MR. SOMES AND HIS FRIENDS.
kS the time draws near for Mr. Somes's Bill to be again
_ brought forward, the meetings in its favour become more frequent and more obstreperous. We have generally found these gatherings held in a small schoolroom or some wretched shed which does duty as a meeting-place for the brethren, and which lies about half a day's journey from any civilized part of the town. The course of business is very simple. The audience consists of a few men and women who are all of one mind on the question, and have, therefore, no chance of disagreeing. Any stranger who chanced to drop in and tried to express opposite views would be immediately hooted down, and probably forcibly expelled. The men and women speak by turns. The general drift of their remarks is that they have been great drunkards and vagabonds in their time, a statement that is often remarkably corroborated by their countenances and manners, and that as they have been bene- fitted by taking the pledge, sober men ought to be made to take it too. We heard one man declare that for more than three years he never went to bed sober a single night, that his wife died brokenhearted, and that his children languished in the workhouse—and, upon the whole, he seemed rather proud of so exceptionably fine an "experience." The fellow had the impudence to draw a comparison between himself and the great body of English workmen, and to declare that now he was "saved" while they were "wallowing in sin." It seems to be the effect of this temperance pledge to stuff men up with all kinds of self-conceit and hypocrisy. They cannot understand that the filthy habits in which they were accustomed to indulge, and upon which they still dwell with a kind of affectionate interest, would be abhorrent to the very natures of decent people. "I have been dead," said a speaker, at a meeting held in Camden Town, "to drinking customs, and they have been dead to me, for thirty years ; but it concerns me when I look upon suffering humanity." It probably never occurred to this man that what he injuri- ously used in excess, others might safely use in moderation. After this fervid speaker came forward a Mr. Noble and declared that they were "resolved to carry this measure." The cheers of the audience showed that at that moment they could joy- fully have consented to the extermination of all who opposed it, and sung a hymn of praise over their miserable remains. A gentleman made another meeting glad by telling them a horrible anecdote of a man who, when his mother came to see him in prison, cursed her for letting him taste ale when be was young, and having thus brought him to ruin. Then fol- lowed a story or two of awful death-bed scenes, over which the audience chuckled and gloated like so many ghouls. Every such anecdote evidently stirred up a fierce joy in their breasts, and they cheered till the thought was suggested that a horde of savages must be animated by much the same feelings when they dance around the scalp of a fallen foe, Another person, quoting from a temperance paper, said that "taverns and ale- houses are the portals of the grave and the gates of hell." But this is putting the matter in an absurdly mild form compared with the language generally employed.
It was deemed necessary that a meeting a little above this tag-rag class should be held in support of the Bill, and so last Tuesday, in one of the minor rooms of Exeter Hall, the promoters induced a few gentlemen to sit on a plat- form in the presence of a handful of persons. A line of ten ladies occupied the front seat, and if they were teetotallers their substantial make and build did some credit to their principles. Next to the chairman sat Mr. Horsfall, the member for Liverpool—it must be a wild cause indeed that could not get some member of Parliament to espouse it—and next to him was a dispirited, melancholy- looking gentleman, who never showed one sign of animation from the time he entered the room till the time he left it. He seemed plunged in grief, but it may only have been the workings of inspiration or the effects of the process of gestation, for it turned out that he was to deliver a speech. Then there was the secretary, who was ever on the look out for fresh arrivals, and gradually tempted to the plat- form a stout reinforcement.
For some time an air of profound wretchedness pervaded the meeting. Whether through the dampness of the day, or the dread of that terrible row of stern matrons iu front, the speakers did not seem to be able to get warmed up properly. The secre- tary read the report, drawn up in a spirit of Draeonic severity. One might have thought it was the production of half-a-dozen despots who had England fast in their grip. It told how the Committee had "taken steps" to " check " the opening of the Crystal Palace on Sunday, and to do away with the bands playing in the parks. Hearing that the Great Exhibition was opened last year to a select few on Sunday, "no time was lost" in " ehecking " that. Then they went farther afield. They learnt that public works were carried on in India on Sunday, and immediately wrote an imperative letter about it to the Secretary of State. Luckily for him, he saved himself by writing back word that no public works were carried on except under necessity. The report went on to say that the society had a Bill ready to render it a punishable offence to open any shop whatever on Sunday, including, we presume, the bakers' shops where the poor get their dinners cooked ; but "friends in Parliament" judged it better not to introduce the Bill this session; so that for another year the poor work- ing man may still enjoy a good dinner at home on one day out of the seven. The Committee had tried to close all post-offices, because these wicked institutions "filled people's minds with thoughts of the riches and pleasures of this world" on the Sabbath. In this strain of serene piety the document ran on till the rise and fall of the secretary's voice in that damp atmosphere seemed to be lulling the audience to sleep, and perhaps to dreams of this happy land bound hand and foot in the dust-before a mob of reckless zealots.
After this came Mr. Horsfall, but he was not a more amusing speaker than Mr. Horsfall usually is. We remember no more of his remarks than the expression of his opinion that ." it is not right in the sight of God to open public houses at all on Sundays." When he had ended his exercise, the chairman called upon Mr. Somes, who proved to be none other than the exceedingly dispirited, melancholy gentleman we before men- tioned. We have heard many bad speakers, but none who floundered and hammered at hopeless sentences so vacantly as the author of the little Bill that is to do so much for Eng- land. He began several sentences that promised well, but, by some mental aberration, he forgot to finish them. He talked principally of a previous appointment which would call him from the meeting, and when he broke down in a sentence, he always filled up the blank with a reference to this appointment, which seemed to weigh very heavily on his mind. Having apparently satisfied himself, and quite satisfied his hearers, that he had nothing to say, he fell back upon extracts of letters in praise of his Bill, which he promised to read to the House of Commons. But he seemed so utterly cast down in spirit, that unless he cheers up a little before that day we are afraid the House will not endure him. The lecturers in the room, who looked as though they had been out somewhere in a blight, evidently felt that they were better qualified to be members of Parliament than the gentleman who was making each a sorry effort to express himself coherently. Finally, he sat down, to the intense relief of all parties, and melted feebly out of the room. The responsibility of the Bill is, perhaps, overweighting him, but he is evidently the very man fit to introduce such a measure.
Things did not go on at all briskly till the chairman called upon a Mr. Payne, whom the audience evidently knew well. His name called forth the first hearty burst of cheers we had heard, and when he came forward, a little round comic gentleman, another burst greeted him. His speech was the only fun of the afternoon. He made all sorts of jokes suited to the precincts of Exeter Hall, and his style was so well known and understood that almost before he came to the point the people laughed. Mr. Somes was an M.P., he said, but M.P. meant something more than usual in his case. It meant that his Manner was Pleasing (which was a cruel piece of sarcasm), that he had Made a Promise, Meant to Perform it, was Marvellously Patient, and so on, till the previously woe- begone audience was convulsed with laughter. Then this merry little gentleman, who had the oddest possible way of brushing up his hair into a ferocious tuft with his hand, read a copy of verses in honour of the occasion,. of which we can recollect no more than that they were the 1855th copy he had written, and that they wound up with a rhyme about " Somes" and "happy homes," which caused one of the ladies to whisper audibly to another that he was a "dear." When this funny, irresistible gentleman sat down another speaker rose, but his "Manner" being almost as "Pleasing" as that of Mr. Somes himself, and another great cloud evidently falling upon the meeting, we were obliged to confess that the endurance of the brethren was much greater than our own.
These are the methods by which the originators of the Bill —for it is palpable that poor Mr. Somes is only the cat's-paw— hope to push it into popular favour. It would be idle to argue seriously with them, for they are impenetrable to argument ; but we would commend a plain statement of the case to their- attention. The Bill is intended, they say, for the benefit of men who drink to the injury of themselves and their families. Now, the habits and inclinations of such'. men would not be- changed by their inability to indulge them on one particular day. If they could not get drink on Sunday, they would get it on Monday, and neglect their work to get it— for slaves to a habit never consider the consequences of their self-indulgence. How would their families be the gainers then ? But they could store drink and take it on Sundays at home, we are told. Is it less a desecration of the Sabbath for a man to get drunk at home than at a publichouse ? To put a " check " on drunkards, sober men must be denied necessary refreshments on Sunday. Teeto- tallers say that beer is not a necessary refreshment; but this is- only their opinion—some men deem it necessary, and they have as great a right to act up to their views as the ab- stainers have to fellow out theirs. If the gentlemen who are induced to lend their names to this cause, the reclaimed drunk- ards who lecture upon it, and the sanguine persons .who- support it with their money, would, when they are "checking" this and that, check their own bigotry and meddling propen- sities, they would serve the cause of true religion far better than by their present efforts, which only tend to bring ridicule upon all that is good.
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