One hundred years ago
The Bishop of Peterborough, who presided at Leicester, on Tuesday night, at a meeting of the Church of England Temperance Society for the diocese of Peterborough, referred, with some humour, to the ambiguous reputation he had earned by some remarks of his on the temperance question in the House of Lords, remarks which had been referred to as almost 'infamous'. The Bishop evidently still maintains his old attitude on the question, — the dislike, that is, to compulsory laws for drilling men into sobriety. 'People talked,' he said, 'of closing licensed houses as if it were an easy thing to do. Let them picture to themselves an artisan with his wife and children walk- ing out on Sunday four or five miles in London, seeing all along the closed shops, dull and uninteresting, and only two places open, — the one the public- house, where he could have a seat and welcome; and the other the church, where he could not always have a seat and welcome.'
Spectator, 29 November 1884
Previous page
