The Sun. — 1870-10-12 (London, England)

BAINES, M.P., ON TEMPERANCE.  In a speech at the annual meeting of the Leeds Band of Hope, Mr. Baines, Vii. P., after narrating some facts which he learnt while on a visit in the neighbourhood of Tenby, chewing how disastrous had been the effect of drink On some families in that district, spoke of the Earl of Cawdor's estate in the same locality, where public houses ware prohibited, and he rode for nine miles without seeing a public house. If the people on that estate could do without intoxicating drinks, why could not the inhabitants of other districts do without them ? If the people at Saltaire, again, could do without public houses, why should malicious and avaricious people go and crowd public houses all round about them, and why should the magistrates have granted a spirit license on the very edge of the Saltaire property, where it might do the greatest amount of mischief ? This seemed to him to be directly wrong, and he thought that the magistrates had much to answer for in this case. He had heard with great grief that, in spite of remonstrances, the magistrates had granted a spirit license on the very borders of that town, which was so happy. From his own experience he was able to say that to abstain from drinking liquors was no privation, or loss whatever, and it was his confident belief that he had had more enjoyment for his palate, taste, and stomach than if he had taken them, while he was pretty nearly as active as any man of his years. Had he taken them, he was confident he would have had worse health. Why should people therefore go on taking them? They all knew that the drinking habits were the source of almost all the disease, almost all the poverty, almost all the insanity, almost all the suicides, almost all the crimes in the country. Everything that was black— he had almost said black and bloody—was caused by this sad abuse of drink --and there was more harm done in England by brandy than there was in China by opium. When introduced into islands where Christian missionaries were labouring, spiritous liquors had sometimes destroyed and sweptaway all the good that had been done. In Madagascar the effects had ben most lareentable, and so horrible had been .the guilt of some so-called Christians living in the neighbourhood of the Red Indians, that they had introduced by design, what was everywhere called fire-water, in order that the poor Indians might perish off the face of the earth and they might possess themselves of their lauds. Indeed, the whole history of drink was a history of horrors. Referring to the remarks made by a previous speaker, Mr. Baines expressed his confident belief that the great source of the 'want of education that there now is in the country was not the want of schools, not the want of persons who would gladly assist the poor to obtain schooling for their children ; but it was the degraded state of the parents, and that degradation was due almost entirely to drink. He believed that if they erected ever so perfect educational machinery, if it should not be accompanied by efforts on behalf of temperance, they. would be almost as badly off as they were at present. He had always said that the tendency of education, of mechanics' institutions, and other agencies of. that character, was in favour of temperance ; but if there should still continue the existing habits of intemperance, as there might, even in connection with knowledge—for some of the brightest geniuses he could name, some of the first poets, princes, philosophers, statesmen, had perished from the effects of drink— if there should still be any connection between increased schooling and intemperance, then he believed we should do comparatively little to check that pauperism which seemed to be flowing in upon us in connection with the degradation of our fellowmen.  MR.