Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-06-17
w, G, T. u. COLUMN.
VERMONT VS.. ENGLAND.

A. G. Austin in Burlington Free Press
writes as follows:
81 have been greatly interested in
the discussion arising out of the form
alton of the Vermont Local Option
League and the letters of the Protes-
tant Episcopal and Roman Cath Ollie
bishops addressed to the promoters
of it.
To say that was surprised at the at
titude of the bishops, is stating it
mildly. Yet when we consider the
condition under which one of these
bishops grew up it will occasion no
surprise. 1t rather calls for sympathy.
When Bishop Hall was a boy in
England (and the conditions were un-
changed when he Left, it was almost
universally believed, except by total
abstainers, that Intoxicating drink
was liquid strength. Beer, containing
five per cent. of alcohol, was placed
beside every plate at lunch, dinner
and supper, with wine and spirits fol-
lowing, on the table of those who
could afford it, with the result that to
be ''drunk as a lord'' had long been
proverbial as applied to person very
drunk.
[ am surprised that a Christian
bishop, who has spent more than
thirty years of his life in rum cursed
England, and quite a few years in
Il, !, III
closing no opportunity Of insisting
upon the folly and mischief ofthe pro-
hibitory law" and promising to be
ready to do anything he can to over
throw it. I am the more surprised
because, as a resident of Oxford dur
ing the time that Bishop Hail was a
member of Oxford University, know
some of the opportunities he must
have had of witnessing the blasting
effects of the common sale of liquor
under license among all classes in one
of the richest and best governed cities
in England. Gould he walk the streets
of Oxford and not witness the work
of license in the staggering gait Of
engage in any sort of parish work, as
a clergyman, that took him to tn
homes of the people, and not have
revealed to him many family skel-
eton that would never have taken
shape there but for those licensed and
gaping vestibules OF hell? Was the
almost everywhere present poverty
and squalor in the homes of the beer
drinking wage Garner continually
projected on his vision and no
thought ever given by him as to the
cause of it all? Is it possible that,
while connected with the CoWley
Fathers and in daily sight of the city's
immense poorhouse, he was unable to
see the intimate relation of the city's
24O licensed drink shops to it?
Has the bishop in any Vermont city
seen a poorhouse containing one fifth
as many paupers as may be found in
any license city of like size in England,
where restriction is rigidly enforced
under penalty of forfeiture of license,
and where it has been worked long
enough to see it's legitimate fruit?
AS Christian worker in England in
Bands Of Hope, Temperance societies,
1. o. G. T. Lodge, Ragged school and
Cottage meetings among the very
poor, and with thirty years of stu
dious observation in England, Wales
and Scotland among mechanics and
lahOrers aS a mechanic and after
twenty-tw years of ministerial SER
vice in Vermont, have nothing but
the most enthusiastic praise for pro-
hibition. I have said more than once,
both in England and Vermont, that
license and prohibition present con-
trast as great as that between hell
and paradise"
Albany, VT, April IS, 1901.