The Blackpool Herald. — 1888-03-09 (Blackpool, Lancashire, England)

THE EDITOR.  SIR, —lt has been my custom for some years to give a viva-wee reply to the speeches made at the Blackpool annual meeting of the licensed victuallers. Owing to a superabundance of official duties I am uuable, I regret to say, to address a public meeting at present. On this account I respectfully request your permission to place a few words in the columns of your paper, lest silence be taken for acquiescence. I observe that Dr. Richardson in his speech undertakes to lecture the clergy of this locality. Now if it were not highly amusing, there could not well be anything more absurd than the attempt to give a pious tone to these licensed victuallers' dinner. parties. It has in it very much of the boy who in the dark lane " whistled to keep his courage up." Why should they—as they so persistently do—try to assure the public that they are as goood as other people, if not better, &c. ? Would it not be just as reasonable to tell the public that the victuallers can walk like other people? Perhaps not. Why? Because the public know these men can walk; but they are not quite so well acquainted with their sober and virtuous conduct. In so far as relates to temperance, I would commend the doctor to his namesake in London, and also reauest the people of Blackpool to read Dr. W. B. Richardson's lectures, and act on them, in preference—with all respect —to the Blackpool Dr. Richardson. It is not a matter that concerns sue much at present, but as the doctor treats on Church and State I should like to ask him if he thinks that Disestabliahment and Disendowment would really drive the clergy of the Eoglish Church out of their parishes ? If so, he must have a very low opinion of the clergy, who will be so ready to depart, and of the public who—he seems to think—would not support the clergy. Did this happen in Ireland when the Church was disestablished ? His notion that the clergy would be driven out of their parishes, and the Dissenting ministers would be compelled to follow is prima facie, most absurd. Tile puerility of such an assumption induces me to think there must be some mistake in the transmis. sion of the speech. Perhaps the printer's demon was asleep at the time. Coming to the Vicar's speech : It is impossible to trust one's pen to characterise it. He seems anxious to make it appear thet "the publicans and sinners" of Scripture were represented by the tax collectors. Perhaps so ; is it just in him to stand on the shoalders of the tax collector, that, thus exalted, he may wreathe the brows of the liquor sellers? Is not tax-collecting a lawful calling? But the Vicar is a teetotaller. Some time ago it was my duty to say that meee personal abstinence from alcoholic liquor does not constitute a man a teetotaller, for the term includes the dig. countenancine of the causes and practices of. intemperance. But the Vicar is reported as saying that the licensed victuallers bad never "endeavoured to weaken the influence of clergymen, but, on the contrary, had always been, and were, ready to help him in good works he had on hand." I am afraid the statement means a good deal. It means this : For so much cash, a clerical braggart about teetotalism will befoul his principles —run with the hare and shout with the hounds— morality has no meaning. and men whose business debases the national life are proclaimed as honoured aids in Christian enterprise. "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil." Has the Vicar ever read the report presented by a ciommittee of the Convocation of Canterbury on Intemperance? I will rebut his questionable testimony with tvo cases in that report, on pages 27 and 47. When once a public-house is established, the proprietor moves Heaven (?) and earth to make it pay, and, therefore, he becomee an active agent, and a most powerful one, in the increase of intemperance. Nor is this all. Dancing and music are added to aid the brimming bowl, and fornication and adultery and murder walk hand-in-hand with the drunkenness which our legislature winks at. Our legislature neglects the greater matter and attends to the smaller. I speak clerically. and say that intemperance undoes all we can do for the morel improvement of the parish ; and aistoially, that, out of every 100 cases, ninety at leas of the cases brought before the Bench