The Bishop of Peterborough, who presided at Leicester, on Tuesday
night, at a meeting of the Church of England Temper- ance Society for the diocese of Peterborough, referred, with some humour, to the am‘Jignons reputation he had earned by some re- marks of his on the temperance question in the House of Lords, remarks which had been referred to as almost "infamous." The Bishop evidently still maintains his old attitude on the question, —the dislike, that is, to compulsory laws for drilling men into sobriety. "People talked," he said, "of closing licensed houses as if it were an easy thing to do. Let them picture to themselves an artisan with his wife and children walking out on Sunday four or five miles in London, seeing all along the closed shops, dull and uninteresting, and only two places open,—the one the public. house, where he could have a seat and welcome ; and the other the church, where be could not always have a seat and welcome." In point of fact, a good deal of the experience of Sunday. closing appears to be by no means favourable to temperance. In Wales we hear of many private Sunday.clubs having been established, where men of dubious character congregate without any fear of a visit from the police. And these are often much more destructive of domestic peace than the old public-houses.
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