WANTED, A COMPROMISE.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLTOE."1
Sin,—I am greatly indebted to you for the courtesy which you have extended to me in publishing my letter, and affording me the information requested therein. Will you allow me to explain that it is Sir Thomas Whittaker, and not I, who has made reflec- tions upon the efficiency, as evidenced by the statute-book; of the Temperance Party? Who really represents the working men may not be easy to discover, but they are quite capable of compelling attention to their views, whatever proportion they may form numerically to the democratic majority. I observe that Mr. J. T. Rhys states with regard to State Purchase : "It should be clearly understood that the one difficulty now comes from the extreme Temperance Party." Does he ever read the Daily Express, which is not, I believe, the official organ of the United Kingdom Alliance ? The extreme Temperance Party has not hitherto achieved the reputatien of a leading authority on the financial problems of the day, which the continued duration of the war hardly tends to simplify. Has Parliament the time or inclination to enter on a vast and complicated financial transaction with per- manent and far-reaching results in order to pave a costly way to Local Veto, and would such a decision on the part of the Government further in any way our progress towards peace? After all, the Government was formed to get on with the war, and not to promote Local Option as a by-product of State Pur- [Mr. Whitbread is a very astute dialectician, but does he really think that he and his friends are making it easier to win the war by insisting in a year of famine that a million quarters of malt, all suitable for human consumption, shall be deprived of
their food value and turned into intoxicants? As we have
explained elsewhere, the brewers will find before the year is out that they have missed an opportunity which will not return, and placed themselves in a position of great public odium.— ED. Spectator.]
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