmen themselves, come pouring in the
accumulated testimonies = emphatic,
heart-rending, unmistakable, reiterated
to the deadliness of this degrading sin.
Do you who are rich and respectable
you who, shut up in your stately houses
or quiet homes, know nothing of this,
and therefore, nursing in some delicious
stiffness your dainty loves and slothful
sympathies, hear it with Indifference or
impatience? If you would know what
drunkenness Is, If you would learn what
cause there is to lift up the voice respect
ing it, leave your ease; do not be afraid
for once to sicken your sensiblities do
not be afraid to. soil your robes. See
women, or what had once been those
gracious beings, shrieking, fighting,
blaspheming, pawning the very shawls
off their backs, and the very bed on
which their children lie. Watch the
poor, ragged, emaciated drunkard-lost
to health, lost to respectability, lost to
reeling from the counter where
he has over and over again shamefully
squandered what might have kept him
self and his family in comfort and inde-
pendence. Follow him, at least in i'm
agination, to the chronic and squalid
misery of that bare, foul room, which
might have been home. See his
children fly from him terror-stricken,
and huddled away out of sight in the
corner, in the street, anywhere. See his
wife-but the picture, though infinitely
less than the reality, is too horrible; and
| you may see this almost anywhere; you
may see it almost any day; and when
| you have seen it you will know at last
why the hearts of thousands sink with
| in them as they contemplate this stand
ing shame, this clinging curse, this eat
ing canker of our prosperity and of our
life. These are its infamous results
parent of evil. Who will venture to de-
ny one of these awful indictments with
which here arraign itp Unnecessary
as it is, except possibly in rarest cases of
illness, being neither food nor source
of strength, it wastes our resources it
saps our national strength; it empties
our churches it illustrates our schools;
1t fills our prisons; it crowds the wards
of our hospitals; it peoples the cells of
our asylums; 1t swells the tables of our
mortality; it degrades many of our
rich it brutalises multitudes of our
poor. Now, all this being SO, what
will you do ? Oh, do believe that there
are thousands of good men and good
women who, If they knew about this
subject all they might know, not look
on coldly and indifferently while others
struggle. They would not think the
druDkard fit subject for smile or a
jest. They would not oppose any legis-
lative endeavour to diminish for the
working man his worst and fatalest Sc
duction. They would not meet the ar
guments of temperance by those feeble
supersutlons anu eApioueu lashlohs VI
Scriptural reasoning which have been
used ere now to kindle the fagot of the
inquisitor, and rivet, the fetters of the
slave. They would not supply to the
cause of intemperanee the shallow
sophism or the ensnaring epigram.
But what they will do would be to join
hand-in- hand in holy crusade against
this curse of nations this worst STUN
blingblock on the path of moral, intel