Sir Thomas Whittaker contributes an interesting footnote to the inner
history of the Bill in a letter to the Westminster Gazette, which had described the proposals as " drastic," and owned to feeling no regret at the rejection of the second reading. He ascribes the defeat of the Bill partly to the hostility and abstention of the Irish Nationalists, but chiefly to Ministerial apathy. "The Liberal Whips' office did nothing "; and out of fourteen Cabinet Ministers sitting in the House of Commons, only three voted for the Bill. Hence his conclusion that unless "something very definite and practical" is done before the end of the Session, tem- perance people must make up their minds that, so far as this Government is concerned, they are living in a fool's paradise. A clearer way of putting it is that the Government's pre- tended sympathy for the temperance cause is part of that "Organized Hypocrisy" to which we have before now drawn attention.
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