CHAPTER IV.

Steady Progress of the cause in England. Liberality of the English People in Relation to it. Our Liberality Contrasted. The Result not Flattering to us. Its Success in one of the New England States. The cause of it. A short Letter to Connecticut by one of her Sons. A Concluding Tableau. In the previous chapters, I have incidentally referred to the steady progress of the temperance enterprise in Great Britain, and the comparative vitality and longevity of their temperance organizations, both general and local. And yet, a variety of influences combine to render the reformatory struggle more desperate there than it has ever been on this side of the Atlantic. Statistics show that a larger amount of liquor, per-capita, is or has been consumed by the people of England than by the population of this country. Again, the division of the people there into classes is more complete than here, so much so that a marked and general change may take place in the social customs of one class without materially affecting the customs of other classes. The liquor system was more popular and powerful in England than it has ever been here.. Some English Brewers, I believe, are members of Parliament. If I am not quite misinformed, the women of Great Britain had been drawn into the habit of drinking, to a far greater extent, than had the women of this country. Among educated ladies of good standing, in this country, now, the most sturdy defenders of social drinking, with whom I have chanced to meet, are those born and bred in England. The idea of giving up the ale

has for them a special horror. Had the question of tolerating the liquor traffic, and continuing the common use of alcoholic liquors been left by general consent to the women of this country, any time during the last twenty years, the traffic and drinking customs would have been doomed ere the lapse of twelve hours, in every state north of the Ohio.

There might be doubt as to how the women of England would decide the matter. The Church and Christian Ministry, in this country, very generally, favored the great reform from the very first, while in England it has taken years of agitation, an ocean of published truth, and a vast deal of patient persevering labor to bring one-half the clergy into the movement. Now, while in many things, we had the advantage of our English brethren, they certainly make a better, steadier fight on the temperance issue than we do. Those ups and downs, those flood and ebb tides which characterize the movement here, are scarcely known to them, if I may judge by their temperance papers which reach me with great regularity. Societies once established there, seem as permanent as Christian Churches, colleges, or township organizations. I read in their temperance journals, the annual reports of societies whose names have been familiar to me for more than fifteen years, while there are not a hundred open local temperance organizations in this country which are ten years old. Why is this? Have the English better " pluck," to use a common term, for a long fight than their descendants this side of the water? I think not. The annals of English warfare record no better fighting than our boys performed at Missionary Ridge, or Lookout Mountain. Why then this difference so distinctly apparent in the current history of the temperance reform? One only satisfactory answer can be given, their societies have a financial basis; ours have none. In many of their local societies a penny a week, (about two cents of our money,) is paid by each member. That seems a small matter, but look at the aggregate during the term of one year, from a society of two hundred members, about two hundred dollars.

We numbered more than five hundred societies in Massachusetts any time between the year 1830 and the year 1845, with an average list of members exceeding one hundred.

The penny or two cents a week system would, from those societies, have given us in Massachusetts fifty thousand dollars annually with which to flood, the state with temperance truth through the press, and furnish to the local societies just that help in educated public teachers and publications

which they needed, to educate their whole membership to such sound and safe views of the whole question, that the ingenious sophistries of the devil's servants could never have befogged them, and no earthly power have turned them back from their great and holy purpose, the annihilation of the liquor system root and branch. But the amount which we could have raised by a regular membership fee at regular meetings, whether weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly, would have been quite independent of the subscriptions of wealthy Christian gentlemen, who could have been relied upon during their lives, or as long as the battle lasted, had any proper regular system been adopted for securing their aid. The wealthy friends of the cause would have been excited to greater liberality than they have ever manifested toward this enterprise, had they but seen the rank and file of our force giving according to their limited means. Wealthy men see no reason why the support of such a work should rest on them alone, while all, down to the humblest laborer, are to be benefitted by the triumph of the cause, aye, even by every successful step toward that triumph.

Look, reader, at the following list of subscriptions to the funds of ONE of the important temperance associations of England of which there are very many.

Here is from ten gentlemen an aggregate of five thousand eight hundred and thirty-two dollars. The entire receipts of the society, as I learn from their annual report, was about twenty thousand dollars. And this was an annual subscrip

tion. Another important feature in connection with this annual subscription, is worthy of special note. The sums subscribed were forwarded to the treasurer by the parties and through the annual report duly acknowledged. Now this looks like work, earnest, appropriate, manly effort, and with such persistent effort the cause there will go steadily forward to a final triumph. With such a system of measures it would go forward in this country with even greater rapidity.

Beside the association from whose subscription list I have quoted, "The United Kingdom Alliance," there is the "National Temperance League" and the "Scottish Temperance League" the two societies expending in the work not less than sixty thousand dollars. I think it entirely safe to say that not less than one hundred thousand dollars are annually expended in Great Britain in the temperance cause by parent societies-and that is quite independent of what is raised and expended by societies strictly local in their operations. Agents or public lecturers, who early distinguished themselves in this work, are still in the field in England, doing excellent service, giving to the cause the benefit of a lengthy experience and of a study of the subject of not less, in some instances, than twenty years. With a number of presses entirely devoted to the work, and with ample funds, our brethren in England are literally flooding their field of labor with publications on the subject, and generally they are of a high character, evincing much study of the subject and careful observation. Now reader, contrast with all this, the meager, stinted, inadequate, lilliputian, sickly, consumptive, and wretched style in which the enterprise has been conducted in this country, and if you are not heartily sick of it, you are a man of very moderate ambition.

Let us look a little closer at facts here. The report of the receipts and expenditures in connection with this enterprise, for the year 1858, in the state of Massachusetts, now lies before me. Total of receipts for the year from all sources $2194.94 cts., expenditures $2233.29 cts., leaving the cause in debt at the end of the year $38.35 cts. Now I will venture to assert that no other state of this Union can, for the year 1858, show so good a record as that.

An English nobleman asked the Hon. Abbott Lawrence, a millionaire of Massachusetts and, at the time, our minister to the Court of St. James, what had given to Massachusetts her astonishing measure of prosperity. His Lordship had traveled extensively, he said, but had never passed through a country where the homes of its citizens, even the laboring classes, were surrounded with, and contained so many of the real comforts of life as the homes of Massachusetts. Mr. Lawrence replied, that, more than any thing else, it was the work of the temperance reform; and added, that prior to the commencement of the reform in this country, in 1826, one half of the farms in his native town (he was country bred) were under mortgage, through the intemperance and consequent improvidence of their owners. "All this is now changed," said Mr. L. "The farmers have ceased to drink-industry and thrift have taken the place of negli. gence and improvidence-the mortgages have been lifted, and the whole face of society is changed. Now, whether the statement was authentic or not, (I read it some years since in an English paper) the facts are undoubtedly as reported. Massachusetts is the richer by twenty millions (I think I might safely write fifty millions) to-day for the temperance cause. Yet see how even Massachusetts treats the enterprise, which, beside adding thus largely to her wealth, has saved from the drunkard's degradation and doom tens of thousands of her sons. Yet that state is rich, and to all other enterprises liberal. As to her wealth, I saw a statement the other day, that her laboring population had more money in Savings' Banks than the entire population of the French Empire about fifty millions, if I recollect. A more intelligent, moral and liberal people cannot be found on earth than the people of Massachusetts. The cause of the trouble I complain of, does not originate in the niggardly disposition of her people, but in the false notion, that, while funds are admitted to be essential to progress in all other good causes, they are not needful in the temperance enterprise.

How this notion, so disastrous heretofore in its effects, and sure, if not corrected, to be fatal to the enterprise, got so