on her way," but that really much drunkenness was going on in our larger towns, and if only she could stay till next week, our annual May fair, during ten successive days, would enable her to see much more than I wished were to be seen of our drinking customs.

In a population of 3,500,000, nearly 35,000 licenses are granted, or one to every 100 inhabitants. Much drunkenness must follow where so many drinking facilities are enticing the people, for we all admit, as a rule in our Temperance Statistics, " many drinkeries, many drunkards; no drinkeries, little intemperance."

These licenses return to the State a revenue of nearly 6,000,000 florins a year; or one-twelfth part of the total budget receipts; a revenue still increasing without any higher taxation. Towns and villages are all largely indebted to the same source for a great part of their local budgets; at the Hague it amounts to one-sixth. The money spent in the use of spirits (wine and beer excluded) may be valued at 24,000,000 florins a year; perhaps two-thirds paid by the working classes, representing an average quantity of eight litres (two gallons) a head for every inhabitant, and for the larger towns twice that number for every person. An immense quantity of grain is destroyed, a great number of paupers are made, a fearful amount of crime and other evils are traceable to this system; so that no better reform could be devised for promoting the morality, the wealth, and the well-being of our people, than the Temperance and Prohibition move

ment.

The first experiment of Temperance Societies in America, and so successfully tried in England, was followed in Holland by six devoted men, headed by our lamented Dr. W. Egeling. They assembled in Leyden, September, 12, 1842, and on that memorable day founded our existing Temperance Society. The following pledge was agreed upon :-"I hereby declare that I will abstain from all spirituous liquors (medicinal use excepted), and promise to discountenance their use wherever I can. If at any time I wish to release myself from being a member of this society, I will notify the fact to the Secretary of the Committee."

The newly-formed society met with much opposition. It was deemed impossible to act against the all-prevailing use of strong drinks. It was a folly to consider their daily use so injurious; it was exaggeration, and so on! But our men stood firm; small tracts were largely circulated, public meetings held, and now and then a few enlisted; till, at the end of the first year, the pledged members numbered 160; and at the end of the second year, 800; at the third, 1,800; and at the end of the tenth year, the society spread over the country with 42 local divisions, 225 corresponding members at different places, with 9,645 registered names. Now, in the twentieth year, we have 58 local divisions, with 354 correspondents in smaller places, and 12,838 members. A branch in our East India colonies numbered, some years since, 800 members, but is now in a less flourishing condition. The actual commander-in-chief of the army, Major-General van Swieten, is one of us. At the Cape of Good Hope, at Natal, and on the West Coast of Africa, and St. George d'Elmina, we have correspondents and active helpers; and thither our Temperance papers and tracts are regularly sent.

During winter time, from October till May, public meetings are held in the larger divisions. In the past season we had near to 300 generally well attended. Some ladies gave us their aid. From 80,000 to 100,000 tracts are distributed yearly. Temperance works, sold at low prices, are in large circulation; some written by our own men, as Rev. Mr. Huydecooper, Limburg Brouwer, Professor Schroeder, Van der Kolk, M.D.; others translated from the English.

66

The engravings of "The Bottle," from your inimitable artist and friend of our cause, Mr. Cruikshank, have been of great use, and are circulated in a cheap and popular edition in our schools. "The Drunkard's Children" are engravings equally popular. Illustrated handbills are widely spread. A translation in Dutch of the "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room " found a ready sale; the stirring stories, so well written, spoke mightily against the evils of drunkenness. "Danesbury House," translated by our secretary, Mr. d'Engelbronner, sold well. English Hearts and Hands" and "Haste to the Rescue," the latter translated by the Rev. Van Scheltima, are favourite books. Two Temperance Almanacs have a circulation of many thousands. Of our monthly paper, "De Volksviund” (the People's Friend), we print 2,400 copies. And, lastly, we were enabled to publish a most valuable little book with 500 testimonies of our medical men, out of 4,000 practitioners, condemning the daily use of strong drinks in terms more or less strong. The lecture of Dr. Mc.Culloch, to the medical students of Glasgow, was for us an excellent pleading in a popular style, and partly by his unanswerable arguments I believe our doctors' adhesions were gained.

Were it possible to cure our people of intemperance, and their love of strong drinks, by spreading Temperance works, much should have been done already. But you know by experience that books and reading will not do the work alone, so long as the drinking schools are open at every street corner. If we want to train the child in the way it should go, Government ought not to tolerate the drunkards'-making-profession, making it respectable by the sanction and protection of law.

That is what we are endeavouring to explain and learn in Holland. If, judging by the number of pledged names on our lists, I should fear that very little success had attended our labour; but I am glad to state that, by the light thrown on this subject, many of our antagonists in former days, if not yet our friends, acknowledge the frightful extent of the evil we are denouncing. Public opinion is growing stronger, that something must be done against the murderous drinking customs of our people. The shortest way at the mark is still in question; some think more religion and more education sufficient; and the long way seems to them more safe than the immediate and direct method we advocate. In our StatesGeneral Second Chamber, in 1856, Mr. Rochussen proposed an official inquiry into this matter. Though the Chamber rejected the proposition, it discussed the subject for two days, and concluded with a report from a select committee, declaring the evil to be "a cancer to the people's welfare."

"But did not your society succeed in some partial measures?" some one may ask. I am glad to answer in the affirmative.

In many

instances that influence is observable in different regulations of church, poor, and municipal administrations; in the army and navy, in workshops and manufactories, and in private families, regulations not even thought of ten years back. In many church and poor-law administrations, it is a rule to refuse relief where liquors are used; or, if obliged to assist, to pay in eatables instead of cash.

In towns and villages the public-house police regulations are enforced; street drunkenness is fined or punished with imprisonment for one to three days, at Leyden, Utrecht, and other places. The War Department and military authorities do not allow spirits to be sold in the canteens. The camp spirit ration is changed for coffee in the morning before drill. The barracks, till now very uncomfortable as a soldier's home, are improved, and drunkenness is punished severely. In the navy, the daily spirit ration was diminished to half the quantity, and now that the sailors can get their dram's worth in money, not a few avail themselves of this good regulation. No doubt more would do so, if the officers in command encouraged it by precept and example. In the royal dockyards and wharfes, weekly wages are paid on Tuesdays instead of Saturday. In the Sailors' Home, at Amsterdam, erected by private donations, no gin is allowed on the premises. At Rotterdam we failed to get the same prohibitive rule; but the last report gives only a small consumption of spirits, and the returns show half the quantity for every boarder compared with the year before. Some merchant ships are sailing on Temperance principles, and the men appear to do their work very well. In many manufactories strong prohibitive regulations are placarded in the workshops. In the carriage manufactory of Messrs. Hermans and Co. the introduction of strong drinks is strictly forbidden, and weekly wages are paid on Thursday. At the Hague, sixty-seven masters, at the request of the local Temperance committee three years ago, changed the usual Saturday payment. In other towns similar regulations are common. In many families liquors are entirely banished, where formerly they were in daily or occasional use.

Though something has been done through the influence of our movement, it is still discouraging to notice a yearly increase of the total use of strong drinks. The official returns on excise duties for home-made and imported spirits are-1857, 4,935,980 florins; 1860, 5,644,868 florins; 1861, 5,970,348 florins. (The augmented tax in 1860 was too slight to account for the difference.) A growing population, and a more strict oversight of the excise, may partly explain this fact. But it seems to indicate, likewise, that general prohibitory or repressive laws against the Traffic are indispensable to any lasting benefit. A Temperance movement on the broadest scale, if not followed with the necessary restrictive measures upon the drink Traffic, will only last for a time. A new generation, not trained in the same school, will quickly relapse, and the old evil revive under a rising youth. In Ireland, Father Mathew's influence would have been durable if a prohibitory law could have followed the unprecedented enthusiasm awakened during his time.

I am not over sanguine for the future. Our gin-loving, gin-manufacturing people are slow to learn. Many interests are against a reform

of these drinking customs; and it will be long before a real change can be effected. But still we hope for better days, and work in faith. If a first effort in our Legislative Assembly was not successful, a second and a third must be tried. A Wilberforce brought his anti-slavery propositions twenty-six times into Parliament, and succeeded only after so many years, and his Christian advocacy reminds us of our duty in this work of our days, and encourages us to go on. Since last month only, in Holland, after five unsuccessful schemes, from 1857 to 1862, a law for the abolition of slavery in the Dutch West India colonies was voted. If, on a question of such general and indisputable wrong, a majority always found fault with the proposals to remove it, we need not be astonished at so much indifference concerning our home drink slavery. Sometimes I fear to be one-sided, but the more I study the fearful consequences of drink slavery, the more I am convinced that it ought to have an equal, if not a larger share of my sympathies.

At the present International Exhibition not less than ten prize medals were awarded to the Dutch exhibitors, for different most ingenious processes to distil alcohol out of sugar, madder, potatoes, beet-root, and for making the best crême de noyaux, persico, anisette, Chinese liquor, and also the most excellent gin.

A French correspondent in the Journal des Débats, of July 8th, after enumerating some particulars about the Dutch department at the Exhibition, remarks:-"I regret to register the gin, that famous Dutch liquor, which only will lose its reputation like all other poisonous beverages from the Northern countries, when no custom duties will obstruct, and railways shall favour, French wines, to be sold at seventy-five centimes a litre (2s. 10d. a gallon), and drunkenness then will be suppressed better than all the Temperance organisations can do it."

French and Southern sobriety, notwithstanding many exceptions, might be for Holland, and perhaps for England too, a decided progress; and if strong drinks were unavoidable, I should prefer a daily use of light wine to that of gin and its drunkenness. I fear, however, the light wines would prove too light, and not palatable enough for our people. They would quickly modify them with the different alcoholic extracts medalised at the Exhibition, and so only a new intoxicating beverage would fill the already too well provisioned stores.

Though prospects for the abolition of strong drinks in Holland are not bright, strong restrictive measures may be expected. Our Minister of Finance has spoken on different occasions against our existing license system, and a new license law for all trades is looked for. We hope a higher rate of licenses for the drink sellers, and a general higher taxation, will at least be tried. A heavier duty would do something to check the consumption of spirits, and there is scope in this direction, for our taxation, compared with England, on the same quantity of spirits (100 litres, or 22 gallons), is 33 to 133 florins (£2. 15s. to £11). If a large State revenue from the drink Traffic is a bad policy, it is an acceptable profit only when a decrease in consumption of spirits follows an increase of receipts in money. Temperance men must hail any measure that will curtail the Traffic. Mr. Bonwick, in his letters on Holland, is quite right

when he asserts, in reference to Germany and Holland, "that the mode of procedure should be an appeal to Government. Unquestionably it should be some restriction of existing liberty of sale. There is an excess of liberty granted to the vendors of alcoholic liquors, much more in character with the habits of the inhabitants than the claims of virtue." And when he speaks of "a want of appreciation of Temperance organisation" he is not misjudging us entirely, We do want more information in this particular work, and it is because we feel a need of help that we are with you at this Convention. Perhaps we should do well to omit the fermented drinks for ourselves, and become teetotalers. I believe it is a surer and less questionable stand, for since I was made one myself, by sound teaching on former visits to England, I know how to love our Temperance cause the more. Drinking and drunkenness are of a most cosmopolitan character; it is one evil under King Alcohol's command, and one and the same remedy will, in all climes, serve to cure it. Individually, we must abstain; socially, we must reform our manners and laws. These are the two phases of our movement. What a happy change would result—what a beneficial reform would be operated in society at large-if these principles should be generally adopted! To work is our part; God's blessing will follow in God's own time.

Ireland and Father Mathew. By JAMES HAUGHTON, J.P., Dublin.

[Ireland has the honour of being the first European country in which the modern Temperance movement commenced, the first society being established in 1829, at New Ross, by the Rev. G. Carr. Some information has been lately published by Mr. Robert Rae, which, if correct, would also make Ireland the birth-place of the first Teetotal Society, as it undoubtedly is of its greatest apostle. It seems that a Mr. Jeffery Sedwards, a nailer in Skibbereen, county Cork, who died so lately as 1861, at the advanced age of 85, became an Abstainer about the year 1817, and originated an Abstinence Society shortly afterwards. Two of the first members of the society, Mr. Denis Mara, house carpenter, and Mr. James White, nailer, still reside at Skibbereen. These surviving members, as well as several other persons, agree in ascribing the origin of the society to Mr. Sedwards. At first it consisted of only twelve members, most of whom had been intemperate. After some weekly house meetings, they gave a tea party, to which a number of persons were admitted by tickets. It was then resolved "That a society, to be called the Abstinence Society, be formed, to be governed by written rules and regulations; to assemble monthly; to be presided over by the father of the society, Mr. Jeffery Sedwards, and by a vice-president. The little band now became enlarged, and as more flocked to the Temperance standard than could be accommodated in any member's house, the meetings were held for a while in the school-houses and other rooms, until the members, in 1824, built a meeting house for themselves. Mr. Mara states that it was completed in eight days, solely by the tradespeople who were members of the society, the dimensions being fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and sixteen feet wall-high. The Abstainers, at this time all tradespeople and artisans, were so elated with their success, that they applied to the magistrates for permission to carry flags and banners, which was readily granted. After this the Abstainers frequently assembled in large numbers to walk through the streets, and visit the surrounding towns and villages, Bantry, Clonakilty, Ross, and Castle-Townsend, proclaiming the blessings of Temperance. Mr. Sedwards, jun., says that he remembers to have seen the Skibbereen and Clonakilty societies, amounting to five hundred, walk in procession through Skibbereen, after having been entertained at the society house.