THE PERMISSIVE BILL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:1 think you have, unwittingly, done a large number of teetotallers an injustice in your last issue. It is true that the Permissive Bill owes its origin to the teetotallers, but from its very beginning it has been strongly objected to by a very large party among them. Though I have been a teetotaller for more than twenty years, I find very little in your article on the Per- missive Bill to which I can object ; on the contrary,! find there some of my own opinions more forcibly expressed than I have ever seen them before. The Permissive Bill long ago split up English teetotallers into two hostile camps ; and its present position is due as much to the patronage of men who are not teetotallers and who keep beer and wine in, their own cellars, as to the sympathy of teetotallers. To. the many abstainers who agree with you in holding the Permissive Bill to be "bad morally, bad socially, bad politically," the recent action of its advocates in assisting the publicans to mutilate Mr. Bruce's Bill has been the occasion of deep regret.-1 am, Sir, &e.,
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