THE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
[To TRE EDITOR OF TIM SFECTATOR."] SIR,—Referring to the notice in your issue of February 19th of the recent Temperance Convention at Exeter Hall, permit me to say that the question with which the Convention dealt was- not, as might be inferred from your remarks, the right or wrong of drinking, but this,—Is it right or wrong that the people be- consulted as to the drink traffic ?
You apparently assume that teetotallers necessarily regard the moderate use of alcoholic liquor as in itself sinful. Thousands of abstainers, however, do not hold any such view. Their position is simply this,—they believe that by personal abstinence they can best serve the temperance cause. Having formed this judgment, abstinence, doubtless, becomes for them a matter of conscience ; but they do not judge others whose moderation, on the other hand, may be equally conscientious. "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."
That the liquor traffic is a fact and factor of enormous
importanoe in the country is indisputable. No other trade or interest approaches it either in magnitude or results. For whose presumed convenience and benefit is its existence sanctioned by law ? For that of the "trade ?" No; but for that of the people. If this be so, is it right or wrong that the people should possess the power of control P That question, and the answer to it, formed the sole subjects of discussion at the Convention.
IF the liquor traffic be on the whole beneficial to the community, it will doubtless, under popular control, be maintained, and even -extended. If, on the contrary, the public-house be "a huge nuisance and misery," as the Tinter described it some years ago, we may expeet, under like control, to see curtailment and repression.
The temperance party in this country ask for nothing more than the people of Canada now possess under their local option laws—namely, complete popular control of the traffic—which, as it exists for the people, and most vitally affects the people, they claim ought to be under the control of the people.
May I, as a constant reader of the Spectator, be permitted to add my regret that your apparent interest in this question of temperance reform is not greater,—if, indeed, an estimate of that interest is to be formed from your rare references to the subject Nearly half-a-century ago, Mr. Cobden expressed the opinion -that the temperance question lay at the very foundation of our national reformation. Acknowledgment of the truth of these words is daily growing. Temperance legislation is now a leading item in the Liberal programme, and yet the Spectator remains for the most part silent on the whole subject.—I am, Sir, &c., Liverpool, February 2l at. A. GUTHRIE. [But if drinking in moderation is lawful, what right have you t) interfere with it P—En. Spectator.]
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